Towelhead

2007 US Alan Ball
✰

Alan Ball plays with a Lebanese Lolita rather than Mena Suvari in this re-hash of American Beauty, which was garbage to begin with. You get: depravity lurking beneath suburbia, over-cooked dinner scenes, a redneck neighbour with a sexual underbelly, thick second helpings of "symbolism" topped with pretentious dialogue—even the freakin' music is the twinkling same. The story is about the sexual awakening (popular cinema topic, no?) of an Arab-American 13-year old, in case you're wondering. But, really: add in that Ball can't direct (dullness), and the film ends up staring at you like a well-dressed deaf-mute for two hours. It's disconcerting, but not because it deals with sexual abuse; rather, because you're asked to take it seriously. I snickered back in '99, now you're just annoying me, Ball. Actors do a decent job, considering. With two games played, the Suburbs lead Alan 2-0.

The Last Confession of Alexander Pearce

2008 AU Michael James Rowland
✰✰✰

Alexander Pearce was an 19th-century Irishman sentenced to Sarah Island penal colony in Australia. Twice he escaped—once with seven men, once with a single partner—and twice he came out alive, alone, having eaten human flesh to survive. For his crimes, he was sentenced to hang, and did so. Prior, he gave his confession to a priest, Philip Connely, and shocked the "civilized" British world. This 60-minute docudrama (that most-maligned of genres, though excellent if done right) makes visual these confessions in a haunting yet rugged way. It is an old-style adventure / survival story with a horrific twist and an eye to the effects of human mistreatment, beatings. Question: who is the monster? Film is sympathetic to Pearce, as was (?) his confessor. It is humane—history with a conscience. The picture looks excellent. Digital cameras, locations, period detail, and beautiful nature cinematography create a sense of immediacy and involvement. Stirring stuff, indeed.

Summer

2008 GB Kenneth Glenaan
✰✰ 1/2

Story of two life-long friends, friendship cemented by an accident that left one crippled. Told in the kind of split-time, parallel narratives writers can't help indulging in. As both past and present unfold over Summers, climaxes converge. But, surprise: film doesn't play "the accident" as an emotional trump card, there's no [sick] thrill from "finally" seeing the character shattered. It doesn't happen after a 10-minute police chase, on a cliff, with musical strings swelling. I like that. The style is also quite nice throughout. A bit too polished, maybe; but certainly adventurous enough you're glad some other filmmaker didn't make it. Time gets stuck in a few places, the past invades the present, signaling its permanence. Robert Carlyle tries too hard in the main role. Bottom line: for a film dealing with disabilities, death, tragedy—there are many, and most are manipulative trash—I felt real emotions.

Goodfellas

1990 US Martin Scorsese
✰✰✰✰

Goodfellas get born, get made, get dead. So: who doesn't remember the opening lines, Joe Pesci, bug-eyed, brain-fried Ray Liotta watching helly-copters, that sub-urban ending? This is pop culture. And it's good, too. On this viewing, I remember: the wedding scene, the feeling that you can keep your money bags under the table and no one's gonna swipe 'em. That's the dream, the national dream, the personal dream. It's also the mob tragedy: nations have myths; Henry Hill had the real thing, real security, and lost it. Of course, he had to lose it (illusory). From perfect trust to Florida whack jobs. Power breeds paranoia. I've also decided Karen Hill's narration is a welcome voice—though Karen Hill (character, acting) has fits of unwelcome hysteria. What else? Goodfellas is a technical marvel, a good story, entertaining. It's the Scorsese second only to Mean Streets, overcoming with style and blood-laughs interplay what it loses in depth.

Humboldt County

2008 US Danny Jacobs
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Awful "indie" about a lost (played: comatose) medical student who follows a girl (where did you go, Fairuza?) to a Northern California pot farm, where he learns to live again. Excusing the green photography and setting, this film tastes like bong water. Main character's transformation is unbelievable—unless he just needed oxygen, crises happen on clockwork cue, and [excess] characters pass around life speeches like so-many empty reefers. The climax involves a shotgun, a helicopter, running around, and the DEA. Peter Bogdanovich, who is undoubtedly now searching for acting jobs in porn, looks appropriately bewildered throughout.

Babysitter Wanted

2008 US Jonas Barnes
✰✰

Disarmingly-entertaining flick about a devout Christian girl who goes to college (Art History) and takes a babysitting job at a farmhouse out in the sticks to earn money. Her seemingly-normal employer family isn't so normal, however; comic-relief sprinkled horror follows! Good production values make good-looking picture, suspenseful, acting is what it should be (Bruce Campbell twin Bruce Thomas looks like he had an especially good time). But: long beginning is stronger than ending, which gets cheesy in a bad way. Soundtrack is emotionally-abusive at times, too. Gore is restricted to a handful of scenes, played over-the-top. Surprisingly, no nudity.

