Latest Reviews April 24-30, 2008

Blind Mountain

Writer-director Li Yang’s powerful rural drama is both a heartbreaking human tragedy and a ferocious meditation on the horrors of peasant life in China’s heartland – many metaphorical parsecs away from where the eyes of the world will shortly be focused during the Olympics. To help her impoverished parents, recent college graduate Bai (Lu Huang) agrees to accept a job selling medicinal herbs in the countryside. Unfortunately, when she arrives to accept the job, Bai discovers that she’s been tricked: instead of selling herbs, she’s been sold to a peasant family to be the mail order bride for oafish Huang (Yang You’an). This new gig includes regular beatings and rapes – as Huang breaks the girl’s will like a horse. Although Bai’s craggle-toothed new mother-in-law (Zhang Yuling) warns the new bride that it’s easier to just give in, Bai never stops trying to escape.

Li’s film, cast mostly with local, rural performers, is a compelling portrait of squalid peasant life. While the work straddles a razor thin line of political criticism, the sense of backcountry authenticity is almost eerie – at times, the film seems almost consciously reminiscent of Polanski’s Tess. Lu’s performance is haunting, particularly as she ages from innocent, pampered beauty to hardened rural fishwife. (Paul Birchall) (Laemmle’s Grande 4)

Constantine’s Sword

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Oren Jacoby’s fascinating documentary explores some of the violence and ill done in God’s name throughout history – a skipped-stone journey of remembrance and reckoning. Starting with the story of conservative Christian ideology being peddled at the Air Force Academy (where fliers for Mel Gibson’s The Passion were handed out, and Ted Haggard’s New Life ministries touted) and winding back in time, the movie follows author and former Roman Catholic priest James Carroll as he interweaves his own family history with a grander inquisition into faith, and in particular the intersection between Christianity and Judaism.

Neither naked provocation nor burrowing analysis is a part of Jacoby’s agenda here. In fact, as soon as the film alights on some engrossing historical nugget – Roman general Constantine’s 310 A.D. conversion, which ushered in the iconography of the cross – it’s just as quickly off to something else. This occasionally makes for some minor frustration, since one wants a deeper probe of certain topics. Carroll, though, is a fantastic and articulate guide, and this exceedingly contemplative work is both topically important – warning of what happens when military might and religious fervor are mixed – and intellectually stimulating as all get out. (Brent Simon) (Laemmle’s Music Hall 3)

Dare Not Walk Alone

The civil rights struggle holds thousands of stories, and this clear-eyed documentary focuses on St. Augustine, Florida, which in 1964 found itself at the center of this great social upheaval. Much of the movie centers around the business establishment primarily targeted in demonstrations, the Monson Motor Lodge, whose embittered owner, James Brock, now 81, makes for an interesting interview subject, along with Andrew Young and former field organizers of the protest.

Directed by Jeremy Dean, Dare Not Walk Alone successfully avoids the trappings of many well-meaning civil rights docs that serve chiefly as grief mops for white liberal guilt. Eschewing overly explicative narration, it isn’t afraid to trade in silences, or let 8mm or newsreel footage unfold under a trip-hop spiritual beat. The effect is often mesmerizing and certainly heart-rending. The film makes a hairpin – and not entirely convincing – turn into the present day, tying the story to the allure of hip-hop’s upward social mobility with current-day St. Augustine residents, where over a quarter of the African-American population lives in poverty. The resulting whiplash is almost forgotten and certainly entirely forgiven, however, with moving closing footage of a church reconciliation ceremony for African-American parishioners turned away from worship 40 years earlier. (Brent Simon) (Laemmle’s Grande 4)

Deal

Against his parents’ wishes, recent college grad Alex Stillman (Bret Harrison) seems more intent on spending the summer before law school playing professional-level poker than showing up for the job Dad has arranged. His skills catch the eye of Tommy Vinson (Burt Reynolds), a once-contender who never quite won a championship and finally quit the game altogether to save his marriage. A part of Tommy has always wanted to return to the game, and he sees Alex as a way to vicariously get back in for one last time without breaking his pledge to his wife (Maria Mason). Thanks in part to his coaching, Alex has a meteoric rise to the top of the national field and manages to get involved with a young Vegas woman (Shannon Elizabeth, who also appeared in the other recent poker movie, The Grand). But conflict between student and mentor is inevitable, and, when the Big Tournament rolls around, they find themselves as opponents.

This is the third Vegas gambling movie to be released in as many months and easily the lamest. It might be described as the conflicts of 21 grafted onto the setting of The Grand, except that it was shot before either, and it’s easy to see why it was slower to reach theaters. Director/co-writer Gil Cates Jr. gives us a by-the-numbers execution of a by-the-numbers story, which would barely be movie-of-the-week material but for Reynolds’s “star power.” This is another one of the latter’s string of old-guy-guiding-young-guy parts, which started at least as far back as the superior Breaking In (1989). No major star in my lifetime has so badly squandered his commercial and aesthetic potential through lackluster choices. Additionally disturbing in this outing is how Reynolds looks. Seventy when the film was shot, Reynolds needs either a new makeup person or a new plastic surgeon; his face looks like paint on drywall. (Andy Klein) (Citywide)

Deception

Friendless, geeky accountant Jonathan McQuarry (Ewan McGregor) is flattered by the attention of outgoing, studly attorney Wyatt Bose (Hugh Jackman). When the two accidentally switch cell phones just as Wyatt is leaving town, Jonathan finds himself the recipient of strange calls, which turn out to be an impersonal mating ritual for the members of an anonymous sex club. Suddenly a party to numerous liaisons with gorgeous women (Charlotte Rampling and Natasha Henstridge among them), Jonathan comes out of his shell, until, despite the anonymity rules, he seriously falls for one of “dates” (Michelle Williams).

