A press release boasts that this 130-minute feature by writer-director Don Roos (The Opposite of Sex) tells no fewer than ten overlapping stories, but I couldn’t work up the energy to count them. The sensibility is Southern California Witless, and the jokey intertitles that periodically take up half the ‘Scope frames (This is a comedy. Sort of.) are even more smarmy than the characters. The latter include an aspiring filmmaker who blackmails a woman who once had an illegitimate child into helping him make a documentary, a rock singer who has successive affairs with a gay drummer and the drummer’s wealthy father, and similar fun types. With Lisa Kudrow, Steve Coogan, Jesse Bradford, Bobby Cannavale, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jason Ritter, Tom Arnold, and Laura Dern. R. (JR) Read more
Fingers, James Toback’s 1978 debut feature about a second-generation gangster who plays classical piano, was described by Dave Kehr as “dauntingly personal filmmaking, full of strange, suggestive ideas and deep feelings that are never made comprehensible for the audience.” Despite the enthusiasm of everyone from Pauline Kael to Edgardo Cozarinsky and Francois Truffaut, I never liked Toback’s piece of macho braggadocio, so this remake by Jacques Audiard (Read My Lips) couldn’t go anywhere but up. It’s more than a simple improvement, inverting some of the original’s qualities so that the impersonal, well-crafted filmmaking remains lucid throughout. Even more unexpectedly, the piano lessons taken by the hero (Romain Duris, very fine) from a Vietnamese woman (Linh-dan Pham) who speaks no French are more highly charged than any of the violence. Niels Arestrup is striking as the hero’s slumlord father. In French with subtitles. 107 min. Century 12 and CineArts 6, Landmark’s Century Centre. Read more
According to Scott Yanow’s book Jazz on Film, John Alomfrah’s British documentary The Wonderful World of Louis Armstrong (2001, 65 min.) is marred by the interviewees — among them George Melly, Wynton Marsalis, Dave Brubeck, Max Roach, Gary Giddins, and Lil Hardin Armstrong — talking over the music. By contrast, both the talk and the music in Edward O. Bland’s eccentric Chicago-made short Cry of Jazz (1959, 31 min.) are absolutely essential. The paradox is that Bland’s film centers on jazz and needs various kinds of performance to illustrate its points, yet what’s being played is only adequate; if the music were good enough to distract one from the talk, the film wouldn’t work as well. Lucid and provocative, this is recommended viewing for any jazz novice, one of the best social readings of jazz form I know. (JR) Read more
Trained as a musician, English writer-director Sally Potter (The Tango Lesson) still thinks like one. All the dialogue in her timely masterpiece–a passionate post-9/11 love story about an unhappily married Irish-American scientist (Joan Allen) and a younger Lebanese chef (Simon Abkarian) set in London, Belfast, Beirut, and Havana–is written in rhyming iambic pentameter. Beautifully composed and deftly delivered, it becomes the libretto to Potter’s visual music, creating a remarkable lyricism and emotional directness. This is a story about class and age as well as cultural difference, so it matters that the scientist’s dying aunt is a communist and that her sympathetically portrayed estranged husband (Sam Neill) is an English politician. It matters even more that the action is framed by the married couple’s maid (Shirley Henderson), who addresses the camera as she discusses dirt and what we think about it. R, 100 min. Reviewed this week in Section 1. Landmark’s Century Centre. Read more
With the help of director Chris Terrio, Amy Fox adapts her own play about crisscrossing sex lives in Manhattan, mainly within a theater-and-art milieu. This is brisk and fun to watch, thanks to the actors (including Glenn Close, Elizabeth Banks, James Marsden, Jesse Bradford, Isabella Rossellini, and George Segal in a swell bit as an avuncular rabbi). But once you catch the main drift of the plot, it becomes awfully ho-hum. R, 93 min. (JR) Read more
I had a pleasant time with this comedy about light witchery and even lighter bitchery. If you like Nicole Kidman, you might enjoy her here (she reminded me of Tuesday Weld), and even if you usually find Will Ferrell obnoxious, you might appreciate him hyping rather than trying to minimize his boorishness. Shirley MacLaine and Michael Caine are a bit less at ease, but the special effects, for once, are witty rather than overblown, and director Nora Ephron, writing with her sister Delia, handles the material with grace and confidence. PG-13, 100 min. (JR) Read more
Head transplants, etc. Victor Trivas directed this dubbed 1959 German horror item, originally known as Die Nackte und der Satan. With Horst Frank, Karin Kernkew, andwhat’s he doing here?the great Swiss actor Michel Simon. 97 min. (JR) Read more
