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Archive for the ‘Art house fare’ Category

MOVIES THAT MATTER: THE SEQUEL

Posted in Art house fare, KC Film Scene on August 7, 2013| Leave a Comment »

I’m happy to report that once again this year I’ll be hosting Movies That Matter, the KC Public Library’s  series devoted to some of the greatest titles in cinema history.

Last year for our kickoff  we offered such classics as Buster Keaton’s “The General,” Orson Welle’s “Citizen Kane,” Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull,” Carl Theodore Dryer’s “The Passion of Joan of Arc,” the screwball comedy “Bringing Up Baby,” Disney’s animated “Snow White,” the musical “Singin’ in the Rain” and Wim Wenders’ haunting “Wings of Desire.”

Movies That Matter: The Sequel  consists of 10 titles from both the silent and sound eras. We’ll be showing comedies, musicals, adventures, searing drama, horror – even an animated classic.

All screenings are at 1:30 p.m. Sundays in the Truman Forum of the Plaza Branch, 4801 Main St. Admission is free.

The schedule:

THE GRAND ILLUSION (France; 1937)

Sunday, Sept. 29, 2013

On the outside it’s a World War I escape movie about Frenchmen breaking out of a German POW camp.

On the inside Jean Renoir’s The Grand Illusion is a meditation on the inevitability of armed conflict and the changing face of European society.

Grand illusionThe titled French officer De Boldieu (Pierre Fresnay) has more in common with the aristocratic German commander of the prison camp (Eric Von Stroheim)  than he does with his own working-class fellow prisoner, Marechal (Jean Gabin). Then there’s Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio), the Jew whose “new money” denotes a future in which competence, not birthright, determines the pecking order.

Renoir, the son of impressionist painter August Renoir, was a humanist who observed that no matter which side you’re fighting for, the basic qualities we share should trump the politics that push us apart. But it never works out that way.

An end to war? Alas, Renoir argues, that’s the grand illusion.

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“THE HUNT”: Mikkelsen does it again

Posted in Art house fare on August 2, 2013| 1 Comment »

hunt 1“THE HUNT”  My rating: B+ (Now showing at the Tivoli)

115 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Is Mads  Mikkelsen is our greatest living movie actor, the Olivier of our era?

Exhibit A is the melancholy Dane’s latest film, “The Hunt.”

In it Mikkelsen portrays an average guy accused of a horrible crime – child molestation – and caught up in a Kafkaesque situation in which he cannot prove that the crime didn’t happen, all the while being driven further away from the community he calls home.

Directed by Thomas Vinterberg, one of the founders of the austere Dogme 95 avant-garde filmmaking movement, this tale is so excruciating that it takes a bravura central performance to make it bearable.

Naturally, Mikkelsen delivers.

Of course there are plenty of other impressive  Mikkelson perfs to be sampled: the bloodthirsty Viking berserker in Nicholas Winding Refn’s  “Valhalla Rising,” the suave but majorly disturbed villain of the Bond flick “Casino Royale,” an idealistic aid worker caught up in a corrupt rich family in “After the Wedding,” or the psycho/cannibal/psychiatrist title character of the current NBC series “Hannibal.”

Whatever the project, Mikkelsen lifts everything around him.

Here he plays Lucas, a teacher in a small Danish town who is putting his lonely life back together after several setbacks.

He used to teach at a middle school, but he was downsized. Now he’s employed by a kindergarten where he’s beloved by staff and kids (the latter group uses him like a human jungle gym).

His ex-wife has had custody of their teenage son and until recently would allow the boy to visit Lucas only every other weekend.  Now young Marcus (Lasse Fogelstrom) has made such a fuss that Lucas’ ex agrees to let him live with his father.

And Lucas’ love life has improved, thanks to Nadja (Alexandra Rapaport),  a cook at the school.

Job. Child. Woman. Everything is looking up.

At least until little Klara (Annika Wedderkopp), the four-year-old daughter of Lucas’ lifelong best friend, gets mad at him and tells another teacher that she has seen Lucas’ erect penis. (How, you wonder, does a child even know such stuff?  She glimpsed a porn website on her older brother’s computer tablet.)

And at that point it all starts falling apart for poor Lucas.

