The first (1918) and by most accounts best of the three Hollywood versions of the Maurice Maeterlinck fantasy play, directed by the great Maurice Tourneur. Generally considered a masterpiece, it tells the story of two poor children taught by a fairy on Christmas Eve how to see the world through the eyes of God. 75 min. (JR) Read more
In this farcical sequel to Bruce Almighty (2003), God is still a janitor played by Morgan Freeman, but the Buffalo newscaster played by Jim Carrey is now a Buffalo newscaster-turned-congressman played by The 40-Year-Old Virgin’s Steve Carell. As soon as the hero arrives with his family in a Virginia suburb to change the world, God orders him to build an ark, and then sends loads of animals in pairs after him until he obeys. Freeman’s God is a mix of Old and New Testament, with a dash of both sexism and sitcom; Carell’s Noah is a political fool, but that only proves he’s honest and sincere. This is idiotic, but it’s so good-natured I didn’t mind. Directed by Tom Shadyac from a script by Steve Oedekerk; with Lauren Graham, John Goodman, John Michael Higgins, and Wanda Sykes. PG, 88 min. (JR) Read more
Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1961 follow-up to L’Avventuraand middle feature in a loose trilogy ending with Eclipserepeats many of the melancholic themes of its predecessor, with particular emphasis on the boredom and atrophied emotions of the rich. The results are somewhat more mixed, though on the whole the performances are betterwhich may not matter so much in an Antonioni context. The minimal plot, restricted to less than 24 hours, involves the death of passion between a successful novelist (Marcello Mastroianni) and his frustrated wife (Jeanne Moreau). The best parts of this movie tend to cluster around the beginning and end, and include the novelist’s brief encounter with a nymphomaniac patient at a hospital and his longer encounter with the daughter (Monica Vitti) of an industrialist at a party; one of the worst is a walk taken by the wife around Milan, full of symbolic and pretentious details. In Italian with subtitles. 122 min. (JR) Read more
A good half century has passed since I’ve read any Nancy Drew mysteries, an endless series that’s been appearing since 1930, and frankly I wasn’t expecting Andrew Fleming’s ‘Scope movie, written with Tiffany Paulsen, to stir up many memories of them. But this is a loving, uncondescending tribute to the novels’ sweetness and hokeyness and an excellent piece of genre filmmaking. Nancy (Emma Roberts) accompanies her geeky dad (Tate Donovan) to Hollywood, where they rent the former mansion of a late movie star who’s died mysteriously and the girl sleuth solves the case. The postmodernist evocations of the past (roughly the 50s through the 80s) are a charming mishmash, delivered with wit and style. With Josh Flitter and Barry Bostwick. PG, 99 min. (JR) Read more
Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard tears up all the available scenery in this overblown, achronological biopic of French pop singer Edith Piaf. Whether sincere or cynical, the movie is a near parody of the Je ne regrette rien/This is Mrs. Norman Maine school of female suffering and camp mortification: the heroine grows up in grandma’s brothel, sings on the streets, gets discovered by an entrepreneur (Gerard Depardieu no less), loses or gets snatched away from loved ones, becomes dependent on drink and drugs. Director-cowriter Olivier Dahan lamentably leapfrogs past most of the German occupation, when Piaf was a courageous member of the resistance. With Sylvie Testud and Emmanuelle Seigner. In French with subtitles. 140 min. (JR) Read more
This savage early talkie (1932), with John Gilbert as a chauffeur seducing and blackmailing the married woman he works for as well as two other servants, was a commercial miscalculation for MGM, but it’s too interesting to dismiss. Derived from a story Gilbert wrote, and directed by the once-prominent Monta Bell (a Chaplin protege who guided Garbo through her first Hollywood feature), it seems inspired partly by Erich von Stroheim (who directed Gilbert in The Merry Widow). But Gilbert’s former profile as a silent matinee idol seems to preclude his playing a man you love to hate, and because a more sympathetic butler character (Paul Lukas) defends traditional class divisions, the morality of this Depression-era melodrama seems both complex and confused. With Virginia Bruce (shortly to become the fourth Mrs. Gilbert). 77 min. (JR) Read more
English documentarian Phil Grabsky (In Search of Mozart, The Boy Who Plays on the Buddhas of Bamiyan) presents a chronology of Ali’s life and career, told mainly through interviews with friends, relatives, and boxing associates. This 2001 film is gripping for its glimpses of Ali’s politics, generosity, charismatic vanity, and fleet, almost Chaplinesque footwork. Curiously, as the story progresses, Grabsky seems less and less engaged with his subject, and the film gradually fades out into apathy. 74 min. (JR) Read more
Narrative incoherence continues to reign supreme in this flashy sequel to the 2004 Russian blockbuster Night Watch, despite an opening summary of the first movie that resembles a trailer. With its Manichaean blather about forces of darkness and light, the series aspires to the dehumanized protofascism of George Lucas or Zhang Yimou, but this time around some of the extravagant action and fantasy conceits seem closer to farce than metaphysics (a car racing up the side of a Moscow skyscraper and then barreling through a window into a hallway, a stretch of gender-bending in which a man assumes a woman’s body). I wasn’t exactly engaged, but this time boredom never took over. Sergei Lukyanenko adapted his best-selling fantasy novel in collaboration with Kazakh director Timur Bekmambetov. In Russian with subtitles. R, 139 min. (JR) Read more
