MOVIE REVIEW
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009)
Lena Herzog/66th Venice Film Festival
“Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” — which director Werner Herzog only made when screenwriter William Finkelstein gave him “a solemn oath” that it wasn’t a remake of Abel Ferrara’s “Bad Lieutenant” — is as much about a particular idea of post-Katrina New Orleans as it is the bad lieutenant of its title. It’s a depiction of a fevered, lawless world of decay, in which morality and the proper modes of human conduct have fallen by the wayside. The forces of good have left for drier ground, and all that’s left are the looters, exploiters and the drugged.
Continue reading “Drawn and French Quartered” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Fourth Kind (2009)
Simon Vesrano/Universal Pictures
The pretension that suffocates "The Fourth Kind" belittles common sense. Writer-director Olatunde Osunsanmi wants his film — equal parts dramatization of a Nome, Alaska-based psychologist's close encounters of the fourth kind (alien abduction), which were supposedly recorded in 2000 and said "archival footage" from the hypnosis sessions — to leave the audience in uncomfortable deliberation: Was what we just saw real? Could that have actually happened? The way Mr. Osunsanmi conducts "The Fourth Kind," though, those questions are repeatedly silenced by his increasingly hokey structure. A stacked deck of sci-fi promise is squandered.
Continue reading “X-Filing Away” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Dear Lemon Lima, (2009)
The Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival
Every hit film spawns a few imitators. For your setting, pick a location not frequently shown in movies. Make your lead character peripherally involved in high-school politics. Give them some friends who want nothing more to help further them in their goal. There’s some amusing attempts at physical activity, and broad comedy at the expense of the actors of color. Work in an emotional dance scene. Oh, and don’t forget the repeated drawings on lined paper, frequent use of sign language and even references to tater tots.
In other words, first-time writer-director Suzi Yoonessi’s “Dear Lemon Lima,” is “Napoleon Dynamite” for girls. Vanessa (Savanah Wiltfong) lives in Alaska with her single mother (Eleanor Hutchins). Her absent father is Yup’ik, which qualifies her for a scholarship to the private school attended by her on/off boyfriend Philip (Shayne Topp, alternating his Tom Cruise and Owen Wilson impressions) where she meets a group of equally misfit kids. One of them, Hercule (Zane Huett of “Desperate Housewives”), is her next door neighbor whom she has somehow never met. When she learns the other cliques call the kids like her “FUBARs,” Vanessa is outraged; when she learns what that means, she is incandescent. The only way to show them is to put together a team to triumph in the annual winter sports competition.
Continue reading “Out of This Ghost World” »
MOVIE REVIEW
45365 (2009)
The Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival
There is something special about small-town America. If you’ve lived in a place your whole life, you can really get under the skin. You know where to go, what to do, and whom to do it with. You know who the characters are and what their stories are; and you can usually figure out what’s the most succinct way of demonstrating the character of the place to a visitor.
Something along the lines must have been in the minds of the Ross brothers — Bill IV and Turner — when they began filming “45365,” the zip code of Sidney, Ohio and the hometown they decided to film for about six months in 2007. They went on ride-alongs with the local cops, followed a local judicial candidate on his campaign trail and sat in with the D.J.s at the radio stations while they took requests. They filmed kids playing baseball; girls arguing with their boyfriends on the phone; men taking their sons to the barbershop; and the ex-wives of a man shaking their heads together over his current situation.
Continue reading “Deep in the Heart of It All” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo (2009)
The Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival
As reality television and documentary filmmaking become more prevalent in everyday society, it is accepted that the act of observation changes the people being observed. The question is therefore how to create an authentic experience while addressing this fact. Some documentary filmmakers such as Nick Broomfield or Michael Moore include themselves onscreen, others provide a voiceover narration once the editing process is complete. But what Bradley Beesley has done is more dangerous and disingenuous than that.
Continue reading “Caged Rodeo Heat” »
MOVIE REVIEW
At the End of Daybreak (2009)
The Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival
Inspired by a tabloid crime story, Malaysian director Ho Yuhang’s “At the End of Daybreak” is a tale of class divides, tragic love and the loss of innocence. It’s a slick, hectic and moody picture that’s tinged with anger and passion that cements Mr. Ho’s already exciting reputation.
Continue reading “The Dead-Leaf Echo of the Nymphet” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Woman Without Piano (2009)
The Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival
FIPRESCI award-winning director Javier Rebollo teams up with Spanish TV stalwart Carmen Machi for an atmospheric character study that touches on feelings of helplessness and discontent and the lengths some people will go to define their existence.
Ms. Machi is Rosa, a middle-aged Madrid housewife who wiles away her time watching daytime television and tending to trite chores; Mr. Rebollo neatly highlights the banality of her routine with shots of a made bed and a plate of food. She has long, tedious conversations with people she doesn’t want to speak to: a salesman on the phone, an unhelpful woman at the post office. It all makes for a fairly miserable and meandering existence, which Mr. Rebollo emphasizes by filling the picture with shots of clocks highlighting the slow passage of time. Yet when night falls, Rosa appears to lead a secret life and donning a wig she disappears into the night.
Continue reading “Wondering in the Night What Were the Chances” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Michael Jackson's This Is It (2009)
Kevin Mazur/AEG/Getty Images
Genuine tribute or cynical money making ploy? That question has surrounded “Michael Jackson’s This Is It,” since the project — a compilation of rehearsal footage and behind the scenes interviews accrued during the run-up to Jackson’s planned 50 dates at London’s O2 Arena — was announced shortly after the King of Pop’s death. By keeping the film shrouded in secrecy, first showing it to most critics last night and at a courtesy screening this morning, Sony Pictures and AEG Live did little to stem the tide of suspicion.
Continue reading “Finding Neverland” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Starsuckers (2009)
The Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival
Chris Atkins may be the most influential documentary maker currently working in Britain. His 2007 BAFTA-nominated film, “Taking Liberties,” examined the gradual erosion of civil liberties and the rise of a surveillance society under New Labour; it’s an informative and terrifying picture. His follow up, “Starsuckers,” is a damning indictment of the power of the media and the cult of celebrity; and it’s perhaps the most relevant and hard-hitting picture of the year.
Continue reading “La Douche Vita” »
MOVIE REVIEW
She, a Chinese (2009)
The Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival
The enigma that is 21st-century China and the effect that rapid modernization has had on its younger generation forms the crux of Xiaolu Guo’s latest film, “She, a Chinese.” Ms. Guo’s inherently sad tale follows the personal journey of Li Mei (an exceptional Huang Lu) from the Chinese countryside to the big city and eventually to London as she vainly searches for an identity and meaning.
Continue reading “Slow Boat From China” »