Away From Her

The first film written and directed by 28-year-old Canadian actress Sarah Polley, adapted from an Alice Munro story, is amazingly mature, assured, and accomplished. Julie Christie captivates as a woman succumbing to Alzheimer’s, deep blue eyes and good bone structure last even while the mind goes. Gordon Pinsent is thoroughly convincing as her husband of 44 years, no saint but still in love with the woman who no longer recognizes him. The patients and staff of the nursing facility are all well portrayed, and Olympia Dukakis makes the most of a small role as the wife of a man with whom Julie engages in a blank-slate institutionalized romance. A time-fractured editing scheme successfully conveys the disorientation of dementia, and the heart-tugging loss of memory and relationship is both astringent and powerfully moving, allowing for humor and sharp observation along with well-earned tears. This is no “movie of the week” but one of the best of the year. (2007, Images, n.) *8+* (MC-88.)

Our Daily Bread

Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s look at industrialized food production in Europe is aestheticized rather than muckraking, but effective nonetheless. There is no narration, dialogue, music, or other form of contextualization -- just classically composed and lingering shots of machines and humans at work, along with animals and vegetables subjected to massive and highly mechanized procedures. This open-ended visual meditation allows you to take away an appreciation of ingenuity and impressive rationalization, or horror at denaturalization, institutionalized cruelty, and excessive use of fossil fuels. For myself and most viewers, the reaction to agricultural inhumanity is likely to be a vow to obtain as much food as possible grown locally and organically. A good companion to Richard Linklater’s docudrama, Fast Food Nation. (2006, Sund/T, n.) *7* (MC-86.)

The Good Shepherd

Well-upholstered but overstuffed and lumpy, Robert DeNiro’s film -- from an Eric Roth script -- is earnest and well-meaning, but a chore to sit through or on. It endeavors to tell the story of the CIA through a character based on James Jesus Angleton and played by Matt Damon, from Skull & Bones initiation at Yale through development of OSS in WWII to the Bay of Pigs and beyond. The cast rounds up a talented bunch of the usual suspects, from Alec Baldwin, William Hurt, and Michael Gambon, to Billy Crudup as the Kim Philby-type and Angelina Jolie as the suffering wife of the close-mouthed and withholding main character. The film tries for a LeCarre-like depiction of spycraft and counterintelligence, but winds up muddled and befuddling, while also mounting Godfather-like set pieces, from weddings to Bonesmen rituals. There’s good stuff in it (confirmed by recent release of CIA's "family jewels"), and good points about the liabilities of secrecy and disinformation, but it’s all too much. Or too little, when it comes to emotional involvement with characters or story. (2006, dvd, n.) *6-* (MC-61.)

Waitress

Plenty of reason to root for this little indie, what with writer/director Adrienne Shelly’s subsequent fate and her poignant postmortem acclaim at Sundance. But I’ll be as cold as the film itself left me -- it just doesn’t have the snap-crackle-&-pop to be a successful comedy, or the authenticity and perception to be an effective drama. Keri Russell is not without appeal as the reluctantly pregnant but ecstatically pie-baking young woman at the center of this story. The supporting cast is intriguing but makes for an out-of-key ensemble -- Cheryl Hines, Shelly herself, Andy Griffith, Jeremy Sisto (making his “Six Feet Under” character Southern and a little more degenerate), Nathan Fillion (trying to flip his image from the ultimate demon in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”). The credit sequence suggests the film might be classic food porn, and the pie-baking trope works pretty well throughout, but most of the effort to work against type makes the film of no type at all. Honorable effort and all, too bad Ms. Shelly won’t be able to move on to better work, but this is a crowd-pleaser only for a crowd that resolutely wants to be pleased. (2007, Images, n.) *6-* (MC-74.)

