A schoolteacher (Jimmy Fallon) finds his fanatical attachment to the Boston Red Sox getting in the way of his budding relationship with a business consultant (Drew Barrymore) in this slightly-better-than-average romantic comedy by Peter and Bobby Farrelly (There’s Something About Mary). It doesn’t require any knowledge of baseball and in fact does a pretty good job of exploring the more regressive aspects of sports fandom, though it doesn’t advance very far beyond predictable formula. To call this Farrelly brothers lite may be a little redundant, but aside from the odd vomit gag, it goes relatively easy on their usual working-class taboo busting. Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel wrote the script, adapting Nick Hornby’s memoir about his addiction to English soccer. PG-13, 105 min. (JR) Read more
This program includes Lotte Reiniger’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed (66 min.), about which Dave Kehr writes, Reiniger was the master (and perhaps the sole practitioner) of an elaborate form of cutout animation in which silhouetted characters perform before filigreed backgrounds. This film, released in 1926 after three years’ work, is her only feature; it is charming, accomplished, and somewhat arcane. Completing the program are Berthold Bartosch’s L’idee (1932), Fernand Leger and Dudley Murphy’s classic Ballet mecanique (1924), the great Oskar Fischinger’s Wax Experiments (1927) and Muratti Marches On (1934), and Walter Ruttmann’s Opus II (1921), Opus III (1924), and Opus IV (1925). 140 min. (JR) Read more
John Boorman directs a potent, liberal-minded drama about South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation hearings of the mid-90s, adapted by Ann Peacock from Antjie Krog’s book Country of My Skull. The plot focuses on two journalists, an Afrikaner poet (Juliette Binoche) who firmly believes in the South African concept of ubuntu (collective unity) and a Washington Post reporter (Samuel L. Jackson) who’s a lot more skeptical, seeing the hearings chiefly as a way for guilty whites to be pardoned for their crimes. Though the opposition between these characters as well as their growing rapport may seem somewhat diagrammatic at times, the story as a whole is sufficiently nuanced to develop in unforeseeable directions, and Boorman gets the most out of the material. R, 104 min. (JR) Read more
For spectators who haven’t seen the original and don’t know all the donnees of the characters and situations, the makers of the sequel aren’t as forthcoming as they might have been. But there’s still a fair amount of disreputable amusement to be found from the eponymous, carnivorous rolling fur balls from outer space and the extraterrestrial bounty hunters on their trail. This minor Gremlins spin-off can’t boast much in the acting department, and most of the special effects are decidedly cut-rate, so good-natured nasty fun is the main bill of fare. Its not nearly as imaginative as Beetlejuice, but its callow little heart and its overbite are still both in the right place. With Don Opper, Scott Grimes, Liane Curtis, Barry Corbin, and Terrence Mann; directed by Mick Garris, written by Garris and David Twohy. (JR) Read more
128 minutes of slow-motion torture. Bertrand Tavernier’s misconceived catalog of suffering and squalor during the Middle Agesspecifically his grim account of incest and humiliation after a lord (Bernard Pierre Donnadieu) returns from the Hundred Years’ War to rape his daughter (Julie Delpy), berate his son (Nils Tavernier), curse God, and abuse a few othersis worthy of Woody Allen in one of his unfunny, self-flagellating moods. The toneless script is by Colo Tavernier O’Hagan, who previously collaborated with her ex-husband on that oatmeal manifesto known as A Sunday in the Country. If the earlier film was a square celebration of mediocrity, this one is an equally square and gutless attempt to do something down and dirty without knowing precisely how or why. A fine original score by jazz bassist Ron Carter and some good cinematography by Bruno de Keyzer get wasted in an art film that, like the worst of Allen, manages to bore you (and bore into you) with its relentless determination to be as depressing as possible for no reason in particular. (JR) Read more
Judy Irving’s graceful and laid-back 2003 documentary deals with at least three subjects, separately and in conjunction with one another. One is indicated by the title: the 45 or so wild parrots from South America that have mysteriously found their way to Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. A good many of them have been befriended, as it were, by the second subject: Mark Bittner, a jobless and sometimes homeless local bohemian who teaches us a lot about them and himself. The third subject is the city–a sturdy and loving portrait of San Francisco and its people emerges from the details. The film is both wise and tender in its treatment of relationships–between birds, between people, and between birds and people. G, 83 min. Landmark’s Century Centre. Read more
Chosen to represent the Czech Republic at the Oscars, this Altman-esque fresco by Jan Hrebejk (Divided We Fall) offers a provocative and entertaining satirical account of intersecting lives, classes, and subcultures in contemporary Prague. At first it seems to be about immigration, but eventually it becomes a wry commentary on racism and xenophobia as manifested in every reach of society, from the violence of soccer hooligans to the more genteel prejudice of intellectuals. Along the way Hrebejk delivers caustic ironies about the postcommunist world, though his movie is limited by the rather dubious suggestion that race hatred is a specifically Czech problem. The large cast of characters allows for many strong performances, especially Jiri Machacek as a security guard and Petr Forman (son of director Milos) as a young man estranged from his professor father. In Czech with subtitles. R, 108 min. Music Box. Read more
Fresh, likable, and stylishly low-key, this wistful and sexy romantic comedy marks the feature-directing debut of conceptual artist Miranda July. There are a lot of strong performances by relative unknowns, but what really holds things together is a certain sustained pitch of feeling about loneliness. July plays a shy video artist, supporting herself as a cabdriver for the elderly, who becomes interested in a recently separated shoe clerk (John Hawkes) with two sons. The movie’s flirtatious roundelay also includes the clerk’s coworker, an art curator, and a couple of teenage girls. R, 90 min. (JR) Read more
