Still swamped. Here’s this week’s minireviews:
Stalking Santa, California Theater, Berkeley, Monday, 7:00; Roxie, Tuesday, 7:00. With so many millions believing in him, mustn’t there be some truth to the legend? What about that papyrus from ancient Egypt? Or that curious, suppressed footage from the North Pole expedition? And why is the government hiding those dead elves and burnt venison from the Roswell “UFO” crash site? William Shatner is the perfect narrator for Greg Kiefer’s always amusing, occasionally hilarious send-up of paranormal “documentaries.” Part of indiefest.
Ballad of Greenwich Village, Victoria Theater, Friday, 4:30 and Saturday, 9:30. Karen Kramer’s documentary is a pleasant enough way to spend 70 minutes. You get to see old footage from the sixties and seventies, listen to Woody Allen talk about hanging out with Bill Cosby, hear some jazz, and discover the Village’s origins in an early 19th-century protest against city planning. You also learn how modern economics are driving out the poor artists that made the Village so special. But the Ballad feels more like a TV special than a real movie–something you’d watch on PBS if you had nothing better to do. Part of indiefest.
Green Mind, Metal Bats, Roxie, Saturday, 7:00 and Monday, 9:30; California (Berkeley), Thursday, 7:00. You don’t exactly warm up to the characters in this Japanese baseball drama. It’s hard to get excited about a guy with no personality falling into a mutually abusive relationship with a woman for whom no personality would be an improvement. When these two turn to crime to support her drinking habit, we meet the third principle character–a cynical cop so apathetic and misanthropic it’s a wonder he’s kept his job. We never actually get to like these three, but as we discover more about what shaped their lives (at least with the guys; the woman remains a cipher throughout), Green Mind, Metal Bats acquires a strange and not-entirely pointless fascination. Part of indiefest.
LOL, Victoria Theater, Saturday, 4:30. I hate panning a movie made on the extreme cheap by young, eager filmmakers, especially when they try an unusual approach to explore an interesting subject–in this case, how Internet addiction affects young men’s love lives. But there’s a good reason why this approach–non-actors improvising without a plot outline (let alone a script)–has remained unusual. The result is a really bad movie. This is one case where a movie’s low budget isn’t rendered irrelevant by talent; the camerawork and sound are as amateurish as the acting and (lack of) writing. Part of indiefest.
The Lady Vanishes, Pacific Film Archive, Wednesday, 3:00. The best (and almost the last) film Alfred Hitchcock made in England before jumping the pond. This is Hitchcock light–starting out as a gentle comedy and slowly building suspense, but never taking itself seriously. Part of the Film 50: History of Cinema class.
The Music Man, Rafael, Wednesday, 7:00. One of my childhood favorites doesn’t quite look like a masterpiece anymore. But it’s still big, dazzling, funny, and filled with catchy tunes. Robert Preston carries the picture as Professor Harold Hill, the conman who pretends to be a music teacher, and deep down wants to be one. The cast is rounded out with Shirley Jones, Buddy Hackett, Paul Ford, and the Buffalo Bills (this may be the only major Hollywood movie with a featured barbershop quartet). Shot in Technirama–a process that used twice as much film for each frame than standard 35mm–The Music Man really should be experienced on a large, wide screen. A Love of Literacy fundraiser.
Safety Last, Pacific Film Archive, Saturday, 3:00. Harold Lloyd’s iconic image, hanging from a large clock high over a city street, comes from this boy-makes-good-by-risking-his-neck fairytale. Lloyd made better pictures, but even mediocre Lloyd is funnier than most comics. And when he starts climbing that building, the laughs–and thrills–don’t stop. Part of the
Shanghai Express, Stanford, Saturday and Sunday. Josef von Sternberg wasn’t a great storyteller, but he could really photograph women. And no one could beat him at turning a Hollywood soundstage into an exotic location. He does both superbly in this otherwise silly melodrama set on a train crossing war-torn China. In addition to his usual muse, Marlene Dietrich, Sternberg also turns Anna May Wong into an object of the camera’s affection. On a double bill with Love Me Tonight.