Come Early Morning

First off, let me confess to a little crush on Ashley Judd, starting with Ruby in Paradise (but not encompassing all the crap Hollywood product she has “graced” with her presence.) Here’s another indie in which she gets to play a real woman, instead of a femme-in-jeop or female revenge fantasy, and a film made by another woman to boot. Joey Lauren Adams is probably best known as the Amy of Kevin Smith’s Chasing Amy, but here makes a creditable debut as writer and director. The film is a little schematic in showing how a strong but believably flawed thirtysomething woman deals with the men and the women in her life on the way to finding a life of her own, and furthermore the sense of place amounts to little more than “down south” without further specification. The country music soundtrack is a plus, however, and figures into the story with meaning, climaxing wordlessly in a tune played quietly by Ashley’s uncommunicative Dad. She’s been holding off other men, emotionally if not sexually, in the futile hope of re-connecting with her father, and avoiding the fate of her disappointed and delusional female relatives. But she’s strong, and will find a way to be her own woman. That’s the template. But hey, the lines are colored in vividly by Ashley and a good supporting cast. It will not surprise you much, but you won’t mind the company. (2006, dvd, n.) *6* (MC-64.)

Army of Shadows

I don’t get it. Not the film itself, which I get well enough, but the reaction of critics. While I would call this film good but not great, some hailed it as the best film of the year, and it received the highest Metacritic rating I’ve seen yet. Certainly the film is well acted and directed, meticulously made and psychologically probing, but it is also long and slow and implausible in parts. Jean-Pierre Melville’s career was somewhat swamped by the New Wave, but his work has been in a process of restoration lately and Army of Shadows is certainly worth the U.S. distribution it never received before last year. A story of the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation of WWII, it’s characters are morally compromised to be sure, and one prison break fails utterly, while another is swift and chancy, but yet another is something out of Mission: Impossible. Ultimately the maquis operate more like a gang with omerta, rather than a political movement based on patriotism, a self-fulfilling and self-destroying conspiracy that seems to have no connection to public action or the populace at large. The careful mise en scene and consistent blue-green palette that can seem almost monochrome give the film an air of quality, but it’s not thrilling enough to be a thriller, nor consistent enough to be profound. IMHO. (1969/2006, dvd, n.) *6+* (MC-99.)

Documentary checklist

I’ve always been a lover of and advocate for documentaries, so I am happy to agree that we are in a golden age of documentary filmmaking, though I tend not to care much for those cited as most successful. So I want to speak up for some truly worthwhile nonfiction films that you may or may not have heard of.

On of my first posts to Cinema Salon was “33 docs to watch instead of Michael Moore” and I thought it opportune to update that list with all the documentaries I have reviewed and recommended since. Typing “33 docs” in the search box above will bring up the prior list, and similarly, you can call up my reviews of any of the titles below. Reviews of further well-regarded documentaries will follow forthwith.

Perhaps I need to re-emphasize the subjectivity (informed or not) of my ratings, a reaction to a particular viewing at a particular time, subject to change on re-viewing, but not as much as you might think. The Leonard Cohen is a case in point; a second time around the film’s flaws might register more, when at first I was dazzled by the subject himself, an introduction that felt revelatory.

*9+*
Hoop Dreams (1994)

*8+*
Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man (2006)

*8*
49 Up (2006) (“7 Up” series as a whole = *10*)
Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing (2006)
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005)
Grey Gardens (1976)
Jonestown: The Life and Death of the Peoples Temple (2006)
My Flesh and Blood (2003)
Neil Young: Heart of Gold (2006)
Rivers and Tides (2001)

*8-*
When the Levees Broke (2006)

*7+*
Bearing Witness (2005)
Born into Brothels (2004)
Bright Leaves (2004)
Festival Express (2004)
Gimme Shelter (1970)
Grizzly Man (2005)
Mad Hot Ballroom (2005)
No Direction Home (2005)
One Bright Shining Moment (2005)
Paradise Lost (1996) and Paradise Lost 2 (1999)
The Real Dirt on Farmer John (2005)
Street Fight (2005)
Unforgivable Blackness (2004)
Unknown White Male (2006)
Wordplay (2006)

