Christopher Guest’s half-funny mockumentary follow-up to Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show imagines a Town Hall folk music concert organized by a stiff control freak (Bob Balaban) as a memorial to his manager father. It’s easy to laugh at the preponderance of Jews in the pop-folk scene, and see that the Folksmen (Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer) are patterned after the Kingston Trio, the New Main Street Singers (including John Michael Higgins and Parker Posey) after the New Christy Minstrels, and Mitch & Mickey (cowriter Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara) after Sonny and Cher. But I can’t fathom why Guest and Levy had the mirthless idea of making Mitch a burned-out mental case. With Paul Dooley, Jane Lynch, and Fred Willard. 87 min. (JR) Read more
Warmly recommended to viewers who like their romantic comedies small-scale but life-size, this charming debut feature by Peter Sollette, set in a Dominican milieu on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, follows the stumbling exploits of the title character (Victor Rasuk), a small-time teenage Romeo trying to upgrade his image after being caught in the act with a chubby neighbor. Victor plots his way into the good graces of “Juicy Judy” (Judy Marte), a wary local beauty with agendas of her own; the hero’s sister, his younger brother, his cantankerous grandmother (Altagracia Guzman), and Judy’s brother and best friend all play significant parts in the developing intrigue. The nonprofessional cast contributed a lot to the script. 88 min. Century 12 and CineArts 6, Esquire, Landmark’s Century Centre. Read more
The minimalism of this Abbas Kiarostami film (2003) makes it one of the boldest experiments yet by the masterful Iranian filmmaker: its ten sequences transpire in a car driving through Tehran, with a stylish young divorcee at the wheel and a series of six characters in the passenger seat. Shot with two digital video cameras mounted on the dashboard, it’s neither scripted nor directed in any ordinary sense, but Kiarostami spent a long time preparing the nonprofessional actors (all strong performers). The best scenes involve the driver’s spiky ten-year-old son (the only male in the cast, but a fitting stand-in for Iranian patriarchy), a young woman she picks up twice near a shrine, and a prostitute. The film offers a fascinating glimpse of the Iranian urban middle class, and though it eschews most of the pleasures of composition and landscape found in other Kiarostami films, it’s never less than riveting. In Farsi with subtitles. 94 min. (JR) Read more
Argentinean-born composer, lyricist, and singer Javier Patricio Gato Perez (1950-’90), who emigrated to Spain in his youth, is the subject of this engaging Spanish documentary by Ventura Pons (2002, 103 min.), in which lively performances of Perez’s music are nicely juxtaposed with gab from his friends and relatives, both parts relaxed and intimate. El Gran Gato (the Big Cat) synthesized Gypsy songs, Catalan rumbas, rock, and elements of South American music while adding colorful and somewhat literary lyrics, and this is a warm tribute to his talent. In Catalan with subtitles. (JR) Read more
Six friends (including Javier Bardem, Luis Tosar, and Jose Angel Egido) struggle to make ends meet after being laid off from their shipyard jobs in this 2002 feature by writer-director Fernando Leon de Aranoa. Like Fellini’s I Vitelloni, this Spanish-French-Italian coproduction is a bittersweet epic about frustration and relative inertia, though with a somewhat older and wiser group of layabouts, and its contemporary relevance made it a box-office hit in Spain, which nominated it for an Oscar. In Spanish with subtitles. 113 min. (JR) Read more
Riding a subway, an aging doctor relives traumas associated with the kidnappings and killings of Argentina’s dirty war of the 70s, including the loss of his daughter. Director Luis Cesar D’Angiolillo adapted a play by actor and theater director Eduardo Pavlovsky, leading us through a procession of melodramatic memories and nightmares that are less evocative of Fellini and Bergman than of their heavier imitators (e.g., Sidney Lumet in The Pawnbroker); this 2001 Argentinean drama also reminded me of Arthur Miller, but not at his best. The suitably oppressive title, which means power, is glossed at both the beginning and end of the picture to make the feeling of doom even more inescapable. 89 min. (JR) Read more
The title of this so-so Argentinean indie (2002, 93 min.) means heritage or inheritance, which apparently alludes both to the 24-year-old German (Adrian Witzke) who arrives in Buenos Aires with minimal Spanish looking haplessly for the love of his life and to the aging, cantankerous Italian restaurant owner (Rita Cortese) who takes him in and recalls how she once came to the city for similar reasons. I wasn’t happy with the Muzak-like score, the predictable sentimental flourishes, or Witzke’s inexpressiveness, but Cortese has her moments. Written and directed by Paula Hernandez. In Spanish with subtitles. (JR) Read more
