More gaps to fill

My viewing remains more random than usual. While generally diverse, now it’s hard to find any thread at all. Let’s see if we can tease one out. I really need to weed through and reorganize my Netflix queue, get it down from 200 to 100, and probably should economize by cutting back from five to three discs at a time. When I first subscribed to Netflix eight years ago, they only had one shipping point, in LaJolla CA, but now a two day turnaround in the mail is typical, so even if I watched one every day, the three-disc deal would be sufficient. And that was before I had TiVo, where I probably have twenty more films “Now Playing.” So these were the latest disks to show up in my mailbox:

There’s a strong presumption than any new Criterion Collection release is likely to be worth watching, and Barbara Stanwyck is an actress I look for, so that’s how The Furies (1950) got to the top of my queue. I’m not really up to speed with Anthony Mann’s Freudian Westerns, aside from one or two of the Jimmy Stewarts, but this transposition of King Lear to the New Mexico desert reeks of incestuous passion. Walter Huston, in his last film, is a cantakerous cattle baron, with Stanwyck as his spirited daughter, a mare who will not be broken. In noirish black and white, with more night scenes and interiors than wide open spaces, the film is a little much, but not enough, if you know what I mean. The leads are magnetic but much that surrounds them is laughable. Only for aficionados of one sort or another.

I was looking for another Therese adapted from a French novel, recommended by an emeritus professor who frequently comes to my screenings at the Clark, but wound up with Therese Raquin (1953), a Marcel Carne film from after his classic period (which was capped by all-time great Children of Paradise). Despite a tendency to turn Zola into potboiler, this story of a fatal triangle is carried by a luminous young Simone Signoret and a rugged Raf Vallone. Nearly unknown, it is not something you need to seek out, but not without interest

It must have been sheer randomness that brought Death and the Maiden (1994) to the top of my queue. I may have put in on after I had a chance to meet Sigourney Weaver briefly at a Williamstown Film Festival event, or maybe I was filling in my Roman Polanski life list. At any rate, it was years ago and the reason has been forgotten. My viewing was slightly discombulated by a dirty disk, but even allowing for the disruption, I don’t think this adaptation of an Ariel Dorfman play about torture, guilt, revenge, and forgiveness, set in an unnamed country reminiscent of Chile after Pinochet, would have worked for me, starting with the artificiality of the English-speaking cast. Sigourney is strong but not quite right as the torture victim who gets an unlikely chance to get back at one of her tormentors, played with requisite ambiguity but not much resonance by Ben Kingsley. Stagey as the set-up may be, Polanski brings a personal intensity to the volatile proceedings, which makes the film hard to dismiss despite evident flaws.

At some point when I was on a noir kick, it occurred to me that I had never seen the Jack Nicholson-Jessica Lange remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981). Now I have, and while it offers more than the 1946 version with John Garfield and Lana Turner, it also offers less. More of the book, but less sense. More sex, but less heat. More real, but less feel. It’s fascinating to watch Jack and Jessica in their prime, as they go down and dirty, if rather tastefully so. This is pulp gone classic, with script by David Mamet, direction by Bob Rafelson, and cinematography by Sven Nykvist (!). It’s a rare case in which a single reviewer -- Vincent Canby -- says everything I would say and more. Yeah, what he said.

Not as bad as one may have heard but not as good as one might have hoped, Art School Confidential (2006) is the follow-up by director Terry Zwigoff and writer/artist Daniel Clowes to their zingy, zesty Ghost World. As an art museum film programmer, I felt obliged to watch a film with “Art” in the title (plus, Zwigoff’s Crumb is a doc I’ve shown twice at the Clark already). So I kept my eyes and mind open, despite the critical pummeling this film took upon release. I found it half-good, with an effective skewering of art school pretension (like Claire’s experiences in Six Feet Under), but then some undernourished mystery about a serial killer develops and the satire goes from stinging to distasteful and disproportionate. Some familiar faces, some not so, appear in the film, but no acting worthy of a name. So now it’s on my list, but I wouldn’t recommend it for yours. (MC-54.)

A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints

This vanity project projects sufficient humility to be watchable, if not a must-see. First-time writer-director Dito Montiel adapts his own memoir of growing up in Astoria, Queens in the 1980s, a prescription for self-importance, but enlists Robert Downey Jr. and Shia LeBeouf to play his older and younger selves, and Dianne Wiest and Chazz Palminteri for his parents, with Martin Compson (of Ken Loach’s Sweet Sixteen) as one of a variety of believable street boys and girls, another of whom grows up very believably and rivetingly to be Rosario Dawson. So across the board the acting trumps the ego involved, and with big assists from cinematographer and editor, plus Sundance workshopping, this film is able for its duration to make you forget its descent from Mean Streets and all its progeny, and lose yourself in a time and a place and a group of people hanging out and hooking up, getting by and coming to grief. (2006, dvd, n.) *6+* (MC-67.)

Filling in the gaps

Lately I’ve been re-viewing a lot of films without being moved to review them, so I will just mention some of them in passing. Zhang Yimou’s staging of the Beijing Olympics led me back to To Live (1994), which some time ago was a revelation to me (Gong Li!) and set me off on a binge of Chinese movies, including all of his. Lately he has relied too much on sheer spectacle, in historical martial arts epics, but formerly alternated relatively intimate films of contemporary peasant life. To Live contains both elements, in a decades-long family saga within an historical pageant (for which I tend to be a sucker -- e.g. The Best of Youth), following China from World War II through the Cultural Revolution. This time the filmmaking seemed a bit stodgy, but the history lesson remained vital.