This remarkable 2004 film by English documentarian Phil Grabsky (In Search of Mozart) chronicles a year in the life of an impoverished Afghan family whose home, a cave in the side of a mountain, is surrounded by the ruins of the two giant Buddha sculptures demolished by the Taliban. Without minimizing the harshness of their existence or idealizing their capacity to cope with it, Grabsky challenges us to concentrate on the story’s more inspiring aspects, such as the natural beauty of the setting and the cheerful resilience of his eight-year-old protagonist. I suspect James Agee, who celebrated Depression sharecroppers in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, would have loved this film. If I have one complaint it’s about the off-putting atmospheric score, by Dimitri Tchamouroff, which manages to sound both indigenous and Hollywoodish at the same time. In Dari with subtitles. 95 min. a Sun 6/17, 3 PM, Tue 6/19, 6 PM, and Thu 6/21, 7:45 PM, Gene Siskel Film Center. Read more
Not quite top-grade John Waters (1994), but with Kathleen Turner offering the first top-grade star turn in a Waters picture since the death of Divine there’s little cause for complaintjust a bit of awkwardness around the edges of this satire about the American worship and domestication of serial killers, plus several other Waters hobbyhorses. Turner plays a happy, wholesome mom in suburban Baltimore who happens to bump off everyone she gets irritated withand given that this is a Waters picture, that’s a lot of folks. Sam Waterston is her husband and Ricki Lake and Matthew Lillard play their kids, while the many walk-ons include Mink Stole, Patricia Hearst, Traci Lords, and Suzanne Somers. There’s a lot of ribbing of both police procedurals and Hitchcock productions, and, though it isn’t fashionable to say so, the movie’s comedy is also assisted by its libertarian-humanist politics (for gory movies and against capital punishment). The results are nothing momentous, but still loads of fun. R, 93 min. (JR) Read more
Alain Resnais’ 2006 adaptation of a British play by Alan Ayckbourn is a world apart from his earlier Ayckbourn adaptation, Smoking/No Smoking (1993). That film tried to be as “English” as possible, but this time Resnais looks for precise French equivalents to British qualities, and what emerges is one of his most personal works, intermittently recalling the melancholy Muriel (1963) and Providence (1977). A bittersweet comedy of loneliness, shyness, and repression, it was shot entirely on cozy sets, with a continual snowfall outside, and its interwoven plots feature Resnais standbys Sabine Azema, Pierre Arditi, Andre Dussollier, and Lambert Wilson. At 85, the director is not only a consummate master but arguably the last great embodiment of the craft, style, and feeling of classical Hollywood. In French with subtitles. 120 min. Reviewed this week in Section 1. a Music Box. Read more
Screening as the opening-night program of the 19th annual Onion City festival, these eight shorts might seem to be all over the place–Manoel de Oliveira’s The Improbable Is Not Impossible (2006), an eclectic tribute to Portugal’s Gulbenkian Foundation, isn’t even experimental. But many of them share the same alienated fascination with history: Jean-Luc Godard’s archival, corpse-laden Origin of the 21st Century (2000), Guy Ben-Ner’s Moby Dick (2000), which comically restages Melville’s novel in the filmmaker’s kitchen, and Bill Morrison’s Outerborough (2005) and Ken Jacobs’s The Surging Sea of Humanity (2006), which both use footage from the 1890s, all seem to poeticize the weight of the past. Also showing are Kyle Canterbury’s Man (2006), a world premiere; Olivo Barbieri’s Sevilla –(_) 06 (2006), with abstract aerial views of Spain; and Michael Robinson’s The General Returns From One Place to Another (2006), derived from a Frank O’Hara play. 94 min. The festival continues June 15 through 17 at Chicago Filmmakers; for a schedule visit www.chicagofilmmakers.org. a Thu 6/14, 8 PM, Gene Siskel Film Center. Read more
A small-time crook (Jamel Debbouze of Days of Glory), about to be rubbed out in Paris for an unpaid debt, decides to jump into the Seine, but when a leggy blond (Rie Rasmussen of Femme Fatale) jumps first, he promptly saves her. She turns out to be the title angel and accompanies him around the city, showing him how to clean up his act. Given my antipathy toward Luc Besson’s glib and nihilistic early features, I didn’t expect to like this 2005 mix of romantic fantasy and screwball comedy. But his attractive black-and-white ‘Scope compositions, strong Paris locations, and effective handling of the actors makes this captivating throughout, and wholly undeserving of the drubbing it’s received from many critics. In French with subtitles. R, 91 min. (JR) Read more
The title hero (Kevin Costner), a successful and beloved executive, husband, and father, is secretly addicted to committing gratuitous murders and voices his inner doubts to an alter ego (William Hurt) while being tracked by a similarly compulsive millionaire cop (Demi Moore). When he forgets to close the blinds before killing a couple, a voyeur (Dane Cook) spots him and blackmails him, demanding to be brought along on the next caper. This is one of those slick, violent, ridiculous Hollywood jobs that make little sense as a story, a comment on life, or a depiction of characters, but are moderately enjoyable in their spinning of movie conventions. There’s even a good De Palma-style fake shock ending. Bruce A. Evans directed a script he wrote with Raynold Gideon. R, 120 min. (JR) Read more
Hilary Brougher follows up her highly original debut feature The Sticky Fingers of Time (1997) with this grim, intensely realized psychological thriller (2006) about an alienated 16-year-old (Amber Tamblyn) in denial about both her secret pregnancy and having murdered the baby after delivering it alone in a public restroom. That’s a pretty loaded premise, but the pregnant forensic psychologist (Tilda Swinton) hired to question the teenager has issues as well, her first pregnancy having ended with a stillbirth. Apart from Swinton’s fine performance, what largely distinguishes this is Brougher’s sharp narrative focus. With Timothy Hutton, Denis O’Hare, and Melissa Leo. R, 92 min. (JR) Read more