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“I’M SO EXCITED”: Almodovar makes a gay film

Posted in Art house fare, tagged , on August 2, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Javier Cámara, Raúl Arévalo and Carlos Areces in I'm So Excit“I’M SO EXCITED” My rating: B-

95 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“I’m So Excited” is the gayest movie of Pedro Almodovar’s career.

Which is another way of saying that it’s really, really  gay.

It’s also amusing and wacky in a lightweight, breathless way that so reminds me of one of Almodovar’s earlier classics that it could have been called “Flight Attendants on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.”

All is quiet and peaceful on Peninsula Airlines Flight 259 from Madrid to Mexico City. Everyone in economy class is fast asleep. You can tell by the snoring, farting and drool collecting in the corners of the passengers’ mouths.

This is  because of  the muscle relaxant with which their drinks have been spiked by the three male cabin attendants.

You see, there’s a problem with the plane, one that could kill everyone on board. And rather than deal with a bunch of panicked travelers, the business-class crew — Fajas (Carlos Areces), Joserra (Javier Camara) and Ulloa (Raul Arevalo) —  have defused the situation with pharmaceuticals.

Now  these three are busily self-medicating with tequila and weed — and letting their gay sensibilities have free reign. At this point there’s nothing to lose…which may explain why they attempt to distract the passengers still awake with a fully choreographed lip sync version of the Pointer Sisters’ “I’m So Excited.”

“I’m So Excited” unfolds while the plane flies circles over Spain and the authorities on the ground try to find an open runway for a crash landing.

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“THE WAY, WAY BACK”: The hilarity of misery

Posted in Art house fare, tagged , , , , , on July 19, 2013| 2 Comments »

way way Liam James“THE WAY, WAY BACK” My rating: B+ (Opening wide on July 19) 

103 minutes | MPAA rating:  PG-13

Coming-of-age-movies are a dime a dozen, and a plot outline of “The Way, Way Back” suggests just more of the same.

But five minutes into this first feature from the writing/directing team of Nat Faxon and Jim Rash (they wrote the screenplay for Alexander Payne’s marvelous “The Descendants”) you’ll realize that something special is at work. This movie is fall-over funny, emotionally resonant (without getting sticky) and astonishingly charitable toward a cast of characters who are, to put it mildly, majorly flawed.

Our  protagonist is Duncan (Liam James), a 14-year-old who appears to have no personality save for a bad case of sullenness. Duncan is stuck in the summer vacation from hell. His divorced and insecure mother Pam (Toni

Toni Collette, Steve Carell

Toni Collette, Steve Carell

Collette) has taken up with alpha-male car salesman Trent (Steve Carell in a straight role); now Duncan has been shanghaied into a summer at Trent’s beach house on Cape Cod.  Also on board is Trent’s high-schooler daughter Steph (Zoe Levin), who cannot mask her disdain for these interlopers.

Once installed on the shore Duncan can only observe with silent disgust the behavior of vacationing adults. Trent and Pam seem to party around the clock (after seeing this film you’ll think twice before drinking around your kids), acting like teenagers with Trent’s friend Kip (Rob Corddry) and his hot wife Joan (Amanda Peet).

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“A HIJACKING”: Living in limbo

Posted in Art house fare, tagged , on July 18, 2013| Leave a Comment »

DDDD...a captive of Somali pirates

Pilou Asbaek…a captive of Somali pirates

“A HIJACKING” My rating: B+ (Opening July 19 at the Tivioli)

103 minutes | MPAA rating: R

There’s not one superfluous moment in the Danish release “A Hijacking,” a terse docudrama handled so realistically and with such quiet insight that you come away from it feeling for the first time that you understand what modern seagoing piracy is all about.

Tobias Lindholm’s film is nerve-wracking without resorting to hackneyed ideas of movie “action.” And it provides tons of insight into not only what it’s like to be a captive sailor held for ransom, but what it’s like to be a corporate bigwig negotiating for his employees’ freedom.

Lindholm’s methodology might at first seem anti-dramatic. He first introduces us to Mikkel (Pilou Asbaek), the chubby, bearded young cook of a Danish cargo vessel plying the Indian Ocean. Mikkel is talking to his girlfriend and his young daughter back in Denmark, looking forward to his return home.