I was happy to relive the bejeweled music box perfections of two French classics of aristocratic adultery, but feel disinclined to look too much inside the works, to examine the delight-producing mechanisms. In my intermittent retrospective of Jean Renoir (in which La Bete Humaine filled a gap and Elena and Her Men stuck me as his worst effort, chaos without control), I had the Criterion Collection disk of Rules of the Game (1939) around for months, while I spent way too many evenings watching election coverage of one sort or another. But once Barack was safely elected, I was free to revisit the chateau where Renoir’s figures high and low go through their clockwork dance. What a perfect construction -- delightfully complicated, exquisitely sad, lightly profound! Though I will always prefer La Grande Illusion personally, I cannot quibble with the consensus view that La Regle du Jeu is one of the very best films of all time.

Meanwhile another new Criterion Collection disk finally arrived after a “very long wait” on my Netflix queue. Max Ophuls’ Earrings of Madame de ... (1953) displays similar clockwork charm, though his mechanism is a moving camera rather than Renoir’s deep focus. Through the contrivance of the eponymous jewelry, which passes back and forth like the clap in La Ronde, Ophuls tells a story of passion that breaks through the mirrored facades of fin-de-siecle France. Danielle Darrieux and Vittorio De Sica are sublime as the lofty lovers, while Charles Boyer maintains his dignity as the cuckolded general. One marvels at the construction, but catches a breath of passion as well -- it’s all artificial but moving nonetheless.

Peter Watkins must be one of the most unwatched and unwatchable of great filmmakers. Gradually more of his work is becoming available. It was decades before I got another chance to see an old favorite, Battle of Culloden (1964), but when I caught up with Punishment Park (1971) on IFC recently I couldn’t bear the old counter-cultural hysteria. Privilege (1967), however, retained its interest despite seeming amateurish and implausible. There was some incisive social analysis in the story of pop star Paul Jones being exploited to subvert dissent into semi-fascist conformity. Jean Shrimpton is blankly effective as the bird of the moment, and the broad caricatures of British business and religious leaders are sometimes spot-on, if you can see past the lameness of the overall enterprise.

The Coen brothers, on the other hand, are sometimes undermined by their own facility, which can border on slickness. While recently underwhelmed by No Country for Old Men -- at least relative to its Best Picture Oscar -- I retain appreciation of a number of their films. Having read several references to the growing cult status of The Big Lebowski (1998), I decided to give it another look. Sure enough, it’s very funny in places, and its central conceit of plopping aging stoner Jeff Bridges in the midst of a Raymond Chandler-like plot gives free rein to a number of reliable performers, such as John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Julianne Moore, and others. It’s not a great film, but it does fit neatly in the Coen career project of genre deconstruction. I think most would agree, “The Dude abides.”

Charles Burnett seems to me to have been given the benefit of critical affirmative action, with many willing to overlook the low-budget flaws of his slice-of-ghetto-life stories. While Killer of Sheep was sustained by the soundtrack -- whose clearances kept it from being released for decades -- My Brother’s Wedding (1983) proves less worthy of resurrection. There are some flavorful characters, but it is less the amateur actors than the flat-footed script that undermines the authenticity of Burnett’s picture of Black life in L.A.

Having passed the midpoint of my “Anime for Grown-Ups” film series, I am inclined to pat myself on the back for my selections from Studio Ghibli. Grave of the Fireflies is truly one of the great anti-war films of all time, Whisper of the Heart a delightful and poignant story of a young girl growing up and finding her purpose in life, and Porco Rosso an accomplished pastiche of cinematic adventure and romance seen through personal perspective of Hayao Miyazaki. I tried to pick animation that would appeal to filmlovers who don’t typically watch animation, and these films certainly fill the bill.

Standard Operating Procedure

Errol Morris’s latest documentary examines the infamous Abu Ghraib photographs -- who took them and why? what they show and what they don’t show? It’s definitely a meta-exercise and not “just the facts, ma’am,” as the jazzy graphics and stagings seem to betray. While it is interesting to see some of the convicted soldiers (Lynddie England et al.) tell their side of the story, and there is point to the Susan Sontag-like concern with the inherent meaning of photography as a medium, this is a pivotal story told askance, and suffers badly in comparison with Taxi to the Dark Side in telling the truth about America’s descent into torture. The film does help you get inside the heads of the “bad apples” who were held accountable, but does not follow the trail to the bad apples in the White House who were truly responsible, as Alex Gibney’s film does so well. So ultimately it says more about Errol Morris’s standing operating procedure (showy but generally effective) than about the S.O.P of military interrogation, and fits more usefully into his own oeuvre than into the essential but suppressed debate over whether the U.S.A. is a torture state. (2008, dvd, n.) *6+* (MC-70.)