Annie Hall, Red Vic, Tuesday and Wednesday. Almost every Hollywood film deals on some level with romantic love, but very few accurately capture the complex, dizzying ups and downs of that common experience. And no other captures it as well, or as hilariously, as Annie Hall.
La Strada, Castro, Thursday. Giulietta Masina brilliantly plays a simple, innocent girl sold by her parents to a coarse, crude, and violent traveling strongman (Anthony Quinn in another strong performance). But for all the great acting, Fellini’s 1954 heartbreaker comes off as shallow. Even worse, it manages to romanticize child abuse. (Or is it spouse abuse? The movie is never too sure about that.) On a double bill with Jules and Jim as part of the Janus Films series.
Crossfire, Stanford, Friday, 7:30. This low-budget film noir, one of the first Hollywood films to address American anti-Semitism, was actually based on a novel that dealt with a more controversial taboo: homophobia. The thematic change isn’t seamless–we don’t associate Judaism with one man taking another to his apartment after meeting him in a bar. No masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, but of considerable historical interest, not only for the bigotries it examines and avoids examining, but also because of the role it played in the Hollywood Ten hearings. This double bill with Cat People opened Wednesday, but I didn’t see the announcement in time for last week’s newsletter.
The Last King of Scotland, Presidio, opens Friday. The “King” in the title refers to Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, played by Forest Whitaker in a performance that may finally win him that Oscar he’s so long deserved. Whitaker shows us all the sides of a paranoid megalomaniac, at one moment winning us over with his easy-going charisma and the next leaving us shaking in fear. We get to know him through the eyes of a young Scottish doctor (James McAvoy) who accidentally falls into Amin’s inner circle and gets seduced by the good life. The film doesn’t give you much reason to like McAvoy’s character–even when doing the altruistic work that brought him to Africa he seems shallow and self-centered–but you care if he lives or dies. And that becomes a real issue as this political character study gradually turns into an thriller. My big complaint: The ending is a moral cop-out.
Children of Men, Parkway, opens Friday. Set in a dystopian, near-future Britain living under a Fascism that looks all too familiar, Alfonso Cuarón’s labor of love feels a bit like V for Vendetta. But it’s better. It’s 2027, with the human race slowly dying out due to mysterious, world-wide infertility, and the British government rounding up illegal aliens the way the Nazi’s rounded up Jews. When one of these aliens turns up pregnant (the last successful birth was more than 18 years ago), an apolitical former radical (Clive Owen) is forced to think beyond himself. One of the rare thrillers that actually keeps you guessing what will happen next.
Little Children, 4Star, opening Friday. Good films don’t have to tell you what a character is thinking or feeling; you sense it from the dialog and the performances. But Todd Field and Tom Perrotta didn’t trust their characters or their actors (which is too bad because the cast couldn’t have been better) and filled Little Children with detailed and annoying narration. Every time the story and performances build dramatic tension, Will Lyman’s omnipotent voice destroys it by telling you what everyone is thinking and to why they’re doing what they’re doing. Things improve after the halfway mark–there’s less narration, giving you a chance to truly appreciate the good performances–but there’s still the overabundance of subplots and some unbelievably idiotic character behavior.
Blood Diamond, Lark and Elmwood, opens Friday. Good intentions aren’t enough. Writer Charles Leavitt and director Edward Zwick try to deliver an exciting thriller and teach us something important about the diamond industry’s horrible toll on African lives. But Blood Diamond is too predictable, too ineptly written, and too preachy to work as a thriller, and a bad thriller doesn’t make for good education (unless, of course, the lesson is How Not to Make a Thriller). I did learn one important lesson from Blood Diamond: Jennifer Connelly is capable of giving a bad performance–all she needs is lame dialog and an unbelievable character.
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