*7*
The Corporation (2004)
Deliver Us From Evil (2006)
The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2006)
Iraq in Fragments (2006)
March of the Penguins (2005)
Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (2004)
Michelangelo: Self Portrait (1989)
Murderball (2005)
The Road to Guantanamo (2006)
Sunset Story (2003)
Two Days in October (2005)
The White Diamond (2005)
Why We Fight (2006)

*7-*
Darwin’s Nightmare (2005)
Girlhood (2003)
An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater (2006)
Sketches of Frank Gehry (2006)

Two indie faves

I caught up with two recent film festival phenoms, but had only a lukewarm reaction to either. They’re different, to be sure. And sincere, modest in means, local in flavor, well-meaning. But definitely not among the best films of the year.

Old Joy. The Pacific Northwest, with its lush landscape and post-hippie politics, is almost the third character in this two-hander, in which a pair of thirtysomething friends try to re-bond on an overnight camping trip to a hot springs in the Cascades. Kelly Reichardt’s direction, and Daniel London and Will Oldham as the two old buddies, have some appeal, but finally not enough. A certain Zen minimalism might have been the effect sought, but my response was “Eh? That’s all you got?” The film doesn’t overstay its welcome, but left me with no feeling of resolution. Other viewers reacted differently, as the Metacritic rating will show. (2006, dvd, n.) *6-* (MC-84.)

Quinceanera. This Sundance winner is firmly located in the Echo Park area of L.A., where gentrification and commodification is supplanting the traditional Mexican neighborhood. Emily Rios is indeed winning as the soon-to-be 15-year-old who gets pregnant without having intercourse, and has to deal with her family and friends' disbelief in her “virgin birth.” James Garcia is also effective as the cousin who is not as tough as he seems, and bonds with her as one outsider to another. The writer/director team of Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland promises more than it delivers, wants to say more than it can articulate, but still expresses some honest caring for the characters and the complex life of family and neighborhood. (2006, dvd, n.) *6* (MC-72.)

The Painted Veil

This self-consciously old-fashioned drama was produced by its stars, Edward Norton and Naomi Watts, and they are indeed the guarantors of value in this enterprise. John Curran’s direction, the location shooting in China, the music and all the rest are competent support to the two central roles, which hold the screen admirably. Norton is a stuffy British bacteriologist who woos the flighty Watts, and wins her by providing escape from her familty to faraway Shanghai. But then of course she needs to escape from him, and takes Liev Schreiber as a lover. Norton discovers the affair and offers to let her go, but when that avenue is closed, insists she accompany him inland where he is going to combat a cholera epidemic. It’s not entirely clear whom he wishes to punish more, her or himself. Alone together in an isolated and deadly situation, they are forced to come to terms with each other, to know each other for the first time. Their relationship is beautifully and subtly and even wittily delineated, and their romantic doom is sealed with intelligence and passion. It’s all a bit stodgy, but moving nonetheless. (2006, dvd, n.) *7-* (MC-69.)

Talk about holding the screen admirably -- no one does it better than Garbo. TCM recently showed the 1934 adaptation of the same Somerset Maugham novel, starring Greta Garbo and Herbert Marshall and directed by Richard Boleslawski. It doesn’t explain the title any more than the other Painted Veil, but makes for an instructive comparison. The China is this film is strictly soundstage, to the point of having “Charlie Chan” as the army colonel, and the story is sanitized and given a happy ending. Doesn’t matter -- it’s Garbo, and therefore fascinating to watch.

While referring to TCM, I should also take note of their recent documentary, Brando, which was quite an interesting review of the great but reluctant actor’s life and work.