Lindholm doen’t even depict the seizing of Mikkel’s ship and its seven-man crew. We simply become aware that the cook has become  a prisoner, confined to a cramped cabin with his ailing captain and the ship’s engineer. The armed pirates refuse to let them use the bathroom, turning their “cell” into a sewer.

Periodically Mikkel is escorted to the galley where he is expected to cook for his captors from an ever-shrinking pantry. (Fact is, we rarely see the pirates, and never very clearly. They’re simply there, just out of sight.) (more…)

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“THE ATTACK”: What we don’t know

Posted in Art house fare, Uncategorized, tagged on July 7, 2013| 1 Comment »

ATTACK1-articleLarge“THE ATTACK” My rating: B (Now at the Tivoli)

102 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Amin Jafaari is leading the good life. Though an Arab, he has carved an enviable niche in Israeli society.  He has a beautiful wife, a fine home, and an illustrious career as a hotshot surgeon. As the film begins, in fact, he is accepting a prestigious award…the first Arab to ever receive it.

The buzz won’t last long. The next day a suicide bombing sends dozens of victims — mostly children attending birthday parties in a Tel Aviv restaurant — to Amin’s emergency room. With professional cool he patches together bodies (although one bloody victim refuses to be treated by an Arab).

The nightmare is just beginning. He’s called back in the middle of the night to identify the body — or the half that’s still recognizable — of the suicide bomber. It is his wife, Siham.

Amin is rocked. He protests that his wife — she was off visiting relatives — would never do such a thing. Before long he’s in handcuffs being manhandled by a scary cop (Uri Gavriel) who seems determined to make him an accomplice to the crime. After three sleepless nights (his cell rocks to high-volume death metal) Amin finds himself out on the street.

When a goodbye letter from his wife arrives in the mail, Amin must admit that Siham was, indeed, the bomber. But why? How did she hide this part of her life from him? How could he be so clueless?

That confusion and angst is perfectly captured by Nazareth-born actor Ali Suliman. He’s terrific…and he needs to be, because I can’t help feeling that this psychological study from Lebanese writer/director Ziad Doueiri is a bit of a cheat. (more…)

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“STUCK IN LOVE”: Love hurts

Posted in Art house fare, tagged , , , on June 28, 2013| 1 Comment »

Lily Collins, Greg Kinnear

Lily Collins, Greg Kinnear

“STUCK IN LOVE” My rating: B (Opens wide on July 5)

97 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Stuck in Love” isn’t wildly original, but for a writing-directing debut it hits its marks cleanly and effectively, gives a talented cast an exhilarating workout, and leaves its audience convinced that newcomer Josh Boone has great things in his future.

Boone‘s comedy-drama centers on the Borgens, a family of writers living along the Atlantic Coast in New England. And I don’t mean a few blocks from the Coast…I mean in a three-story beach house overlooking the dunes.

The place was purchased with money generated by the first several novels penned by William Borgens (Greg Kinnear). Alas, Bill is now in a slump.  His wife of 20 years, Erica (Jennifer Connelly), left him three years ago for another man, and lately the depressed Bill hasn’t written a word.

For excitement Bill hides in the bushes outside the house where Erica and her new husband live. He’s never happier than when he can eavesdrop on them fighting.

(Kinnear almost seems to be channelling a character he played a few years back in a similar romantic drama, “The Feast of Love.”  He’s good at these roles, but let’s have a bit more diversity, eh?)

Meanwhile Bill has his sexual needs met by a neighbor lady (Kristen Bell) who stops by on her morning run, services him in record time, and delivers unsentimental advice while tugging on her jogging outfit.

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“DIRTY WARS”: Institutionalized ruthlessness

Posted in Art house fare, Documentaries, tagged on June 28, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Jeremy Scahill...looking for the story

Jeremy Scahill…looking for the story

“DIRTY WARS” My rating: B (Opens June 28 at the Tivoli)

90 minutes | No MPAA rating

“Dirty Wars” might be termed a “documentary thriller.”

Rick Rowley’s film follows freelance journalist Jeremy Scahill, who has covered Iraq and Afghanistan for The Nation and written the book Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army).

Scahill is attempting to get the story behind an increasing number of disturbing execution/massacres of apparently innocent civilians in Afghanistan and, later, Yemen.