As you might guess from the banal subtitle, this 2002 documentary by Hernan Gaffet is a less than satisfying look at the intriguing Argentinean jazz guitarist and entertainer Oscar Aleman (1909-’80). Raised by an impoverished Spanish-Indian family and untrained as a musician, Aleman made a name for himself in the 30s as part of Josephine Baker’s Paris orchestra (and may have been her lover); World War II drove him back to Argentina, where he eventually became even more popular. Gaffet’s approach is frustrating: he provides analyses of Aleman’s improvisational style but no musical illustrations, and most of the film consists of photos and talking heads with random bits of his music chugging in the background. But a few tantalizing clips show how charismatic Aleman could be as a guitarist, singer, dancer, and comic actor. In Spanish with subtitles. 104 min. (JR) Read more
After 30 years in prison in Rosario, two small-time stumblebums (Federico Luppi and Ulises Dumontthe latter a significant figure in classic Argentinean cinema) try to recover their hidden loot, with messy results. Writer-director Rodrigo Grande has an inventive and nuanced style; he knows how to fill a wide-screen frame and even manages to incorporate a couple of intriguing musical numbers in his melancholy tale. But, as with Catch Me if You Can, the offhand misogyny leaking around the edges of this 2001 drama spoiled most of it for me. In Spanish with subtitles. 90 min. (JR) Read more
Writer-director Austin Chick debuts with this Generation X love triangle, set at Sarah Lawrence in 1993, then updated a decade later, with spouses coming into the picture. Up to a point, I was engaged by Chick’s charactersa laid-back animator (Mark Ruffalo) romancing one woman (Maya Stange), alienating her by going after her friend and roommate (Kathleen Robertson), then finally realizing he loves the first woman. But that point passed pretty soon after the credits rolled, and nothing has come back to haunt me since. With Petra Wright. 91 min. (JR) Read more
I’d be more impressed with the Chicago Latino Film Festival if it better recognized the cutting edge of contemporary South American cinema (for instance, Raul Ruiz’s 2002 Chilean Rhapsody, an ongoing miniseries). Argentinean independent cinema is said to be enjoying a renaissance, but this year’s lineup shows few signs of it. This vulgar, stupid comedy (2002, 99 min.) about artificial insemination grossed $2.4 million in Argentina, perhaps because its actors come from soap operas, but is that any excuse for showcasing it here? Juan Jose Jusid directed. (JR) Read more
This moving drama about a New York journalist (Sigourney Weaver) helping a fire captain (Anthony LaPaglia) write eulogies for the men he lost on 9/11 is the final flowering of a play by Anne Nelson, based on real people and events, that originated with the off-off-Broadway company the Flea Theater. Since the virtues of heroism and decency it celebrates are universal, I hope it doesn’t get absorbed into the dubious agitprop of American exceptionalism, with the presumption that people who don’t want to emulate us in every possible way risk becoming collateral damage like these firemen. Directed by Jim Simpson, who staged the original production. 85 min. (JR) Read more
This epic silent western (1923, 98 min.) by the now forgotten James Cruze is memorable for its pictorial distinction and overall narrative sweep, which helps to overcome the relatively slow pacing. With J. Warren Kerrigan, Lois Wilson, Alan Hale, and Ernest Torrence. (JR) Read more
This sincere, hokey docudrama about the development and deployment of the atomic bomb, released by MGM in 1947, begins with a newsreel prologue that shows the film being sealed in a time capsule for the people of 2446. By that time our contemporary efforts at dramaturgy and objectivity may look just as quaint as this does now, and to its credit, this fascinating period piece shows more misgivings about Hiroshima than Truman ever did. Norman Tauroglater known for his Jerry Lewis and Elvis Presley vehiclesdirected a script by Frank Wead; with Brian Donlevy, Robert Walker, Hume Cronyn (as Robert Oppenheimer), Tom Drake, Audrey Totter, and others impersonating Einstein, FDR, and Truman (the latter viewed only from behind). 112 min. (JR) Read more
The title character (Mikhail Rojkov in a strong performance) is a Russian emigre working as a security guard and trying to adjust to a corrupt Argentinean society. This 2002 feature by Diego Gachassin follows Vladimir’s affair with a part-time prostitute and his friendship with another local Russian who works as an intern, plays the saxophone, and drinks increasing amounts of vodka. Gachassin is an accomplished stylist, and the black-and-white cinematography is appropriately claustrophobic. In Spanish and Russian with subtitles. 94 min. (JR) Read more
