October 14-20, 2004

movie shorts

New Movie Shorts

AROUND THE BEND

Christopher Walken’s hair dominates the proceedings in first-timer Jordan Roberts’ meditation on the difficult and apparently irresistible "tribal" relations of men. When Walken arrives on the doorstep of long-abandoned son Josh Lucas, he’s actually responding to a letter from his own father (Michael Caine). Caine is dying, and predictably he has endeavored to bring together the estranged father-son duo because, as he puts it, Lucas has to "carry" Walken, because the dad is "damaged." Also part of the mix is Lucas’ adorably precocious 6-year-old son, Jonah Bobo, who laughs at Walken’s breast jokes and appreciates his zany dancing in ways that resentful Lucas still finds hard. Leaving behind Caine’s now jobless Danish nurse (Glenne Headly, with an atrocious accent), the boys head out on a mission ordained by Caine’s will, by VW van from Los Angeles to Albuquerque, where a dark family secret will be revealed. They rescue an abused dog, eat lots of KFC, and might learn lessons from great-grandpa’s vintage eight-track tapes (Dylan, Warren Zevon, Fleetwood Mac). The rest of us endure David Baerwald’s cutesy score, relish the stunning landscapes, and see the resolution coming from a mile away. --Cindy Fuchs (Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz 16)

END OF THE CENTURY: STORY OF THE RAMONES

Finally released from legal limbo (Joey’s heirs wanted more interviews, presumably from beyond the grave), Jim Fields and Michael Gramaglia’s documentary digs into the complicated story behind the Ramones’ ruthlessly simple music. They may have played dumb, but they were canny and fiercely competitive, as interviews with Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee, Tommy, Marky, even Ritchie and C.J. Ramone confirm. "We’re the Ramones, and you’re not, now baby, you better shut up," sneers Joey at a 1975 gig. Like the Sex Pistols, the Ramones’ music has been so thoroughly absorbed into the body of rock ’n’ roll that it can be difficult to hear what was revolutionary at the time (although as Seymour Stein, who signed them to Sire Records, points out, they always wrote great songs, which is obvious to anyone with ears). Awestruck testimony from the likes of Debbie Harry, Chris Stein, Glen Matlock and Joe Strummer recreates the context of the band’s initial salvos (like the fact that the Clash stole a few tricks from them on the way to the top). Fields and Gramaglia don’t spare the seedy stuff: Dee Dee declines to discuss his hustling, but there’s plenty on the feud between Joey and Johnny (whose wife was Joey’s girlfriend first) and, of course, the famous story of Phil Spector pulling a gun during the recording of End of the Century, which doesn’t seem quite so funny anymore. Joey went in to the hospital just before his scheduled sit-down, while Johnny and Dee Dee have since gone on to the great gig in the sky, but End of the Century captures the bits of them the songs don’t always show. --Sam Adams (Ritz at the Bourse)

THE FINAL CUT

Not to be confused with the new Heaven’s Gate making of (or the sequel to Urban Legend, or the squillion other movies with similar titles), Omar Naim’s futuristic thriller rarely shows signs of life. Robin Williams, in head-downcast mode, plays Alan Hakman, a "cutter" who edits people’s memories after death so their survivors can have a brief (100 minutes or so), emotional and, above all, sanitized version of their loved one as a keepsake. The comparison with film editing would be obvious even if Alan’s console didn’t resemble an AVID or his colleague wasn’t named Thelma (presumably after Scorsese’s longtime cutter Schoonmaker), but Naim never makes anything of the connection beyond the superficial. (If anything, Alan’s ethical dilemmas, like whether to recut a sexually abusive father’s memories so his love for his daughter appears platonic, have more to do with documentaries, not feature films, but Naim barely seems aware of the distinction.) The plot becomes truly incoherent when an incongruously tanned and blank-looking Jim Caviezel comes on the scene as the leader of an anti-"rememory" resistance, but the film never even bothers to crystallize the nature of their objection; the crowds of protestors that greet Alan resemble anti-abortion mobs, but their retina-shaped signs resemble NARAL placards. Tak Fujimoto gives the movie a burnished but empty look, but it’s nothing that would stick in your mind. --S.A. (AMC Franklin Mills Neshaminy; Plymouth Meeting)