Carl Dreyer’s last silent, the greatest of all Joan of Arc films. (Lost for half a century, the 1928 original was rediscovered in a Norwegian mental asylum in the 80s; other prints had perished in a warehouse fire, and the two versions subsequently circulated consisted of outtakes.) Joan is played by stage actress Renee Falconetti, and though hers is one of the key performances in the history of movies, she never made another film. (Antonin Artaud also appears in a memorable cameo.) Dreyer’s radical approach to constructing space and the slow intensity of his mobile style make this difficult in the sense that, like all the greatest films, it reinvents the world from the ground up. It’s also painful in a way that all Dreyer’s tragedies are, but it will continue to live long after most commercial movies have vanished from memory. In French with subtitles. 114 min. (JR) Read more
Sandra Bullock returns as klutzy FBI agent Gracie Hart and as producer in this sequel to Miss Congeniality, though with all her grotesque disguises, this often suggests a sequel to Mrs. Doubtfire. Screenwriter Marc Lawrence (Miss Congeniality, Two Weeks Notice) delivers plenty of gender humor, including attitude from a black agent named Sam Fuller (Regina King), wisecracks from a gay personal stylist (Diedrich Bader), and a grand climax at a Las Vegas drag show. Among the casino-size product placements are such familiar faces as Ernie Hudson, Treat Williams, William Shatner, and Eileen Brennan in a cameo. John Pasquin directed. PG-13, 115 min. (JR) Read more
Though not entirely satisfying, Manthia Diawara’s 1995 video documentary about innovative French anthropological filmmaker Jean Rouchwhich intermittently attempts to practice a reverse anthropology on Rouch himselfis an invaluable introduction to the great late filmmaker. Diawara, a critic and film professor at New York University who hails from Mali, knew Rouch for years and struggles admirably to balance the filmmaker’s unquestionable achievements (including his role as a precursor of and guru to the French New Wave) with his paternalism toward Africansan attitude that was arguably progressive 20, 30, or 40 years ago, when most of Rouch’s masterpieces were made, but is harder to rationalize today. Diawara fails to resolve the conflict, but he articulates it as honestly as possible. 52 min. (JR) Read more
Two theater people in lower Manhattan (Wallace Shawn and Larry Pine) argue about whether the story of a troubled single woman named Melinda (Radha Mitchell) qualifies as tragedy or comedy, and writer-director Woody Allen cuts between the tragic and comic versions, with different locales, characters, and plot details. But the tragic version isn’t very painful and the comic version, aside from a few one-liners, isn’t very funny. This is mainly a narrative brainteaser like Memento or The Jacket; merely keeping up with the game requires so much energy that the thinness of the material becomes fully apparent only toward the end. With Will Ferrell, Chloe Sevigny, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jonny Lee Miller, Amanda Peet, and Brooke Smith. PG-13, 100 min. (JR) Read more
The title of this brainlessly efficient action thriller should be plural: one family is held hostage by hoods in its deluxe southern California home, while another, belonging to the local police chief (Bruce Willis), is kidnapped to force him to retrieve incriminating evidence from the site of the standoff. (I’m not even counting another hostage in the prologue.) Director Florent Emilio Siri increases the bombast with a particularly pretentious use of slow motion, and Willis, who doubled as executive producer, seems at pains to underline his character’s sanity and sensitivity in contrast to the subhuman demeanor of most of the villains. (The worst wear black masks and headdresses, faintly suggesting Arabs once the action reaches war-movie proportions.) Doug Richardson adapted a novel by Robert Crais; with Kevin Pollak, Jonathan Tucker, Ben Foster, Michelle Horn, and Willis’s daughter Rumer playing the cop’s daughter. R, 113 min. (JR) Read more
Ernst Lubitsch’s only completed film in Technicolor (1943), the greatest of his late films, offers a rosy, meditative, and often very funny view of an irrepressible ladies’ man (Don Ameche in his prime) presenting his life in retrospect to the devil (Laird Cregar). Like a good deal of Lubitsch from The Merry Widow on, it’s about death as well as personal style, but rarely has the subject been treated with such affection for the human condition. Samson Raphaelson’s script is very close to perfection, the sumptuous period sets are a delight, and the secondary castGene Tierney, Charles Coburn, Marjorie Main, Eugene Pallette, and Spring Byingtonis wonderful. In many respects, this is Lubitsch’s testament, full of grace, wisdom, and romance. 112 min. (JR) Read more
Carl Dreyer’s last silent, the greatest of all Joan of Arc films. Lost for half a century, the 1928 original was rediscovered in a Norwegian mental asylum in the 80s (other prints had perished in a warehouse fire, and the two versions subsequently circulated consisted of outtakes). Joan is played by stage actress Renee Falconetti, and though hers is one of the key performances in the history of movies, she never made another film. (Antonin Artaud also appears in a memorable cameo.) Dreyer’s radical approach to constructing space and the slow intensity of his mobile style make this “difficult” in the sense that, like all the greatest films, it reinvents the world from the ground up. It’s also painful in a way that all Dreyer’s tragedies are, but it will continue to live long after most commercial movies have vanished from memory. With subtitled French intertitles. 114 min. The choral group Jubilate, accompanied by a full orchestra, will perform Richard Einhorn’s Voices of Light, a powerful piece written for the film. Tickets are $18 and $22. Fri 3/18, 6:30 and 8:30 PM, Music Institute of Chicago, 1490 Chicago, Evanston, 847-535-9873. Read more
