Screenwriter Jeff Nathanson (The Terminal) makes his directing debut with this unfunny and instantly forgettable comedy about an FBI agent (Alec Baldwin) who poses as a movie producer in order to bust a mob boss. Joan Cusack, in a small part, gets to be hilarious, but other members of the talented castMatthew Broderick, Toni Collette, Tony Shalhoub, and Calista Flockhartprove less lucky. R, 93 min. (JR) Read more
An itinerant Palestinian projectionist, living with his wife near Ramallah and screening cartoons for children in refugee camps, resolves to hold an outdoor screening in Jerusalem despite it being illegal for him to enter the city. The hero, who suggests a stocky George Clooney, is a memorable figure, and in some ways his project recalls Susan Sontag’s 1993 staging of Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo. Directed by Rashid Masharawi, this touching Palestinian feature (2002) is shaped and inflected at every turn by its locations; much of the absorbing narrative is concerned with the nitty-gritty of passing checkpoints and repairing a rickety projector. In Arabic and Hebrew with subtitles. 85 min. (JR) Read more
I haven’t seen Kenji Mizoguchi’s rarely screened first talkie (1930), also known as Home Village. But the plot — an ambitious opera tenor (Yoshie Fujiwara) becomes conceited and neglects his faithful, self-sacrificing girlfriend — suggests some resemblance to The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (1939), one of his greatest films. In Japanese with subtitles. 86 min. (JR) Read more
Writer-director James Toback (The Pick-up Artist) tries his hand at soft-core porn in this comedy-drama revolving around Neve Campbell as a rich kid in a swank new loft, which makes it a tad more visually interesting than his usual. I suspect he thinks his story about various interacting Manhattan hustlersincluding himself as a Columbia professor, Fred Weller as a would-be pimp and movie producer, Dominic Chianese as an Italian count and billionaire, and the conniving Campbell character herselfis more profoundly motivated. But the slapdash plot, paper-thin characters, misogynist undertones, and mechanical crosscutting are all soft-core standbys, and the philosophical platitude of everybody being a hustler (just like Toback himself while pitching movies like this one) actually seems closer to Russ Meyer than to Dostoyevsky. Mike Tyson and Lori Singer contribute cameos as themselves. R, 81 min. (JR) Read more