“THE COLOR OF PARADISE” screens at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 23, at theKansas City Central Library, 14 W. 10th St., as part of the film series Middle Eastern Voices.
“The Color of Paradise” can reduce even the most jaded filmgoer to open-mouthed astonishment.
Iranian writer/director Majid Majidi has taken a tale that would have made Dickens proud and presented it in such a way that it seems both utterly realistic and achingly poetic.
Simultaneously a religious parable and a socially conscious drama, “The Color of Paradise” is unforgettable.
Mohammad (Mohsen Ramezani) is an 8-year-old boy who spends most of each year in a Tehran school for the blind. Now, at the end of term, he’s left twiddling his thumbs while all the other children are picked up by their parents.
Left alone in a park-like setting, Mohammad’s attention is focused on nearby chirping. A tiny bird has fallen from a tree and is being threatened by a hungry cat; on hands and knees Mohammad searches for the distressed creature, retrieves it and then risks his neck by climbing up the tree, feeling his way along the branches, and replacing the hatchling in its nest.
“BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR” My rating: A(Opening Nov. 15 at the Tivoli and the Rio)
179 minutes | MPAA Rating: NC-17
What is the greatest film performance you’ve ever seen?
For me the answer changes every few years. But for the foreseeable future my greatest film performance is given by Adele Exarchopoulos in “Blue Is the Warmest Color.”
“Blue…” arrives on these shores riding a wave of acclaim and notoriety. Writer/director Abdellatif Kechiche and its two lead actresses – Exarchopoulos and Lea Seydoux – jointly were awarded the Palm d’Or at last May’s Cannes Film Festival.
The film has generated controversy for extended scenes of lesbian lovemaking that earned an NC-17 rating from the MPAA. And then there are the recent accusations of sexual coercion hurled by the actresses at Kechiche.
Well, heavy breathing girl-on-girl action may be titillating, and rumors of on-set sexual politics can be diverting.
But let’s look at what “Blue Is the Warmest Color” really is: a monumental (three hours) study of a young woman’s life over several years that delves into her psyche with the sort of detail usually only afforded by a great novel. Continue Reading »
“GOD LOVES UGANDA” My rating: B(Opens Nov. 15 at the Tivoli)
83 minutes | No MPAA rating
At first glance, Roger Ross Williams’ documentary “God Loves Uganda” seems to be a study of a group of young people from the Kansas City area who go to Uganda as missionaries.
They are obviously sincere and highly motivated Christians, full of youthful enthusiasm and convinced that in their faith they have found the answer to…well, everything.
But little by little “God Loves Uganda” tells a dramatically different story, one about conservative Christians who have gained so much influence in a foreign country that their anti-gay bias is being institutionalized in laws that would make homosexuality a crime – even a capital crime.
It takes a while for the film to make its case. Early on we meet the Rev. Kapya Kaoma, a Zambian priest now living in Boston. We see him making breakfast for his family.
Why are we spending time with this guy? Well, it is gradually revealed that Kaoma was a gay-rights researcher who fled Uganda in fear of his life. He believes that American Christian missionaries, no matter how sincere, are responsible for a culture of hate and fear in that country.
Most of the Christians featured in the film are members of the International House of Prayer, which has headquarters in Grandview, Mo., on Kansas City’s south side.
Williams – an Oscar winner for his documentary short “Music by Prudence “– seems to have been given unlimited access , filming worship services and training sessions as the fresh-scrubbed young proselytizers get ready. He then follows them on their mission abroad.
Less likeable are several fire-and-brimstone conservative American preachers who are hugely influential in Uganda. The most objectionable of this bunch may be Scott Lively, an anti-gay activist credited by many with using outright falsehoods (homosexuals were behind the Nazi movement) to whip up an anti-homosexual feeding frenzy.
The resulting documentary is depressing and scary. These fundamentalist Americans see Africa as fertile ground for anti-gay pogroms, without having to deal with the civil rights issues their approach would raise in the U.S.
“God Loves Uganda” has been criticized as being anti-Christian. Actually, it’s anti-Christian bigot. There’s a difference, isn’t there?
There was before “Breathless,” and there was after “Breathless.”
Few movies have done so much to change film culture.
Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 film screens at 1:30 p.m. Sunday, November 17, at the Plaza Branch, 4801 Main St. It’s part of the ongoing Movies That Matter free film series. I’ll be showing the film and giving a brief talk before and after the movie.
How big a game-changer can one movie be?
Pretty damn big.
More than any other movie, “Breathless” drew the world’s attention to the French New Wave, a movement of movies created by young critics-turned-directors. These filmmakers – among them Claude Chabrol, Francois Truffaut, Alain Resnais, and many others – were united not by style or subject matter but by their defiance of the status quo.
The New Wave was a rebellion against the complacency of the French film industry. Instead of aiming for polished, well-made productions, the New Wavers often worked in the streets with skeleton crews, exploring subject matter and attitudes at odds with the official cinema culture.
“PERSEPOLIS” screens at 1:30 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 16 at the Kansas City Central Library, 14 W. 10th St., as part of the film series Middle Eastern Voices.
Animation has for so long been the domain of fairy-tale heroines and wise-guy bunnies that it’s a shock to discover that the form can tell human stories with the depth of great literature.
That’s what we have in “Persepolis,” the animated French-made feature based on Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novels about her youth in revolutionary Iran.
There’s nothing remotely cute here, thematically or visually. Told in black-and-white line drawings occasionally relieved by splashes of color or subtle shading, this film by Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud could have been shot as live action.
But animation adds another dimension; the movie’s minimalist style allows us to zero in on the emotions unfolding on the screen without distractions that might pull the eye away from what really matters. It’s a heightened reality.
Among the many virtues of J.C. Chandor’s “All Is Lost” is this: It may be one of the purest examples of cinema I’ve encountered in ages.
You could turn off the soundtrack and still understand exactly what is going on here. Movies are about movement, after all, and “All Is Lost” is a near-perfect example of visual storytelling.
Robert Redford, now 77, stars as our unnamed protagonist, the sole traveler on a well-equipped modern sailboat on the Indian Ocean.
We first see him awakening to the slosh of water in his cabin; he quickly discovers that his boat has been rammed by a floating container bin — one of those railway car-sized steel shoeboxes that evidently has fallen from the deck of a freighter. It has knocked a whole in the side of the sailor’s boat…and in a bit of ironic commentary, has left the sea littered with thousands of colorful running shoes that it held.
“All Is Lost” is the near-wordless story of what our man does to survive in a hostile environment. As such it bears no small resemblance to another much-ballyhooed current film on the same theme: “Gravity.”
But the fact is that “All Is Lost” is the superior film — less gimmicky, more believable, unbearably suspenseful and heartbreakingly sad.
“THE PRIME MINISTERS: THE PIONEERS” My rating: B-(Opening Nov. 8 at the Screenland Crown Center)
116 minutes | No MPAA rating
I’m not exactly sure what to make of Richard Trank’s “The Prime Ministers: The Pioneers.”
It’s not precisely pro-Israel propaganda, though it sometimes feels like it.
The documentarty is based on the best-selling memoirs of Yehuda Avner, who served as an aide and speechwriter to five Israeli prime ministers. Yet it feels curiously impersonal — even though the 80-something Avner is frequently on camera as a talking head.
On one level it’s a sweeping summation of 50 years of Middle Eastern history: war, terrorism, diplomacy. On another it’s curiously myopic.
The film follows Avner from his boyhood in England to his new life in the infant state of Israel. He must have been an effective diplomatic and political operative, since he served in the administrations of Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin, and Shimon Peres.
The film has been impressively made, featuring state-of-the-art production and a treasure trove of vintage newsreel footage and still photographs chronicling the early years of the Jewish state. Sandra Bullock, Michael Douglas, Leonard Nimoy and Christoph Waltz are among the well-known actors who lend their voices to the effort.
There’s an immense amount of history here (most of it leading up to and through the Meir era…the years of Rabin, Begin and Peres will be dealt with in another documentary coming out next year).
Yet the film lacks a center. Ostensibly it should be Avnder himself, a witness to so much history. But he comes off as calm, polite, and a bit detatched…less a dynamic doer than a fly on the wall who served and observed the great and powerful around him. He’s got some good stories — including one about visiting Harry Truman in Independence — but his modesty makes for an emotionally underwhelming expereince.
“The Prime Ministers: The Pioneers” might best be viewed as a sort of survey course in Israeli history, peppered with sometimes surprising insider anecdotes.
