This Russian feature directed by Valery Priemykhov is a good example of a mediocre foreign film that’s worth seeing because of what it shows us about the country it’s set in. Two Russian youths from the sticks loot a department store in Moscow and head back home on a raft; one of them gets caught and sent to prison for a year. The performances are variable, the lip sync is lousy, the story less than enthralling. I also didn’t warm to the disco version of Albinoni heard on the sound track or the hokey use of slow motion. But the opening sequence, set in a huge and opulent shopping mall where the boys encounter a drag queen, made my jaw drop, giving me an image of Moscow that contradicted most of what I imagined about the place, and other details of contemporary Russian life kept me interested most of the way through. (JR) Read more
Alejandro Agresti’s 1998 Argentinean feature, set in a small town in Patagonia in the 70s, sounds intriguing. It’s about the strange cultural life that develops at the small local cinema, where films that have outlived their usefulness elsewhere are shown with their reels scrambled. The locals form a cult around a French actor whose films are especially incoherent, and after receiving a lot of fan mail from these admirers the actor, now retired and living in Paris, decides to pay them a visit. 91 min. (JR) Read more
Jacques Tati’s first feature (1947), a euphoric comedy set in a sleepy village. As in all of his features, the plot is minimal: during Bastille Day festivities, the local postman (Tati) encounters a newsreel about streamlined postal delivery in America and attempts to clean up his act accordingly. But the exquisite charm of this masterpiece has less to do with individual gags (funny though many of them are) than with Tati’s portrait of a highly interactive French village after the wara view of paradise suffused with affection and poetry. 79 min. (JR) Read more
Meg Myles plays a burlesque dancer in a carnival who moves to New York, starts working in a ritzy nightclub, and sleeps with both her boss and his son. Jerald Intractor directed this low-budget sleaze item (1962, 90 min.) from a script by John T. Chapman. (JR) Read more