Dreamgirls

Well, that was disappointing. And as usual, I blame it on the film’s theatrical origins. The songs and story are lacklustre, might have made it on Broadway but are revealed as empty by Hollywood. Everybody in the film tries too hard, as if to make up for the weakness of the material. It’s a familiar showbiz story, with an exceedingly obvious transposition of The Supremes into The Dreams. Now I’ve always been a fan of The Supremes, but the songwriting here comes nowhere near the magic of Holland-Dozier-Holland. It’s neither R&B nor Disco in turn, but pure show tune. And the placement of the story in a cultural moment is perfunctory at best. It’s utterly lame, and almost offensive, when the characters step out of the world of the would-be Hitsville recording studio into the inferno of Detroit on fire in the 1968 riots. On the basis of Gods and Monsters and Kinsey, I expected more from writer/director Bill Condon, whose work here is frantic and too all-that-jazzy. All the actors substitute energy for shading or subtlety. Eddie Murphy comes off best, as he transitions from James Brown type to Marvin Gaye clone, losing his soul along the way. Jamie Foxx is wound tight and under wraps as the Berry Gordy character. Beyonce Knowles may or may not be another Diana Ross -- she is certainly effective as eye candy and in different styles of performing. And Jennifer Hudson is powerful but overwrought and narrow in her characterization, as the girl with the big voice and the big body who is forced out of the group when it goes from soul to pop (cf. Flo Ballard.) It’s clearly the lead role in the movie, but there is a certain justice in her winning an Oscar as supporting actress. She does provide some moments, but can’t carry the film on her own. So there are some showstopping performances, which do exactly that, they stop the flow of the movie. They may carry the day on stage, live in person, but without a story or characters to care about, the film never comes alive, despite working up a sweat. (2006, dvd, n.) *6-* (MC-76.)

Special preview to highlight Clark film series

Filmmaker Steven J. Ross will bring his just-completed feature-length documentary -- Winslow Homer: Society and Solitude -- to the Clark for a special advance screening in the auditorium at 7:30 pm on Friday, June 29th. Mr. Ross is previewing his film at select museums and colleges connected with the project, before general release and broadcast on television. He will be on hand to comment and answer questions after the showing.

The Clark’s marvelous collection of Winslow Homer work figures prominently in the film, as do a number of scholars associated with the Clark. But beyond any parochial interest, the film makes a case for Homer as an essential American master. While surveying a prodigious array of his work in illustration and painting, it tells the story of his life but also sketches the pivotal period of American life represented. Steve Ross has made a film that is visually, intellectually, and emotionally rich, and this is a remarkable opportunity to get an advance look.

The Winslow Homer biography will culminate a Clark film series called “Documenting Artists: Portraits in Film,” composed of documentary features on artists, all shown on Fridays at 7:30 in June. The Clark is trying an untraditional timeslot to make the films available to a wider audience, but except for the final filmmaker’s presentation each will also be shown at the regular Fridays at 4:00 slot. As usual, admission to films at the Clark is free.

June 8, 4:00 & 7:30: Michelangelo: Self-Portrait. (1989, 85 min.) Robert Snyder expands upon two earlier films (including his 1950 Oscar-winner The Titan) in which the camera swoons around the master’s work, adding a narration of Michelangelo’s own words and music by Monteverdi, for an enveloping and revelatory experience.

June 15, 4:00 & 7:30: Vincent: The Life & Death of Vincent Van Gogh. (1987, 99 min.) Paul Cox searches into Van Gogh’s paintings and the places he painted them, creating a canvas for his own intensely introspective portrait of the tortured artist, expressed in the words of Vincent’s letters to his brother Theo.

June 22, 4:00 & 7:30: The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo. (2004, 90 min.) Amy Stechler conveys both the life and the times, but moreover the art, of the iconic Mexican painter, in all her painful beauty and tempestuous emotion, through well-chosen archival footage, eyewitness testimony, expert commentary, and close examination of the paintings themselves.

June 29, 7:30 only: Winslow Homer: Society and Solitude. (2007, 105 min.) Steve Ross focuses on the sweep of Homer’s work to illuminate his life, and also essential aspects of an America in historic transition, from the lively early engravings for Harper’s Weekly, through the crucible of Civil War, to a nostalgia for a childlike rural America, a clear-eyed look at the ex-slave’s view of Reconstruction, and on to the natural beauty of the Adirondacks and other landscapes, to reach apotheosis in the seascapes of Homer’s late lonely eminence at Prout’s Neck in Maine, so well represented in the Clark’s own collection.

This series is intended to celebrate not only the lives and works of artists through film, but also the art of documentary filmmaking itself, with each film exemplary in a distinctive manner, capped by the actual presence of an artful director/producer to conclude the survey.

Unknown White Male

A meaningful meditation on memory, this film has been derided by some as a hoax, simply because it seems unbelievable. There is a certain convenience in this case of complete retrograde amnesia happening to Doug Bruce -- handsome, clever, and rich, with lots of beautiful friends in beautiful places -- who happens to have a buddy in filmmaker Rupert Murray. And I would certainly suspect a psychological etiology for the ailment, which is essentially a chance to start one’s life over, simply re-boot and begin again with an empty hard drive, but with all your programs and features in place. But it hardly matters if the anomaly is made up or discovered, since it still raises such interesting questions about memory and identity, mind and brain. Are we the product of our experiences, or is there something essentially us that would remain if our pasts were utterly erased? Despite a suspicious similarity to Memento and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, this film seems authentic enough to be ponderable. The testimony of neuroscientists is interesting nonetheless, mysterious in its own right. The breakdown of amnesia into anecdotal, semantic, and operational is instructive, even if it seems implausible in effect. So anyway, this guy emerges from a fugue state on the subway to Coney Island, with no idea of who he is or how he got there, with no ID and even less recollection than Alberto Gonzales. What follows is the highly mediated story of his starting over and trying to piece together his past. In contrast to Iraq in Fragments, here I thought the stylized camerawork and editing contributed to the documentary’s sense of authenticity, since it conveyed the disoriented state of the subject in an artful way. Who knows, maybe I was hoodwinked, but that hardly makes me think less of the film. (2006, dvd, n.) *7+* (MC-65.)

Iraq in Fragments

This highly-personal documentary by James Longley comes with multiple Sundance awards plus an Oscar nomination, and is well worth seeing if you can take the pain of witnessing our misguided war from the other side. Working virtually by himself from start to finish, except for translators and other support staff, Longley creates a film that is brave and revelatory, but also aestheticized and, well, fragmentary. The arty compositions, editing gimmicks, and tricky sound design somehow work against the patent authenticity of the endeavor. Maybe the jump cuts, slo-mo, and MTV editing were required to make the on-the-fly shooting work, but they seem distracting. Longley achieved amazing access both before and after the war, something impossible to duplicate now in the spiraling chaos, and fashions three segments: about a Sunni boy in Baghdad who is essentially an indentured servant to a bullying mechanic, about Shia insurgency in “Sadr’s South”, and a relatively pastoral view of the Kurdish north. Though only an occasional tank or humvee appears in passing in this Iraqi eye view, what holds all three episodes together is resentment of the American occupier. There have been plenty of journalists embedded with American troops, but it take a James Longley to witness a self-flagellation ritual by Moqtada supporters or go on a Mahdi Army action against vendors of alcohol in a local bazaar. (2006, dvd, n.) *7* (MC-84.)

Year of the Dog

As a first-time director, Mike White does not have the courage of his weirdness to the extent he did as writer and actor in Chuck & Buck, and does not have the pizzaz of, say, a Richard Linklater directing his script for School of Rock. So this film winds up as neither funny enough nor strange enough, neither sweet or sour, hot or cold. It’s just not crazy or true enough, which makes for a surprisingly long 90 minutes. Which is not to say there aren’t good things in it. Molly Shannon is quite convincing as the 40ish singleton driven quietly mad by the death of her beloved beagle, and is well supported by the likes of Peter Sarsgaard and Laura Dern. But shtick undermines plausibility at some points, and the story begins to seem arbitrarily constructed, rather than discovered in all its quirks and eye-opening twists. (2007, Images, n.) *5+* (MC-71.)

TV docs

No, not that kind. I’m not talking about the long line running from Dr. Kildare to Dr. McDreamy, but rather nonfiction films on television. I’ve been watching a lot of them lately, and along with the new baseball season and basketball playoffs (both hopeful this year for a long-suffering Cleveland sport fan), they’ve been cutting into my film-watching. Here’s a brief report.