Happy-Go-Lucky

I was happy to view Mike Leigh’s latest with little advance knowledge, so the film could unfold for me like life itself, never knowing just what’s next, with first reactions misleading and final feelings mixed. That is the essence of Leigh’s process, the six months he spends with the cast, working through the characters from the outside in and the inside out, and letting the story emerge from the personalities and interactions that develop. It works so well, one wonders why more directors don’t work the same way. After Secrets & Lies, Topsy-Turvy, Vera Drake, and more, Leigh definitely ranks with the best directors in the world. At first glance, Happy-Go-Lucky may look like a departure, more light-hearted and uncomplicated, but it becomes progressively deeper and more complex, even days after viewing. I confess to having borrowed a bootleg copy of this new release, but will see it again if it ever arrives at a theater near me, and it’s sure to seem different with hindsight, the randomness illuminated by the canny construction, the artful raising and subverting of expectation. I won’t spoil any surprises for you, but just describe the opening scene. Through the credits, we see Poppy riding her bike through the streets of London, smiling broadly and waving at strangers. She stops and goes into a bookstore, annoying the taciturn clerk (and some of the audience) with a stream of laughing patter while she browses. As embodied indelibly by Sally Hawkins, she’s an attractive but psychotically cheerful 30-year-old, turned out in a rainbow of flounces and furbelows. Too much to take, it seems, but beneath her antic aspect, we gradually discern finer qualities. She comes out of the bookstore to find her bike stolen, but her only regret is that she didn’t get the chance to say goodbye to it. In subsequent scenes we see her partying with her female mates, and learn that she has found her niche as a primary school teacher. And we find out that her good cheer is not a natural mania, but a chosen way of being in the world. We follow her through several weeks of small (mis)adventures, and find out just what it means to view the world through Poppy-colored glasses. Sally Hawkins seems destined for a totally-deserved Oscar nomination (like Imelda Staunton as Vera Drake), and however you wind up feeling about her character, you have to love her performance. Equally potent is Eddie Marsan (memorable as Vera’s son) as the tightly-wound driving instructor, whose weekly sessions with Poppy frame the story. The rest of the cast live in their roles, revealing much in small and sidelong ways. This is a film to see with an open mind and an open heart, as well as open eyes. (2008, dvd, n.) *8* (MC-84.)

Late Marriage

I went into this film not knowing what to expect, and it kept taking turns I didn’t anticipate. Dover Koshashvili sets his film within the Georgian emigre community in Israel, and indeed casts his mother as the mother of his protagonist, so this comes across a bit like a home movie -- and what a strange home it is. Lior Ashkenazi plays a superannuated student still living off his parents while he completes a doctorate in philosophy. The actor looks disconcertingly like Steve Carrell, so I was tempted to look at this film like “The 31-Year-Old Non-Virgin.” His parents are eager to arrange a marriage for him, and the film starts with one in a long string of matchmaking meetings, this with a hot but sullen teenager. Later in the evening we find out why Zaza showed so little interest -- he goes to visit his lover, a 34-year-old Moroccan divorcee, played with unabashed sexuality by Ronit Elkabetz. I wasn’t expecting an extended sex scene in an Israeli movie, and this one is startling in its naturalness, quite unlike any film sex I’ve ever seen. But Zaza’s family finds out about the affair and takes collective action, which is just as startling. This insular community is rigid in its ways, and will accept no deviations from its norms. What will Zaza do? Whatever you expect, you will be surprised, and probably not satisfied. It’s a strange world, and you’ll likely remain on the outside looking in. Is this a deadpan comedy, a scathing satire, or a scarring familial drama? You decide. (2002, dvd, n.) *7* (MC-82.)

The Edge of Heaven

After Head-On, Fatih Akin is a filmmaker of whom I expect much, and while he doesn’t disappoint here, the plus in my recommendation is dependent on the dvd’s “Making of” extra, one of the best I’ve seen in showing how the elements of the film came together. Born in Germany of Turkish parents, Akin’s films all confront that duality, and this story too shuttles between the two countries and amongst a group of six characters who sometimes connect and sometimes don’t, in a fatalistic dance signaled by two title cards that announce the deaths of characters before we even meet them. The element of contrivance is strong, but so is the sense of human reality, and discovery as well. The story is broken up in Babel fashion, but much less forced. Schematic sure, but adventitious too, with a documentarian’s feel for local color, whether it’s a red-light district in Bremen or a village on the Black Sea coast of Turkey, a German language bookstore in Istanbul or a prison in Hamburg. Each of the actors is quite involving, though only Hanna Schygulla is a familiar face. Once upon a time Fassbinder’s muse, here she is the hausfrau mother of a young woman who gets involved with an illegal immigrant woman, a radical on the run and looking for her mother, who had long been sending money back to Turkey from Germany. That mother had fallen in with an old Turkish man, whose son teaches Goethe in a German university. These characters collide in different contexts, in a world of hurt where only forgiveness can justify hope. I was struck by the happenstance of watching back to back two foreign films of culture clash, in which characters of differing nationality have to rely on English as their medium of communication, an instance of the soft power of the American imperium. (2007, dvd, n.) *7+* (MC-85.)