HIJACKING CATASTROPHE: 9/11, FEAR & THE SELLING OF AMERICAN EMPIRE

In case the subtitle leaves any doubt, Jeremy Earp and Sut Jhally’s agit-doc is this week’s entry in the Bush-out sweepstakes, and it’s among the more compelling in the mushrooming mini-genre. An unruly cousin to Robert Greenwald’s Uncovered, the film indulges a few too many conspiracy theories, but the basics are rock-solid. Earp and Jhally’s central accusation is that the "war on terror" has been appropriated by a group of right-wing hawks following what’s become known as "the Wolfowitz Doctrine," which in the fall of 2000 called for movement toward a new American empire, but confessed that it would be slow-going "absent some catastrophe Ö like a new Pearl Harbor." A few interview subjects turn into the rhetorical dead end of minimizing the present threat; more persuasive is the line walked by professor Robert Jensens, who says, "the fear is real, but it is being manipulated." By now we’ve probably heard enough from Noam Chomsky and Norman Mailer; the best bits come from insiders like former weapons inspector Scott Ritter and retired Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a former Pentagon staffer who criticizes the "selective reading and then creative packaging" of intelligence. In case you need a refresher course, there’s Donald Rumsfeld saying that "any country on the face of the earth knows that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction," and Dick Cheney saying there’s "no doubt." Who’s naive and dangerous, now? --S.A. (Ritz Five)

RED LIGHTS

Cédric Kahn’s unnerving domestic thriller may be the first in which the arrival of an escaped killer actually reduces the tension. It’s not that you want to see either Jean-Pierre Darroussin or Carole Bouquet get the axe, but by the time their feuding spouses have been packed into a Peugeot for a few (mercifully not real-time) hours, it’s hard to think of a worse fate than staying married to each other. After Bouquet has enough of her henpecked husband’s roadside drinking, she decamps behind his back, which is when she’s replaced in the passenger seat by Vincent Deniard’s scruffy convict. Her husband has wished for a reprieve from social restrictions (the "red lights" of the title): Now he’s got his wish. Drawn from a novel by Georges Simenon, Kahn’s cold-blooded thriller moves with the ruthless, almost abstract efficiency of Claude Chabrol’s recent bitter pills, though Darroussin and Bouquet add more juice than Chabrol’s posh mannequins. There’s something crude and a little moralistic about the way the killer seems to symbolize Darroussin’s basest urges, particularly given the movie’s quietly brutal conclusion. But if nothing else, the extended single shot in which Darroussin makes a series of increasingly frantic phone calls to determine his wife’s fate is a mini-masterpiece of realistic suspense. --S.A. (Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz 16)

SHALL WE DANCE?

This insipid remake of Masayuki Suo’s 1996 romantic comedy features Richard Gere as a sad and banal businessman in search of a reason to feel "happy." Worse, he’s sensitive enough to believe he has no reason to feel this way, as he is surrounded by a terrific wife (Susan Sarandon) and a couple of smart, supportive kids. And so he hides his decision to start dancing at Anita Gillette’s studio, where he politely lusts after exotic, melancholy teacher Paulina (strangely awkward-seeming Jennifer Lopez). Each week, he goes for lessons, alongside fellow novices Bobby Cannavale and Omar Benson Miller, while also discovering that a co-worker (Stanley Tucci) is secretly and rather flamboyantly dancing as well, exhibiting a special fondness for "spicy" Latin steps. As it turns out, dancing is good for the soul and body. This uninspired resolution leaves behind other, more intriguing ideas. Peter Chelsom’s film raises and quickly drops uncertainties concerning suburban conformity, gender roles, sexuality and desire, leaving them to jokes and slapstick. Too bad, as such uncertainties lie at the heart of Gere’s "midlife" quest, which needn’t be as mundane as it looks here. He dances delicately, Lopez struts a bit and Sarandon is criminally underused. --C.F. (Bridge; Ritz 16; UA Grant; UA Riverview)

STAGE BEAUTY

Adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher from his play Compleat Female Stage Beauty, Richard Eyre’s movie is all about acting, from all angles -- as work, delusion, inspiration and obsession. At the center is the fictionalized career of Edward Kynaston (Billy Crudup), renowned for playing 17th-century female parts (tragic Desdemona is his specialty) when women were not allowed to appear on stage. Admired by his dresser and aspiring actress Maria (Claire Danes), he’s at once arrogant and damaged. Kynaston faces a career crisis when foppy Charles II (Rupert Everett) legalizes female stage performances at the insistence of his mistress (Zoe Tapper). (A former working girl and aspiring actress, she appreciates the daily performance demands on women.) Emulating Kynaston, Maria is a hit as Desdemona (she’s the "first of her kind," he’s the "last of his kind"). They compete as they realize their mutual love. Fittingly, the film’s performances are uniformly excellent, but the film presents Kynaston’s "femininity" in perilously reductive terms: His genius for playing girls -- on stage and in bed, here with the egotistical Duke of Buckingham (Ben Chaplin) -- results from childhood abuse by a male teacher, and his emotional health results from transformative sex with Maria. --C.F.

(Ritz Five; Ritz 16)