I’ve plugged it a few times already, but I have to insist: Planet Earth is must viewing, either as broadcast on the Discovery Channel with narration by Sigourney Weaver, or on DVD with BBC narration by David Attenborough. I prefer her to him, less plummy, more straightforward, but the nature photography is stunning either way, a real argument for High Definition TV. The dozen or so hour-long programs are highly miscellaneous, without much scientific coherence, but cumulatively a vivid picture emerges of the diversity and hunger of life, and how that diversity of hungers is fed by the diversity of our one planet -- the ingenuity of evolution, the marvelous, manifold ways living things have found to survive and reproduce.

Another documentary series with a far less exhilarating theme, and much wider variation in quality was the PBS series, “America at the Crossroads.” I couldn’t bear to watch more than a minute of Richard Perle’s feeble re-assertion of righteousness, and several other films sinned against the art of documentary in my view, but there were two worth looking for and at. The Men Behind Jihad was basically a visual recapitulation of the argument of Lawrence Wright’s essential book, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, and he appears prominently as a talking head, but the film puts together a lot of archival footage that illustrates the story well. And Operation Homecoming was a moving and informative view of the Iraq experience from the perspective of American soldiers.

A Crude Awakening, airing on Sundance channel, was an entertaining and eye-opening summary of America’s addiction to oil.

Putting together a continuing series at the Clark on “Documenting Artists,” I had occasion to look at two films that appeared on the PBS series, “American Masters.” From Ric Burns, in the familiar vein that he has worked with his brother Ken and independently, comes Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film (2006), which at four hours is inflated both in rhetoric and running time, but still makes the case for Warhol’s importance as an artist, while showing how the shy, strange boy from Pittsburgh came to define fame and celebrity in late 20th century America. Norman Rockwell: Painting America (1999) is more modest in every respect, but also fills in the life story of another sort of American artistic icon, even while favoring us with the “expert” testimony of Steven Spielberg and the like.

Just to justify my dearth of film reviews lately, let me note that I also watched the new DVD release of the recent BBC miniseries of George Eliot’s novel, Daniel Deronda, which was good of its kind, but if you want to immerse yourself in an adaptation of a Victorian novel, then I strongly reaffirm my suggestion of last year’s Bleak House, recently rebroadcast and now on DVD.

While enumerating my visual distractions, let me note that I am keeping up with the new HBO seasons of The Sopranos and Entourage, but will save comment till they conclude.

Valmont

Though wobbly in tone and language, Milos Forman’s adaptation of Dangerous Liaisons makes it into my Fragonard-related film series at the Clark next Fall simply on the basis of costume and set design. This is a lovely film to look at, and will look great projected widescreen on the museum wall. Made at the same time as Stephen Frears’ version of the 1782 Laclos novel, Valmont ceded priority and esteem to the bravura ensemble of Glenn Close-John Malkovich-Michelle Pfieffer-Uma Thurman. Here the characters are embodied by Annette Bening-Colin Firth-Meg Tilly-Fairuza Balk -- not bad but no match -- their lines have little flavor of period or place, and there’s more bedroom farce than revelation of malevolence and decadence. But oh those locations, dresses, decor! (1989, dvd, n.) *6*

Reader advisory

I’ve been hither and yon lately, but I assure you I have no intention of abandoning Cinema Salon. On the contrary, I am planning new features. So please bookmark the site and please come back.

And please contact me with comments and/or suggestions (or even heckling) at: ssatullo@clarkart.edu. I am eager to make the site more useful and appealing. Now that Google has improved the Blogger search function, I urge you to use the search box at the top of the page, for ready access to my commentary on a given film or director or actor, to compare opinions or seek recommendations.