Blood of the Condor

1969 BO Jorge Sanjinés
✰✰✰ 1/2

In the Bolivian mountains, a man, his wife. Their children: dead. Life according to tradition. One day, police arrest the man, shoot him in cold blood—injured, alive. His wife takes him down, into the city, to his brother. City? Machines, velocity, "modernity", racism—godlessness. The doctor in the city hospital says (in Spanish), "You need blood, you need money to buy blood." They don't have money; will they find it, earn it? Interesting structure, parallel flashback: Peace Corps arrives in the mountain village, bringing clothes, medicine. It's a front. In reality: a forced, covert sterilization program. The man finds out, swarms and attacks the modern-looking building with fellow villagers. They catch the Westerners (in English) listening to psychedelia. Freak-out ensues, frightened Westerner in close-up: "They seem to know everything!" In the present, the man dies, no money for blood. His brother and wife return to the village. Last shot: villagers raising their rifles in protest—freeze frame. Film rendered in striking compositions, jagged editing, little money. Political, impressive. Original title: Yawar mallku.

Il Mare

2000 KR Hyun-seung Lee
✰✰✰ 1/2

Beautiful, soft sci-fi romance about two lonely people finding solace and each other through the magical power of an irrational red mailbox—which delivers letters through time. The beginning: we skim the surface of water, gliding toward a pretty house along the seashore. Fog drifts, up from the surface. Mood set; will remain. Both main characters live here, though years apart. The mailbox is their connection. One puts a letter in, the other takes it out. Will they overcome this time displacement? Surely, and with what fantasy! The style is architectural, which complements the story, itself a dream house. Camera movements are sweeping, precise. Few films move as elegantly. Watch it when you're a dreamer, in the mood for love. Original title: Siworae.

Achilles and the Tortoise

2008 JP Takeshi Kitano
✰✰

What begins as a coming-of-age satire of the art world passes through an un-engaging romantic phase and ends as an absurd story about a ruined artist—macabre undercurrent flowing throughout. The pivotal event: our artist, poor but passionate, paints a beautiful seascape; he takes it to a gallery filled with ugly, inferior works; it's rejected: too conventional. Everything he makes afterwards is an imitation of the poor and inferior, of which the film becomes a (conscious?) mirror: parade of copied styles adding up to something long and incomplete. There is still entertainment to be found in a twisty sense of humour, but what else? No beauty, no emotion, limp irony. The artist, whom we see in three stages of his life, remains a mystery, empty. Takeshi has finished this canvas. Now he should move on. Original title: Akiresu to kame.

Still Walking

2008 JP Hirokazu Koreeda
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Modest, unassuming film about the joy and sadness of families and their passing. The mode? A gathering in a quiet, seaside town: parents, children, spouses, grandchildren. Interactions tease out complex relationships and the persistence of the past—of past histories. There is pain, the death of a young son / brother commemorated each year, but also happiness, love, and the beautiful inevitability of child becoming parent. Characters are vibrant, well-written: faulty creatures with goodness at heart. The old order is different from the new, but only superficially. Differences are often mere theatre. Therein lies the tragedy: disconnection is a choice, a punishment against the self. We are Still Waiting because we choose not to ask, answer, engage. And then they're gone, our families—and we realize our selfishness. Style: camera is unobtrusive, floating; edits are invisible. Original title: Aruitemo aruitemo.

Murderers Are Among Us

1946 DE Wolfgang Staudte
✰✰✰ 1/2

Impressive post-war German mixture of expressionism and neo-realism, combining to form a stylish "rubble film". Shot partly in the streets, immediacy bestows power: this is what Germany ca. '46 looked like. Story is serviceable, constructed of episodes—some better, some worse—about attempts at living, re-starting life after the end of the war, among the ruins and the murderers. Guilt is the constant spectre, passing through everyone, everything. The acting(!): hypnotic and dazzling Hildegard Knef, who herself fled Soviet soldiers and spent time in a prison camp, will haunt you; the power of her intense, penetrating, emotional gaze is indescribable. Along with the outdoor cinematography, the images of her face are the film's highlights. Recommended reading: the production history is worth looking into. Original title: Die Mörder sind unter uns.

Cunnamulla

2000 AU Dennis O'Rourke
✰✰

Troubling Aussie documentary about an "end of the world" outback town filled with junkies, whores, deadbeats, and other forgotten people that the filmmaker exploits into a cinematic freak show. Humanity crops up, but credit the humans, not the camera. Film isn't well-made, dirty form matching what it believes are dirty subjects—silently priding itself on being rough, not "romanticizing". Talking heads are mixed with other shots (a dogcatcher at work, a DJ with ambitions) and narrative gained because the filmmaker spent a year. But, wait: there's value crammed between the cuts and fades, as this place is real. A portrait of a town living contentedly without hope, filled with residents who don't seem to mind.