The Band's Visit

Though admirably minimalist in its heart-tugging or lesson-learning, this is a crowd-pleaser that didn’t especially please me. Writer-director Eran Kolirin follows an official Egyptian band of eight, dressed in powder-blue military uniforms, as they go astray on their way to perform at the opening of an Arab cultural center somewhere in the Israeli desert. Finding themselves stuck in a remote settlement with “no Arab culture, no Israeli culture, no culture at all,” they have no choice but to accept the hospitality of a lively cafe owner, played so enticingly by Ronit Elkabetz that I had to move Late Marriage to the top of my Netflix queue, where it has languished for years. The culture clash is muted here in the middle of nowhere, with both sides finding common ground in English (which kept this film out of the running for a foreign film Oscar). With some charming set-ups and amusing awkward moments, the film does not press its message of can’t-we-all-just-get-along? It remains astringent and deadpan, but in the end the anecdotes did not add up to much of anything. This is certainly a film that does not insult your intelligence while it tickles your funnybone or heartstrings, but it didn’t tickle mine all that much. (2007, dvd, n.) *6+* (MC-80.)

The Visitor

I am pleased to return to film reviewing with a strong recommendation, for this second film from writer-director Tom McCarthy -- The Station Agent was his first, and as an actor he’s familiar as Templeton the sleazebag reporter in season five of The Wire. Nothing surprising happens in this story of an aging professorial widower, whose life is revived when he returns after a long absence to his pied-a-terre in Greenwich Village and discovers it inhabited by a young Muslim couple, illegal immigrants from Syria and Senegal respectively -- but the film continually surprises in the justice of its quiet observation. It unfolds without underlining. Much of the subtlety is in the performance of Richard Jenkins, a familiar character actor who makes the most of his chance at a starring role. He is matched by Hiam Abbass as the woman who reawakens his soul, completing the work begun by her son, a friendly Syrian drummer who restarts the beat of the older man’s heart by teaching him to play the djembe. The charming young musician is snatched by immigration officials when he gets hung up in a subway turnstile, and is sent to a featureless holding facility in Queens, until he can be deported. Neither his girlfriend, a lovely black woman who sells her jewelry at street fairs, nor his mother can visit him without risking detention themselves, so the disheartened econ prof has to become the go-between that holds them together. This quartet makes for an involving chamber piece set within the great symphony of the city, and the even larger music of a globalized world. This is a film with heart and smarts, that does not oversell its message. (2008, dvd, n.) *8+* (MC-79.)

Next up at the Clark

Anime for Grown-ups: The Art of Japanese Animation.

Saturdays at 1:00 pm in Japanese with subtitles
& at 3:00 pm in dubbed American version

Anime, as Japanese animation is usually called, is an immense presence in the culture of Japan, with global reach as well. The Clark will look at anime not from the perspective of genre expectations, but through the work of directors who speak in the international language of film. So -- no bodacious robot babes or cyberpunk gunslingers, but rather serious and wide-ranging exploration of character and theme in an influential graphic medium, a cinema of dreams replete with fantastic imagery. We’ll screen three films by different directors from Studio Ghibli, led by Hayao Miyazaki, and two films by a leading director of the next generation, Satoshi Kon.

November 1: Porco Rosso. (1992, 94 min., PG) A decade before he became a household name in America with an Oscar for Spirited Away, as well as other children’s favorites, Hayao Miyazaki directed this film explicitly for adults. Rather like Casablanca meets Only Angels Have Wings, it tells of a World War I flying ace, reduced to bounty hunting against air pirates over the Adriatic while the Fascists come to power in ’20s Italy -- and oh, incidentally, he’s turned into the Crimson Pig of the title.

November 8: Whisper of the Heart. (1995, 111 min., PG) Unlike Disney, Studio Ghibli is collaborative rather than corporate. For this thoroughly charming tale of adolescent romance and a bright young girl’s search for self, Miyazaki wrote the script but gave the direction to heir apparent Yoshifumi Kondo. Set in a realistic present, it is a testament to the expressive powers of rather simple animation, with brief fantasy interludes. If you liked Juno, you will love this winning story of a brash schoolgirl finding both a boyfriend and a calling in life.

November 15: Grave of the Fireflies. (1988, 88 min., PG-13) Directed by Isao Takahata, Miyazaki’s longtime collaborator, this sensitive, harrowing film depicts the impact of war on children, warranting comparison to all-time classic Forbidden Games. Two orphans, a boy and his younger sister, struggle for survival in the aftermath of the World War II firebombing of Japan, finding evanescent beauty in a terminal landscape. This sad and powerful masterpiece evokes the horror of war and the hope of humanity as well as any live-action film.

November 22: Tokyo Godfathers. (2004, 92 min., PG-13) Satoshi Kon has established himself as a younger director to watch, among those for whom animation is simply an expressive medium for serious films of all sorts. Here he transposes John Ford’s Western Three Godfathers to the underbelly of modern day Tokyo, with three tramps -- an alcoholic, a transvestite, and a teen runaway -- finding a baby on Christmas Eve, and encountering comic adventures in their heartwarming attempt to return the child to its mother.

November 29: Paprika. (2006, 90 min., R) Satoshi Kon delves into the sci-fi realm so common in anime, but with a distinctive bent, adapting a (non-graphic) novel obsessed with psychoanalysis and the meaning of dreams. Paprika is the therapeutic avatar of a powerful woman psychiatrist, partnered with a blubbery nerd genius who has invented a machine that allows physical entry into the dreams of subjects, a dangerous weapon in the hands of the unscrupulous and power-mad. This may be the boldest popular exploration of dream imagery since Hitchcock’s Spellbound.

Coming to the Clark

This season offers an innovation in film programming at the Clark -- “Artists from Screen to Scholar,” a series of feature films about artists offered in a context that only the Clark can provide. On selected Thursdays at 7:00 pm, a Clark-related or invited scholar will introduce a film about the life and work of an artist, and then after the screening serve as interlocutor for a comparative discussion of film and artist. This format begins with a documentary about the contemporary artist Christo and continues with three films from three nations about the multifaceted Spanish painter Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, each presented with expert commentary.

Thursday, October 16, 7:00 pm
“Interrogating The Gates: Christo Documented and Elucidated”
When “The Gates” were installed in Central Park back in February 2005, the Clark offered a very popular marathon screening of five Maysles Brothers’ films about earlier Christo projects. By then Albert Maysles had been following this project since 1978, from conception to rejection and thence to approval and triumphant realization, and his work was picked up and completed by Antonio Ferrera. This documentary (2007, 98 min.)debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival and was thereafter broadcast on HBO, but can now be seen at proper scale at the Clark, with context and commentary provided Lisa Green, the Clark’s Director of Communications and Design.

Thursday, October 23, 7:00 pm
“The Many Faces of Goya: Take One”
Goya’s Ghosts (2006, 114 min.)
Director Milos Forman tries to recapture the Hapsburg magic of Amadeus, turning his attention to Spain in the same era, and portraying Goya as eyewitness to the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition and the Napoleonic occupation. Stellan Skarsgaard plays Goya, whose role as painter gives him an inside view of history in the making, with the changes embodied in characters played by Javier Bardem and Natalie Portman. Michael Cassin, Director of the Center for Education in the Visual Arts, based at the Clark, will elaborate and debunk the portrait of the artist presented here.

Thursday, November 6, 7:00 pm
“The Many Faces of Goya: Take Two”
Goya (1971, 134 min., in German with English subtitles)
This is a very rare opportunity to see this massive Eastern European co-production in its original widescreen glory. Derived from a novel by Lion Feuchtwanger, it’s an epic biography of the great artist directed by Konrad Wolf. Presented in cooperation with the Center for Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Williams College, the film will be introduced and illuminated by Barton Byg, longtime teacher of German and film at UMass Amherst and founding director of the DEFA Film Library there.

Thursday, November 20, 7:00 pm
“The Many Faces of Goya: Take Three”
Goya in Bordeaux (1999, 105 min, in Spanish with subtitles)
Director Carlos Saura takes on Goya, one Spanish master to another, looking back from his approaching death in exile in 1828 to the passionate passages of his earlier life. The production is lavish and phantasmagoric, interspersed with tableaux-like recreations of Goya’s work, particularly the series of etchings, “The Disasters of War.” Mark Ledbury, Associate Director of Research and Academic Programs at the Clark, will bring his scholarly expertise to the presentation and discussion of artist and film.

More random viewing

Another new dvd to mention is the resurrection of the barely-released Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains, a fascinating time capsule from 1981 but not a very good film. This saga of a punkette band called the Stains features a 15-year-old Diane Lane and 13-year-old Laura Dern, with support from a not much older Ray Winstone, who becomes their guide into punkdom. Indifferently directed by music producer Lou Adler, with weak production values and a scattershot script, this still has an aura of authenticity and knowledge of the rock biz. (Not unlike how Payday knows country.) But let’s go back to Diane and Laura as nymphets, and you might have plenty of reason to watch this, or maybe you want to watch members of The Clash and Sex Pistols play backup. Punk is a style of music that passed me right by at the time, as have most subsequent styles, but I must say I have lately been finding out about it through some pretty good films. This isn’t one of them, but isn’t without interest.

Continuing with my half-hearted recital of films I’ve managed to squeeze into gaps in election or financial news, I should take note of one that slipped my mind almost immediately. Smart People (2008, dvd, MC-57) is a half-bright effort from director Noam Murro, about a curmudgeonly English professor played by Dennis Quaid. With support from Ellen Page as his smart-mouthed daughter, Sarah Jessica Parker as his implausible love interest, and Thomas Haden Church as his free-loading brother, this ought to have been much better than it is. The Squid and the Whale this definitely is not. The setting of Carnegie-Mellon in Pittsburgh comes through pretty well, but the script is not nearly as witty as it imagines itself to be, and incidents pile up in sitcom fashion rather than with any organic development. It has some tasty bits going down, but more than Chinese food leaves you hungry a minute after you’re finished with it.

I’m going to close out these random updates with two last films, before going back to individual review and ratings. Both are recommended but with reservations. Snow Angels (2008, dvd, MC-67) is well-made but awfully sad. David Gordon Green halfway crosses over from his indie roots with this adaptation of a Stewart O’Nan novel, mixing thriller and even teen comedy elements into the pathos of small town lives gone astray. I like Kate Beckinsale and she does her best with the role, but seems out of place as a bereft working-class beauty in what was SE Pennsylvania in the 70s in the novel, but is now Nowheresville in an undefined present (actually Halifax). Sam Rockwell, however, fits right in as her estranged loser husband, out of jail and recovery and into evangelical Christianity. A subplot revolves around a highly believable and charming high school romance between Michael Angarano and Olivia Thirlby (Juno’s sidekick), two young actors to watch for in the future. The agonizing arc of the drama is marked by many moments of truthful observation, even when you want to resist the conclusion.

