February 17-23, 2005

movie shorts

New Movies Shorts

ALMOST PEACEFUL
The source novel for Michel Deville's gentle tale of life in postwar Paris is called Quoi de neuf sur la guerre?, and with the recent spate of movies set in the same period, "What's new?" seems like a reasonable question. Deville's not out to innovate; his style is pure ancien regime, static frames filled with the bustling goings-on at a Jewish tailor's shop. Deville is best with minor details, the way life goes on even when you might not want it to. Simon Abkarian's tailor struggles equally with his marital problems and with the guilt that, unlike an employee who lost his wife to the camps, he still has a marriage to struggle with. Hobbled by its novelistic origins, the movie follows several characters but never finds a center, and its occasional flights of flashback fancy feel woefully out of place. --Sam Adams (Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz 16)

BECAUSE OF WINN-DIXIE
Wayne Wang's adaptation of Kate DiCamillo's children's novel never bothers to bury its metaphors. When lead AnnaSophia Robb doles out candies that taste sweet yet dredge up bitter memories, even the film's youngest viewers won't need Aesop to explain the moral of the story. Wang is in full journeyman mode here, content with pointing his camera at the action and indulging in an occasional sunset. For the first half-hour or so, as preacher Jeff Daniels and his daughter move to a small, impoverished Florida town and argue over a stray that she adopts, we are offered little more than familiar cute-dog and frustrated-single-father standards. But once Robb meets the local eccentrics, the strong supporting cast, all more invested in the material than their director, wrest the momentum away from cloying sentimentality. It soon becomes clear that none of these people have led exemplary lives, and a healthy dose of moral ambiguity adds heft to the story. It's refreshing not only to see Cicely Tyson and Eva Marie Saint given such prominent roles but to see elderly characters whose dispensed wisdom comes from having lived, not just from being old. --Shaun Brady (UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)

FEAR AND TREMBLING
Sylvie Testud is one of the most thrilling actresses in the world, but at this point, the most shocking thing she could do would be to play a role where she neither gets naked nor goes crazy. Fear and Trembling's Amélie is not that role. As a Japanese-born Belgian returning to the country of her birth, Testud's hapless office worker is increasingly worn down by the rigid, often incomprehensible culture of her adopted workplace, although her female boss' frigid beauty provides her with a few pleasant daydreams. What begins as a Franco-Japanese Office Space, complete with ugly flourescent lighting, turns rancid as the movie's unwillingness to consider a viewpoint other than Sylvie's turns it into a one-sided, essentially racist screed. Testud can be a marvelous farceuse, as seen in Chantal Akerman's upcoming (we hope) Tomorrow We Move, but Fear and Trembling is flat on its feet. Alain Corneau's direction is listless and smug, and you get the sense that Amélie Nothomb's source novel was written more as an act of revenge than cultural exchange. --S.A.(Ritz at the Bourse)

SON OF THE MASK
Beware the Mask of Loki, intones museum lecturer Ben Stein at the beginning of this feeble sequel. Enter Loki (Alan Cumming), fussing about that mask and unable to find it. That's because a Jack Russell named Otis is digging it up and handing it over to his owner, wannabe animator Jamie Kennedy. Once he's wearing the thing, Kennedy goes spastic, essentially reprising Jim Carrey's 1994 moves, only louder and sloppier. Inspired by the magic of the mask, Kennedy impregnates his wife (Traylor Howard), who births up a baby with amazing body-contorting powers and a desire to torment his father into insanity (learned from television, because it is evil incarnate). Loki shows up to play baby's "other daddy," feeling like the infant, all twisty and conniving and magical, is "a chip off the old block." Loki has his own daddy issues, namely from the glowering, storm-making Norse god Odin (Bob Hoskins). Kennedy tries to come up with a cartoon idea for work (his boss is Steven Wright, his colleague is Kal Penn) but can't keep his mind off the mask or the dog, let alone on the baby. Wifey complains, to no avail: spastic violence and poop jokes abound. --Cindy Fuchs (AMC Orleans; Cinemagic; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Riverview)