Even if the title didn’t telegraph what’s really going on, the stylistic cues in director Marcel Langenegger’s feature debut would be enough. From the audience’s viewpoint, it’s pretty clear from the getgo that Bose is, at a minimum, Not What He Seems. He plays Jonathan like a fiddle, ensnaring him through a scheme that depends on a million little unpredictable details breaking properly. In short, despite a fair amount of suspense and good performances from all three leads, this is one of those films where the phone doesn’t ring a second too soon if that would blow Wyatt’s cover; and Wyatt seems confident of that, in ways that make no sense. This is also a world in which a wrongly accused murder suspect with no experience in crime can flee the country with a perfect fake passport, apparently produced in less than 24 hours, simply because the plot requires him to. (Andy Klein) (Citywide)

Flight of the Red Balloon

A few months back, my colleague Andy Klein told me that he sometimes wished Taiwanese films “would just fucking lighten up.” Hou Hsiao-Hsien has done what he can in this remake of French director Albert Lamorisse’s classic 1956 short The Red Balloon: the film is as weightless as its title suggests, but it’s not as if the deadly earnest Hou has finally found his funny bone. Rather, he takes a strolling look at purposefully trivial subject matter, following a frazzled single mother (Juliette Binoche), her son (Simon Iteanu), and their recently hired Taiwanese nanny (Song Fang) as they walk the streets of Paris or get a piano tune-up. It doesn’t add up to much, but it’s got a handsomely photographed charm, especially with the friendly cameos by the title character. (Alfred Lee) ((Laemmle’s Royal, Laemmle’s Playhouse 7, Laemmle’s Town Center 5)

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

After diluting his burgeoning brand with the twin disappointments Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story and Drillbit Taylor, producer Judd Apatow rebounds with another Knocked Up-style combination of male-skewing juvenilia and genuine emotions. Sitcom star Jason Segel, the latest winner of the Apatow Lottery, stars as sad sack Peter Bretter, who escapes to Hawaii to lick his wounds after being dumped by actress girlfriend Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell). But, as Peter’s bad luck would have it, he winds up at the same resort as Sarah and new, sex-god boyfriend Aldous (Russell Brand). Humorous consolation is provided by Apatow Company players Jonah Hill and Paul Rudd, as well as delicious Mila Kunis.

This funny enough film was written by Segel and directed by first-timer Nicholas Stoller, whose rudimentary style and lack of care in crafting his female characters do little damage. The sight of Peter suffering is sufficiently rewarding, even as it hides the uncomfortable notion that there but for the grace of God go I. This is a scruffy, well-played laffer with unpolished charm, created by adult frat-boys getting their ya-ya’s out (literally, in Segel’s case) while sincerely trying to fill the concept’s emotional demands. Surely any comedy where a man’s inability to perform in bed is played not as farce, but as epiphany, deserves a hearty bro-hug. (Mark Keizer) (Citywide)

Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay

Picking up immediately where 2004’s inspired stoner comedy Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle left off, this funny, ribald sequel finds responsible-minded Harold (John Cho) and ultra-irresponsible Kumar (Kal Penn) heading off to Amsterdam to locate the former’s crush. En route, however, they get mistaken for terrorists and shipped off to Guantanamo Bay. After escaping, the pair make their way back to America, where they cross paths with a wildly racist federal agent (Rob Corddry) and White Castle vet Neil Patrick Harris (once again playing a pill-popping, hyper-masculinized version of himself).

Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, co-writers of the first film, make their directorial debut here, and the delicious uniformity of vision creates a wild ride. Harold & Kumar is first and foremost (as well as maybe second and third) a lewd, pot-infused re-imagination of The Odd Couple, but racial expectations, male sexual subjugation, and topical political humor all get a hilarious workout, as well as the current president’s unresolved daddy issues. What makes this work so well is a game cast and the movie’s ability to honestly and confidently depict white fear with a feverish intensity, while also exposing its ludicrousness. Oh, and there’s also a groundbreaking bottomless party scene. (Brent Simon) (Citywide)

Jellyfish

Newly single, a Tel Aviv waitress tries to pull herself together despite a job she hates, a dumpy apartment, and parents so self-involved they never took a picture or shot a home movie of their only child. A bride breaks her ankle on her wedding day, moving her honeymoon from the Caribbean to a local hotel where she and her groom meet an enigmatic poet. A Filipino caretaker bonds with the curmudgeonly mother of a busy actress while pining for the five-year-old son she left at home.

The lives of these three women intersect only briefly at a wedding during the opening moments of Jellyfish, but in the elegiac feature debut of Israeli directors Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen, they are tied by the pull of the sea, at a place of rare respite in a city constantly on the edge of violence. A novelist and a children’s book author, respectively, the directors infuse the film with a short story’s spare dialogue and tight pacing – the running time is all of 76 minutes – while subtle visual motifs and judicious moments of magical realism demonstrate cinema at its most elegant. (Annlee Ellingson) (Laemmle’s Sunset 5, Laemmle’s One Colorado, Laemmle’s Town Center 5)

Shotgun Stories

Big Daddy Hayes has just died and already his legacy on earth is dwindling. His seven sons (by two wives) can’t agree about him. Stephen (Lynnsee Provence), Cleaman (Michael Abbott Jr.), John (David Rhodes), and Mark (Travis Smith) know him as a born-again farmer. Their older half-brothers Son (Michael Shannon), Boy (Douglas Ligon), and Kid (Barlow Jacobs) spit on his grave. Son and his siblings think their estranged dad’s younger kids got off easy – they ain’t rich either, but their trucks are shinier. And so these small town Arkansans, who can’t scrape up rent money, find themselves hellbent on destruction. