Butler's Cinema Scene

“IN THE LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY” My rating: B (Opens March 30 at the Screenland Crown Center)

128 minutes | MPAA rating: R 

There’ s nary a girly moment in “In the Land of Blood and Honey,” Anjelina Jolie’s hair-raising, heartbreaking love story set amid the horrors of the Bosnian war.

In fact, Jolie’s name doesn’t appear until the end of the film…almost as if she’s hoping we’ll discover the movie without knowing that it was made by one of the world’s most famous and

desirable women.

This gruelling effort follows the parallel lives of Danijel (Goran Kostic), a Serbian police officer, and Ajla (Zana Marjanovic), a Muslim artist. In the film’s early moments the two enjoy a night out dancing at a Sarajevo nightclub. The revelries end when a bomb goes off near them. The war is officially underway.

With Sarajevo under siege by rampaging Serb forces, Ajla hunkers down in an apartment with her mother, sister and infant nephew. One day truckloads of Serbian soldiers pull up and order everyone out of the building. The Muslim men are summarily shot. The women, at least the attractive ones, are carted off to a barracks where they work as cooks, seamstresses, waitresses and prostitutes for Serbian soldiers. Rape and beatings are a daily occurence.

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“THE FORGIVENESS OF BLOOD” My rating: B (Opening March 30 at the Tivoli)

109 minutes | No MPAA rating

Though he has grown up in a dirt-poor rural community in Albania,  Nik (Tristan Halilaj) isn’t all that different from teenage boys anywhere else. He’s a modern adolescent, one who obsesses over his favor sports teams, dreams of opening an internet cafe, texts his friends and ponders the mystery of girls.

But while his eyes may be set on the future, Nik must contend with a present that is very much rooted in a barbaric past.

In “The Forgiveness of Blood” this youngster finds himself caught up in a Hatfields-and-McCoys feud that could very easily end his life before it really gets started.

Early in Joshua Marston’s film, Nik’s father and uncle get into a fight with a neighbor over access to a private road. The confrontation leaves the neighbor dead, the uncle in jail and the father in hiding.

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Robert Wieckiewicz as Leopold Socha

“IN DARKNESS”  My rating: B+ (Opens March 23 at the Tivoli)

145 minutes | MPAA: R

I’m not going to tell you that the Poles have gotten a bad rap when it comes to complicity in the Haulocaust. All the evidence suggests that they were a fiercely anti-Semitic culture to begin with and that the Nazi occupation simply gave those long-simmering hatreds an official outlet.

And yet there were thousands of individual Poles who defied the authorities and their fellow citizens and provided shelter and comfort to their Jewish neighbors.

Leopold Socha was one such individual. But don’t call him a hero. Not yet. Not until you’ve seen “In Darkness,” the latest (and, you could argue, the best) film from Polish director Agnieska Holland.

Holland has done just about everything a director can do, from quality TV (“The Wire,”  “Treme”) to adaptations of classics (“Washington Square,” “The Secret Garden”). But she has often turned to the question of her country’s complicity in Hitler’s “final solution.”

“Angry Harvest” (1985) and “Europa Europa” (1990) both were set in World War II and centered on Jewish characters.

But nothing she’s done has been as powerful as “In Darkness.” (more…)

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Jeremie Elkaine (center) and Valerie Donzelli

“DECLARATION OF WAR” My rating: B (Opening March 16 at the Tivoli)

100 minutes | No MPAA rating

Films about desperately sick children tend to follow a certain, predictable format.

But in “Declaration of War” — France’s official entry in this year’s Oscar race for foreign language film — writer/director/actress Valerie Donzelli strikes out in a brave and satisfying new direction. There’s nothing predictable about it.

For starters, it’s less the story of an ill child than of his parents, two attractive young people whose lives are turned upside down. The little boy, Adam, vanishes from the story for long stretches because Donzelli’s true emphasis lies elsewhere.

And her style breaks all the rules. Entire conversations unfold without us being allowed to hear the dialogue. There’s no need for lots of declamatory emoting; sometimes a gesture is far more eloquent.

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Oduye

“PARIAH” My rating: B (Opens March 9 at the Tivoli)

86 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Being black. That’s one strike.

Being a woman. That’s two.

And being gay…well, those are shaping up as pretty daunting odds.

In “Pariah” Adepero Oduye gives a luminous performance as a high school senior who day by day, incident by incident is being pushed ever closer to revealing to her disapproving family that she’s a lesbian.

Among the many remarkable things about Oduye’s performance is this: At 33 she’s twice the age of the character she so convincingly plays.

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