Unlike most embedded journalists, who live with American troops and tend to unconsciously adopt their perspective, Scahill is fiercely independent. He talks to the villagers who have lost family and friends in mysterious nighttime raids or sudden missile strikes. He tracks down local warlords. And through his dogged reporting, he clearly is a threat to this unseen conspiracy.

At one point we see footage of a TV appearance in which Jay Leno asks Scahill: “Why are you still alive?”

The first half of “Dirty Wars” takes place prior to the killing of Osama Bin Laden. It is during this time that Scahill catches wind of a massive secret U.S. apparatus taking directions from the White House.  This Joint Special Operations Command apparently operates free of the usual rules of engagement, shrugging off civilian deaths — even massive ones — as simply an unavoidable by-product of the War on Terror.

With Ben Laden’s death, however, the JSOC stepped into the spotlight and took its bow. And with its new semi-transparency Scahill realizes that the organization’s efforts are far more massive and widespread than even he imagined.

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“MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING”: Halfway there

Posted in Art house fare, tagged , , on June 23, 2013| 1 Comment »

and Amy Acker as Benedict and Beatrice

Alexis Denisof and Amy Acker as Benedict and Beatrice

“MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING”  My rating: B- (Now showing at the Glenwood Arts)

107 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Making superhero movies with budgets bigger than the GNP of a Third World country is undoubted an amusing pastime.

But apparently after a while even a legendary geek-pleaser like Joss Whedon (TV’s ”Buffy,” the big screen’s “Avengers” and “Thor”) feels the need for a simple, uncomplicated palate cleanser.

Thus “Much Ado About Nothing” which is, of course, Shakespeare’s great comedy about a bickering duo who are cannily manipulated into each other’s arms by their amused friends and relations.

Twenty years ago Kenneth Branagh gave us a more-or-less definitive film version (inasmuch as any performance of Shakespeare can be definitive). Whedon’s isn’t that good, but it’ll do.

A recap for the Bard-deprived:  Don Pedro (Reed Diamond) returns victorious from war and decides to spend some time chilling out on the estate of Leonato (Clark Gregg). Accompanying him are his officers Benedick (Alexis Denisof) and Claudio (Fran Kranz), as well as Don Pedro’s rebellious brother  Don John (Sean Maher), who is their prisoner.

Claudio immediately falls for Leonato’s daughter Hero (Jillian Morgese) and a wedding is planned.

Meanwhile Benedict and Hero’s cousin Beatrice (Amy Acker) carry on a war of insults.  It’s pretty obvious to everyone but themselves that their verbal sparring is a form of foreplay, and before long there’s a conspiracy afoot to drive these “enemies” into each other’s arms.

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“THE BLING RING”: That sense of entitlement

Posted in Art house fare, tagged , , , on June 21, 2013| 2 Comments »

Emma Watson On The Set Of 'The Bling Ring'“THE BLING RING” My rating: B (Opens June 21 at the Alamo Drafthouse)

90 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The juvenile delinquents depicted in Sofia Coppola’s “The Bling Ring” are neither impoverished nor uneducated. They are the beautiful children of Southern California, privileged numbskulls who wear classy clothes, drive expensive cars and party hearty.

In 2008-09 a half dozen of these handsome young people went on a burgling spree, entering the homes of the famous people—Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton — whose lives they experienced vicariously through the Internet and  TV’s ”TMZ” celebrity gossip show. On their nocturnal prowls they made off with more than $3 million in clothing and cash.

In Coppola’s hands their fictionalized story has become a deadpan comedy about really stupid kids (who consider themselves smart) whose sense of entitlement is so complete and moral compass so nonexistent that they assume the rules just don’t apply to them. 

It’d make a hell of a double feature with “Spring Breakers,” though I doubt audiences are prepared for quite that much adolescent idiocy and arrogance.

We’re introduced to the Bling Ring through Marc (Israel Broussard), a baby-faced teen and a new student at Indian Hills High School (a sort of high-class dumping ground for rich kids who been booted from other schools). Marc is sweet and unassertive and totally bowled over when he’s befriended by the beautiful, catty Rebecca (Katie Chang).

It’s not about sex. Marc is pretty obviously gay. He thinks of Rebecca as his sister.

(more…)

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