Also known as Samaria, this 2004 feature by Korean cult director Kim Ki-duk comes across like a grotesque parody, but there are signs that Kim means us to take it seriously. Two teenage girls (Seo Min-jeong and Kwak Ji-min), who enjoy soaping each another in a photogenic bathhouse, take up prostitution to earn air tickets to Europe. Kwak, who pimps for her friend, is distressed when the girl seems to enjoy her work; after Seo dies in a tragic accident, Kwak begins having sex with all their former clients in order to capture her friend’s bliss, meanwhile paying back all the money. Needless to say, there’s also violence and redemption galore. In Korean with subtitles. R, 95 min. (JR) Read more
Keren Yedaya’s powerful and memorable Israeli drama (2004) won a well-deserved prize for best first feature at the Cannes film festival. Written with Sari Ezouz, it focuses on an aging Tel Aviv hooker (Ronit Elkabetz) who’s halfheartedly trying to go straight and her resourceful teenage daughter (Dana Ivgi), who supports them both as a dishwasher while struggling with her own sexuality. They live in a world ravaged by war and occupation, one that Yedaya views with an angry lucidity. The story may suffer from a touch of determinism, but the camera’s stubborn immobility in most scenes forces us to arrive at our own conclusions, and the performances are electric. Also known as Mon tresor. In Hebrew with subtitles. 100 min. Reviewed this week in Section 1. Gene Siskel Film Center. 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. Reviewed this week in Section 1. Century 12 and CineArts 6, Landmark’s Century Centre. Read more
After a 20-year hiatus, George A. Romero resumes his quasi-satiric horror series about the flesh-eating living dead. Land of the Dead, his fourth entry, turns out to be his most conventional as an action thrillerthough it’s every bit as gory as the others and more clearly class conscious. By now the subproletarian zombies have taken over everything except a gated city run by scheming villain Dennis Hopper (surprisingly cliched here); spurred on by a leader of sorts (Eugene Clark), a former filling-station attendant, they’re beginning to think a little as they attack. This being contemporary, the reprisals are military. With Simon Baker, John Leguizamo, Asia Argento, and Robert Joy. R, 93 min. (JR) Read more
For those who haven’t yet awoken to the possibility that our government and economy might be controlled by crooks, this political thriller about the oil industry, set in the near future, may provide a bracing wake-up call. But nobody will be surprised by its CEO, executive, and Russian Mafia types, its idealistic heroine (Selma Blair), its semi-idealistic hero (Christian Slater), or the mechanical crosscutting that eventually overtakes all the other cliches. If you don’t mind the telegraphed punches of Ruth Epstein’s script and Harvey Kahn’s direction, this should carry you along. With Robert Loggia, Colm Feore, John Heard, Angie Harmon, and Kevin Tighe. R, 107 min. (JR) Read more
A young Chinese-American surgeon (Michelle Krusiec) is dismayed when her widowed and mysteriously pregnant mother (Joan Chen) moves in with her. Meanwhile the doctor falls in love with a ballet dancer (Lynn Chen), scandalizing their conservative Chinese community. At first this comedy drama by Alice Wu promises to move beyond the complacency of Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet, which dealt with some of the same Asian-American concerns, but instead it abjectly collapses into feel-good nonsense. In English and subtitled Mandarin. R, 91 min. (JR) Read more
Most mediocre slasher films choose one or two obvious modelsPsycho or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or I Spit on Your Grave or Dressed to Kill or Re-Animatorbut this exceptionally gory French item (2003) gropes for all of them and winds up incoherent. The distributor, showing a similar desire to cover all bases, has dubbed some of the dialogue and subtitled the rest. If old-fashioned jolts are what you’re after, this nasty piece of merchandise delivers. But so does electroshock. Alexandre Aja directed; with Cecile de France, Maiwenn Le Besco, and Philippe Nahon. Also known as Switchblade Romance. R, 91 min. (JR) Read more
Making a movie out of the 50s sitcom and substituting black characters half a century later sounds like a dubious proposition on multiple levels. But thanks to some affectionate fidelity to the original characters, plus a spirited castCedric the Entertainer and Gabrielle Union as Ralph and Alice Kramden, Mike Epps as Ed Nortonthis plays a bit better than it sounds. I miss the show’s mangy, minimalist sets, but the slapdash narrative construction and good-hearted schmaltz survive intact. With Regina Hall and extra mugging from John Leguizamo and Jon Polito. PG-13, 90 min. (JR) Read more