The Rape of Europa (2007, dvd, MC-77) is a conventional but absorbing documentary on art as one of the victims of World War II -- the looting by Hitler and Goering, the evacuations of art from the Louvre and the Hermitage, the collateral damage of the Allied drive up the boot of Italy, the eventual repatriation of Nazi booty to the Jewish heirs of Holocaust victims, and the heroic efforts of the “Monument Men” of the advancing Allies, committed to preserving what they could of the art history of Europe. The approach is miscellaneous but cumulatively powerful, “The World At War” from the perspective of art objects. This will be shown at the Clark next April.

Random updates

Like many another political junkie, I have been diverted from my usual diet of movies by the ongoing soap opera of the election. This may go on for a while. So in the absence of serious film comment, I will briefly review my recent viewing and offer a few recommendations.

Top recommendation unquestionably goes to Generation Kill, the new HBO miniseries from David Simon and Ed Burns -- creators of The Wire -- that follows a Marine unit through the first three weeks of the Iraq War. When compared to documentaries like Occupation: Dreamland and Gunner Palace, it’s realer than real. Scripted word for word out of the nonfiction reporting by embedded Rolling Stone journalist Evan Wright, it is impeccably acted and utterly involving. As with The Wire, however, getting involved takes some work, absorbing a large cast in chaotic action, while gradually learning to make sense of the communal lingo and behavior of the hard young men. You are thrown into the midst of a situation and have to sort it out for yourself, much as the Marines themselves have to do. A tip -- visit the HBO website, where you can sort out the characters, their ranks and relationships, humvee by humvee. The glossary helps too. Though clearly critical of the unclear mission, and without blinking at the reality of their actions and attitudes, this series clearly supports the troops, in the sense of making us aware of exactly what we are asking of them. The view is intimate, but just as much admiring as appalled. For non-HBO subscribers, the dvd will be available in mid-December.

If you are on HBO, then one documentary to look for is The Black List, tremendously moving and informative, just twenty talking heads of well-known African-Americans from Chris Rock to Colin Powell, but extremely well shot and edited. Elvis Mitchell is the unseen and unheard interviewer, while Timothy Greenfield-Sanders directs. (Also, Alex Gibney’s Oscar-winning documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side, debuts on HBO Monday 9/29, one of the most painful must-see films ever. The dvd releases the next day. My review is here.)

It’s always nice to have at least one show to look forward to week by week, with soap opera immersion, and for me these days that show is Mad Men, now in the midst of its second season on AMC, with the first season available on dvd. The characters are as soapy as you could ask for -- you really want to find out what happens to them next -- but the real charm of the piece is its time-capsule capture of a particular period and place, a Madison Avenue advertising firm in the early Sixties. In a way, it’s like a tv spinoff of Billy Wilder’s The Apartment, a longtime favorite of mine.

For once in the 8+ years I’ve been a subscriber, Netflix is making money on me these days, minimizing their postage and processing expenses as I fail to watch and return the disks I have on hand. One I did get around to recently is Brand Upon the Brain (2007, MC-79). Guy Maddin certainly has an identifiable brand upon his brain, like no other, a herky-jerky black-&-white style that harks back to the heyday of silent films and surrealism. He grounds his flights of Grand Guignol fantasy firmly in autobiography (the main character is called “Guy Maddin”) and claims they are “97% true.” Well, maybe he didn’t grow up in a lighthouse where his parents ran an orphanage. And maybe his father wasn’t a mad scientist who distilled a rejuvenating nectar from the brains of the orphans, or his mother didn’t wield the lighthouse light to search out every sexual secret of her son and daughter. And maybe the son and daughter didn’t have polymorphously perverse relations with a boy and girl pair of twin teen detectives. But it’s all surprisingly plausible and coherent in a funhouse sort of way. If you have a notion to give Maddin’s retro avant-garde stylings a try, this is a good place to start. It’s plenty weird, but you can get into it.

The Counterfeiters

Winner of this year’s Oscar for Best Foreign Film, this German docudrama is a worthy successor to The Lives of Others in its historical evocation of the moral dilemmas propounded by authoritarian evil. Stefan Ruzowitzky adapts a nonfiction memoir into a story about inmates of a Nazi concentration camp recruited for their artistic, printing, or banking skills into a counterfeiting scheme to ruin Allied economies by flooding them with false currency. They realize that their survival, and even comfort, is bought at the risk of extending the war, so while they do produce more than 130 million pounds, subtle sabotage keeps them from perfecting the dollar, just long enough for their camp to be liberated in 1945. Karl Markovics is remarkable as the seemingly amoral artist and con man who takes to the task as to the masterpiece of his craft. The film is swift and continuously engrossing, while remaining even-handed and morally complex. It does not wallow in the awfulness of the Holocaust, but reveals it in short, strong strokes of heart-piercing sharpness, then gets on with the question of how and why you might survive in such a surreal situation of total risk. What it comes down to is the same wisdom shared by the wonderful characters of Bunk and Omar in The Wire: “Man’s gotta have a code.” (2008, dvd, n.) *7+* (MC-78.)

