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24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE

It’s either a condemnation or a vindication that Steve Coogan’s extraneous asides are the best part of 24 Hour Party People. As Tony Wilson, the Factory Records impresario who helped make Manchester the place to be more than once, Coogan, a well-known British comedian known for playing self-obsessed entertainers, frequently turns to the camera and apologizes for his behavior, for the film’s incomplete historical record, for the filmmaker’s heavy-handed symbolism. (After an opening in which he crashes a hang-glider, Wilson deadpans, “Icarus -- that’s all I’m saying.”) These mea culpas show off Coogan’s considerable charm as well as relieving the film of the burden of authoritativeness -- a scene picturing Buzzcocks singer Howard Devoto having it off with Wilson’s wife climaxes with the real Devoto, playing a janitor, turning to the camera and saying “That never happened” -- but it also undercuts any sense of you-are-there excitement. Director Michael Winterbottom’s cast includes some uncanny simulations, but the film ultimately out-clevers itself, more satisfying in parts than as a whole. Confessing that the movie has warped his own story as well as everyone else’s, Coogan turns to the lens and cavils, “But it’s not about me, it’s about the music.” If only. --Sam Adams

See Sam Adams’ interview with Steve Coogan and Tony Wilson. (Ritz Five; Ritz 16)

THE ADVENTURES OF PLUTO NASH

(Not reviewed.) A haiku:

Hollywood: Enough!

Pam Grier playing Eddie’s mom?

That’s space-ageism.

(AMC Andorra; AMC Orleans; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham)

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BLUE CRUSH

It’s hard to remember if surfing is the most visually beautiful of all sports, or if, after watching Blue Crush, it just feels like it. On one level, John Stockwell’s girls-on-boards yarn is standard-issue sports movie stuff, with its damaged central character building towards a chance at redemption which just happens to coincide with a major competition. But it reminds you what’s so potent about sports movies; they dramatize, perhaps better than any other genre, the idea that life comes down to moments, moments in which you either take your shot or wish you had. In the surfing scenes, David Hennings’ camera seems to be everywhere -- on the board, in the water, swooshing past the characters, diving beneath and rising up to meet them. It’s like what Raging Bull did for boxing. The feats performed are outlandish enough to prompt one couple leaving the theater to scoff “computer-generated,” but the press kit boasts not “a single blue screen or tank shot,” and the sheer rush of adrenaline makes you believe it. The film’s trio of surfer girls -- Kate Bosworth, Michelle Rodriguez and Sanoe Lake -- are sure-footed on their boards, and though Bosworth is the nominal star, the movie doesn’t favor her unduly, and the offhand camaraderie among them feels as lived-in as their threadbare surroundings. Stockwell knows how to take the edge off his mandated plot points by throwing away on-the-nose lines (though the ending still crosses one too many Ts), and how to mix in non-professional actors (as he did in crazy/beautiful) without shattering the mood. Climaxing with a lengthy competition sequence which plunges you into the roaring waves again and again, Blue Crush sucks you in, and you emerge gasping for breath, but eager to head back out. --S.A. (AMC Andorra; AMC Orleans; UA Main St.; UA 69th St.)

MOSTLY MARTHA

Martha (Martina Gedeck) lives a precise life. The much-acclaimed chef at a fine Hamburg restaurant, she makes perfect food, maintains a strict routine, and sees a shrink because her boss (Sibylle Canonica) thinks she’s neurotic. (True, she hides in the freezer at work for “time out,” but she is admirably efficient, proud of her control of all “logistics.”) All this changes when her niece Lina (Maxime Foerste) comes to live with her. Suddenly, Martha’s routine is undone: she’s sleeping on the couch (giving Lina her room), cooking an 8-year-old who refuses to eat, and repeatedly late getting her to school. Almost worse: there’s a new chef hired to helped out in her kitchen, an Italian (Sergio Castellitto) who plays “Volare” and dances while working. While the rest of the plot is wholly unsurprising, Gedeck’s convincingly taut performance (food is full of “issues” for her, not just a means to externalize her inner glow and nourish others) and director Sandra Nettelbeck’s preference for crisp, careful compositions help the film avoid both the mushiness of a “food” movie like Chocolat and the sensual-saturation of a Babette’s Feast. --Cindy Fuchs

POSSESSION

Based on A.S. Byatt’s 1990 novel, Neil LaBute’s new film interlaces two romances, one more interesting than the other. A pair of literary scholars (Aaron Eckhart and Gwyneth Paltrow, who plays Brit again) tracks the secret relationship of a pair of Victorian poets (Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle, both playing 19th-century again). The trick is that the relationships run perversely parallel. The 19th century writers (both already attached, he to a chilly wife and she to a passionate artist girlfriend) resist their attraction until they can stand it no longer; as they conduct their research -- some library work, but mostly lovely journeys to rendezvous points they discover in love letters -- the scholars (she’s involved with a snotty fellow scholar, he’s devoted to being a misogynist bachelor) do the same. While the plot surely concerns desire and fervor, the tone remains detached; LaBute calls it “emotional archeology.” Being a LaBute film, its not-so-very subtext is less love than power. And here, the gender roles seem all too fated: men believe they wield it, and are mystified to learn that women do. --C.F. (Bala; Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz 16)

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