But while it chronicles Israel’s ongoing conflicts with its Islamic neighbors, the film sidesteps all mention of why so much of the Arab world is bent on eradicating the Jewish nation. It’s not like the doc is overtly anti-Arab…its tone is more one of indifference. A person unschooled in the history of the region could come away from this movie without much of an understanding of what the conflict is all about.
“NOSFERATU: THE VAMPYRE” My rating: B (Opens Nov. 8 at the Tivoli)
107 minutes | MPAA rating: PG
Remaking a classic movie is generally a futile and thankless task, and you’ve got to wonder about Werner Herzog’s hubris in even attempting a color redo of the silent black-and-white vampire classic “Nosferatu.”
The original, directed by F.W. Murnau in 1927, is a masterpiece of German expressionism and is rightly regarded as one of the greatest horror movies of all time. The very first vampire film, it also contained the creepiest bloodsucker ever, a bald, ratlike nightmare played by the mysterious Max Schrek.
How do you top that?
Herzog’s 1979 “Nosferatu” doesn’t top it, but it offers a perfectly valid alternate telling of the story. Herzog is, after all a cinematic genius (yeah, yeah, often a really irritating cinematic genius) and his version has many strengths.
The newly digitized “Nosferatu” being shown at the Tivoli is in German. The film was shot in both German and English, and only the English version has previously played in the U.S. This was unfortunate, since those who have seen both believe the largely German cast gave superior performances when delivering their lines in their native language.
“INCENDIES” screens at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 9 at the Kansas City Central Library, 14 W. 10th St., as part of the film series Middle Eastern Voices.
Denis Villeneuve’s Oscar-nominated (for foreign language film) “Incendies” (French for “fires”) is about war and peace, about family and forgiveness.
It overflows with horror and emotional beauty, yet it delivers its potent payload with a minimum of sentimentality and filmic melodrama.
It’s the story of one life, but also about how the ripples from that life have spread to engulf many other lives.
Writer/director Villeneuve (whose first American film, “Prisoners” with Jake Gyllenhaal and Hugh Jackman, opened a few weeks back) has given us an intimate epic.
In modern-day Quebec twins Jeanne and Simon Marwan (Melissa Desormeaux-Poulin, Maxim Gaudette) learn that their late mother, Nawal, a native of Lebanon who lived in Canada for more than two decades, has left behind a will packed with bombshells.
Through a notary the dead woman instructs Jeanne to find the twins’ father and deliver a letter to him. Simon is told to locate their older brother and hand over a similar epistle. Continue Reading »
“MUSCLE SHOALS” My rating: B(Opening Nov. 1 at the Tivoli)
111 minutes | MPAA rating: PG
Like “Standing in the Shadows of Motown,” “AKA Doc Pomus” and “Tom Dowd & the Language of Music,” the new documentary “Muscle Shoals” leaves you stunned at the realization of the great music created by just one individual, record label or – in this case – town.
Muscle Shoals, Alabama, population 8,000, is a redneck burg of no particular distinction. Yet it became the birthplace of some of our greatest R&B and rock. Why should a rural town in one of the most racially-charged states have become a happy melting pot of black and white music-makers?
Greg Camalier’s film tries to answer that. Maybe it has something to do with the landscape – Native Americans called the nearby Tennessee River “the river that sings.” Opines U2’s Bono: “It’s like the songs came out of the mud.”
Whatever. Here’s what we can say for certain.
Jimmy Cliff
In the early ‘60s a local guy named Rick Hall created a recording studio in Muscle Shoals and hired a bunch of local white kids as a house band. As individual musicians they weren’t all that great – not at first, anyway — but together they had a synergy, a creativity that allowed them to take any performer, any song, and find just the right approach and arrangement. They became known as The Swampers.
Hall’s Fame Studio in Muscle Shoals got a big shot in the arm when a local nursing home worker named Percy Sledge recorded “When A Man Loves a Woman” there. Attracted by that huge hit, as well as tunes recorded in Muscle Shoals by Arthur Alexander, big-time record producer Jerry Wexler began bringing artists like Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin to work with Hall and the Swampers.
The combination of black artists and a white producer and studio band resulted in spectacular music like “Respect” and “Land of 1,000 Dances.”
Butler's Cinema Scene 