Sweet Land

This fine indie debut by writer-director Ali Selim wins my Truth in Titling award; it is indeed sweet and the land is indeed the dominant character. Making the absolute most of its tiny budget, the film recreates Norwegian immigrant life in 1920s Minnesota in a manner that is both believable and picturesque. Though there are some familiar faces in supporting roles (Alan Cumming, Ned Beatty, John Heard), the two leads were previously unknown to me. Elizabeth Reaser is beautiful and winning as the strong-willed mail order bride (like an unobnoxious Andie Macdowell), and Tim Guinee is stoic and hunky as the taciturn farmer for whom she is destined. Though utterly predictable every step of the way, this story of a slow-burning romance emerging from an arranged marriage still charms, with relevant subtexts of religion, xenophobia, and socialism. And it doesn’t hurt that this lovely film recalls two even better, particular favorites of mine: Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven, and Jan Troell’s magnificent diptych, The Emigrants/The New Land, starring Liv Ullmann and Max von Sydow and still criminally unreleased on home video. Sweet Land is a little film that plays big, and is worth seeking out. (2006, dvd, n.) *7* (MC-75.)

Man on Wire

Amazingly assured -- that description applies to both this film and its subject. Director James Marsh documents the astounding feat (and feet) of aerialist Phillipe Petit -- “The Man Who Walked Between the Towers” (as in the title of Mordicai Gerstein’s superb Caldecott-winning picture book -- as good as this film is, Mordicai’s book is even better, in clarity of story and impact of illustration -- see the movie by all means, but look at the book as well!) Something between a heist film like Oceans 11 and a Maysles documentation of a Christo project, this film is well done in all its various parts -- the retrospective interviews with participants, the stylized but convincing recreations of “Le coup” on August 7, 1974 (with Nixon’s resignation playing on the tv), the vintage footage and stills, the evocative music. Marsh is adept in what he leaves out as well as what he puts in -- when he includes footage of the World Trade Center being built he doesn’t need to reference its destruction, a universal memory triggered every time an airplane appears in the film. The case is convincingly made that Petit’s impish stunt was also an aesthetic statement, an acte gratuite (“There is no why”) of surpassing beauty. One is swept up into his mad passion, as were his accomplices, without blinking at his animating solipsism. It’s fun, it’s exhilarating and inspiring, but it’s no fantasy, rather a willful act that somehow evades its consequences. Phillipe is an Icarus who flies too close to the sun and lives to tell the tale, the man who didn’t fall from the sky. (2008, Images, n.) *8+* (MC-89.)

As part of my continuing retrospective of Hollywood’s second “golden age” in the Seventies, I checked out the recent dvd release of Payday (1972) -- Rip Torn is good as a dissipated country singer on the road, but his act is a little more familiar than it was at the time, and the film is not as snappy or as authentic as it might have been. Since I’m not offering a recommendation, for accurate detail I refer you to the source I find most reliable for short reviews, both online and in its printed annual guide, i.e. Time Out.

So the Olympics end and the party conventions take their place in eating my time and keeping me from movies. I keep up quality viewing with Mad Men on AMC and Generation Kill on HBO, both of which I will write about sometime soon. As for films lately, I seem only to watch what I show, and my “Visions of a Gilded Age” film series at the Clark just concluded. I have to say I was glad to see each film again on the big screen, and each (except The Bostonians) went up in my estimation, especially the final two Edith Wharton adaptations. Age of Innocence was confirmed as a classic for me -- would that Marty Scorsese made more films like that and fewer like The Departed! Among other things, it may use narration as well as any film I’ve seen; Joanne Woodward is the perfect authorial voice, integral to the film’s texture and not something stuck in to cover gaps in the story. Sure, the sets and costumes are something to see, but it’s the characters inside the costumes that rivet the attention, from Daniel Day-Lewis and Michelle Pfieffer on down. And House of Mirth, as unmirthful as it may be and merciless in its portrait of a beautiful woman in distress, comes quite close to the mark as well -- much closer to Dreiser than Jane Austen in its portrayal of society. Terence Davies brings out the emotional brutality of the situation, and a good cast led by Gillian Anderson as Lily Bart delivers the grim reality in convincing fashion. Come to think of it, this series didn’t have much in the way of happy endings. All good to great films, however.

King Corn

This documentary does a fairly entertaining job of presenting the ideas of Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) in a digestible format. Director Aaron Woolf follows two best friends, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, after their graduation from Yale, as they pack into a pickup and head for the Iowa town where by chance the great-grandfathers of both came from. They intend to grow one acre of corn and follow it from field to market, to explain how our bodies got to be so full of the stuff. They trace the development back to Nixon’s infamous secretary of agriculture, Earl Butz, who changed farm policy from subsidizing non-production to encouraging all-out production. The incentive became to grow as much as possible, with all the profit in the process coming from the federal subsidy. As industrialization increased yield, the product had to have a place to go and it went largely to bulking up cattle, even though they are meant to eat grass and the corn would kill them if they weren’t slaughtered first. Then that excess corn was processed into the ubiquitous high-fructose corn syrup, which has destroyed the American diet over the past few decades and yielded an epidemic of obesity. And now of course, we are subsidizing the inefficient production of ethanol from corn. A disastrous policy all round. The two guys are not characterized sufficiently to make for an involving documentary drama (or comedy in the vein of Super Size Me), but in trying not to be dull they pull out all stops, from timelapse photography of the growing cornfield to animation involving a plastic toy farm picked up at a real farm’s foreclosure auction. The antics can be a little scattershot, but the message gets across. If you’ve read Pollan, it’s a lot of fooling around to make a familiar point, but if not, it’s important information in a palatable format. (2007, dvd, n.) *7-* (MC-70.)