I am curious whether other features would make Cinema Salon more attractive. The name was supposed to betoken a discussion website, but I turned the comment feature off when it filled with spam. Now I have seen a number of sites where threaded commentary works well, and I wonder whether a moderated discussion by registered users would be worthwhile? Technical simpleton that I am, I am also contemplating late adoption of another common blog feature, in making a live link from the Metacritic rating I append to most reviews.

As for my own rating system, I will restate my rationale. My 10-point ranking compares neatly with Metacritic’s 100-point scale, though arrived at quite differently. Without pretense to collective objectivity, my ratings are unabashedly subjective, though I like to think they are offered with an informed subjectivity. But I don’t imagine that I am assigning some objective value to a film, but rather my particular response to a particular screening in a particular situation. It might alter considerably upon re-viewing. I wish only to share my enthusiasms and offer my caveats. So here’s what my scale implies:

*5* = B-. Anything less should be taken as a warning, since life is too short to spend on the less than good.

*6* = B. Definitely worth seeing, if you have the time and interest and opportunity.

*7* = B+. Recommended viewing, worth looking for.

*8* = A-. Among the best films of any given year, worth seeking out.

*9* = A. Among the best films of all time, must viewing.

*10* = A+. Go and see this, then come and talk to me about the art of film.

Clean

Maggie Cheung plays a cross between Yoko Ono and Courtney Love, in this film by her ex-husband Olivier Assayas. It says something about her appeal and skill as an actress that she makes such a grating personality into a sympathetic character -- she has presence and conveys feeling. Nick Nolte contributes a mannered but effective performance, as the father of Maggie’s OD’ed rock star husband, and guardian of the son she is too strung out to take care of. She struggles to get off drugs and put her life together, maybe for the first time, and he offers a message of forgiveness and redemption, played out in small steps and tiny gestures. Assayas’ style is intimate but visually exciting, and he’s got a subtle but sure touch with writing and direction. Can people change for the better? This film holds out a modest hope. Will be interesting to compare to Maggie Gyllenhaal in Sherrybaby. (2005, dvd, n.) *7+* (MC-75.)

One Bright Shining Moment

“The Forgotten Summer of George McGovern” is the subtitle of Stephen Vittoria’s documentary. Though the man himself may be forgotten, the term “McGovernite” remains a term of abuse and ridicule in general political discourse, but I remember him with great fondness and regret, so I was happy for this film to resurrect memories and buff up the image of the “prairie populist,” the “right from the start” preacher man “too decent to be President.” The time is still too vivid for me to be in need of much recall, but it was good to hear from McGovern himself both then and now. The film is unabashedly partisan, to its own detriment, but the Vietnam-Iraq parallel does not have to be heavily underlined for the contemporary relevance of this documentary to be painfully obvious. If only we’d listened to George then, we wouldn’t be afflicted by W. now. Sigh. (2005, dvd, n.) *7+* (MC-64.)

Overlord

This semi-documentary about D-Day won a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, but wasn’t released in the U.S. till 2006, probably just as a promo for the now-released Criterion Collection DVD. With a small sample of reviews, it ranked absurdly high on Metacritic’s averaged ranking of the best films of the year. Maybe if I were able to read the liner notes by my old acquaintance (and now ubiquitous film critic) Kent Jones, I might have been more convinced of the importance of this film, but having only the dvd from Netflix, I have to say my response was lukewarm. As a use of Imperial War Museum film archives, it did not satisfy as much as the World At War tv series, which I watched religiously way back when, and can still summon the memory of the music and Laurence Olivier’s narration, behind the footage brought back by some amazingly brave and composed combat cameramen. Here, a slender story of one British soldier from conscription to just the moment before hitting the beach at Normandy is interwoven almost seamlessly by director Stuart Cooper with vintage documentary footage. The rigors of training and then of waiting, without any knowledge or control over your own fate, are most effectively portrayed. The contemporaneous horrors of war come almost as nightmare to the young soldier awaiting deployment, along with premonitions of his own death. It’s an honorable effort but the staged scenes are a little skimpy; what stands out is the documentary footage, and that makes me want (but dread) to watch World At War all over again. (1975, dvd, n.) *6* (MC-88.)