CQ

In Paris in 1969, a young American film editor (Jeremy Davies) works on a dumb European SF thriller set in the year 2000 while trying to film his own life in his spare time; he lives with a French stewardess (Elodie Bouchez), but spends a lot of time fantasizing about the lead actress in the thriller (Angela Lindvall), who plays a secret agent. Asked to replace the director of the thriller (Gerard Depardieu), he goes into overdrive. Writer-director Roman Coppola (son of Francis Ford Coppola) may rely too much on David Holzman’s Diary (a key pseudodocumentary of the 60s) for the hero’s own film — a debt he seems to acknowledge by casting that film’s writer and lead actor, L.M. Kit Carson, in a bit part — but he has a field day with the tacky SF movie. It’s sort of a blend of Barbarella, the Matt Helm movies, and Modesty Blaise, and Coppola imagines it in hilarious detail, bringing it the same kind of devotion shown the equally imaginary Hotpants College II in Love and Death on Long Island. As energetic silliness, this gave me a good time. 91 min. (JR) Read more

Son Of The Bride

Juan Jose Campanella, who splits his time between making features in Argentina and directing TV episodes in the U.S., cowrote and directed this Oscar-nominated comedy-drama, about the midlife crisis and diverse family dealings of a restaurateur (Ricardo Darin). (There are a few anticipations of Argentina’s current economic crisis in the plot, but they’re incidental to the sitcom situations.) The other characters include his girlfriend, estranged wife, remote daughter, mother (in a nursing home, afflicted with Alzheimer’s), and father (who sentimentally wants to renew his wedding vows). This has the sort of good-natured mildness I would associate with Paul Mazursky on one of his less energetic outings; I didn’t feel I was wasting my time but I started looking at my watch long before it was over. With Hector Alterio and Norma Aleandro. In Spanish with subtitles. 124 min. (JR) Read more