Much in the same vein, Everything’s Cool, a 2007 documentary by Daniel Gold and Judith Helfand, leavens its warnings about global warming with humor and a variety of filmic techniques, from interviews with the likes of Bill McKibben to animation by Emily Hubley, but in sum the effect is less eclectic that merely miscellaneous. The most illuminating part offers clips of oil-financed “scientists” sowing doubts about the facts of the case, and trying to reduce global warming to one “theory” in a “debate.” This muddying of the waters, of course, has been the Bushies’ main strategy on various issues, from evolution to education, from preemptive war to torture and other human rights violations. But it is still not true that if you say something false often enough with a straight face -- aside from the contemptuous sneer -- that the facts become debatable. Eventually reality will bite you back.

I’m not sure why I’ve been sucked in like never before, but the Beijing Olympics are definitely eating into the my film viewing these days. Perhaps it’s the same with you. Nonetheless I will soon resume the pace of my reviewing.

Werckmeister Harmonies

I’m a cinematic Goldilocks who likes his films not too fast and not too slow, but just right, matched to the duration of my heartbeat and the endurance of my pants seat. Bela Tarr’s stripped-down follow-up to his notorious 7 1/2 hour Satantango may be only one-third as long, but still exceeds my patience for exquisitely composed and fluidly protracted shots that run, or rather walk, the full length of a film reel, 11 minutes plus. Despite his anointing by the most serious of critics (notably Susan Sontag), it took me three tries to get through Tarr’s dark Hungarian fable, and with that I had to hit the fast-forward button repeatedly. The striking images are more black than white and the sinuous camera reveals more ordinary ugliness than transcendent beauty, but I can glimpse the appeal of such self-assured filmmaking. There’s something there, to be sure, some hypnotic power and some precise evocation of wonder and despair, but it is not an experience I would urge upon anyone who doesn’t feel up to the test. (2000, dvd, n.) *NR*

Honeydripper

I don’t know John Sayles personally, though he was a Williams classmate of mine, but I’ve always felt an affiliation with his filmmaking -- he is truly the stand-alone model for the fully independent writer-director. And his heart is always in the right place, while his projects take him around the country and the world to bring back stories that need to be told. Some criticize him for being more literary than cinematic, but in my view, over a thirty-year career he has made a number of very good films and a few superlative ones. Eight Men Out and Lone Star stand out for me as the most fully realized, but I’d tick off more than a handful that are well worth seeking out, and Honeydripper is another. Sayles’ films are not likely to set your pulse racing or your heart to overflowing, but each makes a considered appeal to your mind and conscience. With exiguous financing and a drive to keep telling more stories, his films don’t always have the finish they might, but they are always literate and engaged, with fine acting from a large and diverse cast. In this film, set in Alabama in 1950, the cast is almost all African-American, led by Danny Glover as the proprietor of the juke joint of the title. Filmed on location, as always, the cast is filled out with nonprofessionals for genuine local color. Even some of the featured players are appearing in their first film, including Glover’s beautiful stepdaughter (model Yaya DeCosta, who steps nimbly from the runway into period character) and the itinerant guitar player she falls for (real performer Gary Clark Jr.) Besides capturing the moment when the blues gave way to rock ’n roll, the film gives an authentic rendition of Holiness tent revival preaching, and doesn’t demonize whites while still making clear the realities of the Jim Crow South. There are no real surprises along the way, but this film takes you places you ought to go. (2007, dvd, n.) *7* (MC-68.)

Red Road

I blame Lars von Trier for anything that’s wrong with this film -- with his preposterous fixation on redemption through female sexual degradation (cf. Breaking the Waves, one of the rare films I cared about enough to hate). The Dogme 95 strictures are slipping by now, but I still find it an admirable approach to making films -- limited means lead to the largest payoffs. One might call that one of the central lessons of cinema history. The plan here was to have three filmmakers approach the same characters in the same setting and situation with the same actors. Up first was Andrea Arnold, who had won an Oscar for best live action short with Wasp (which is an extra on this dvd, and bumps the disk up to a firm recommendation from me -- with caveats.) She tells the story in a way that is suspenseful and sensual, while remaining quietly observational. Kate Dickie is riveting as a CCTV surveillance monitor for City Eye in Glasgow, the ultimate Rear Window situation, as she sits in front of a bank of monitors, calling up a particular view to pan and zoom on. She’s bereaved and numb, for reasons that emerge very gradually, and I won’t say more than that. There is gritty, underclass supporting work from Tony Curran, Martin Compston (memorable from Ken Loach’s Sweet Sixteen), and Nathalie Press (excellent as the focus for Wasp, and also memorable from My Summer of Love). Don’t worry, there are subtitles for the Glaswegian accents, and while this film is certainly down and dirty, you might call it Hitchcockian with all the kinks exposed. (2006, dvd, n.) *7-* (MC-73.)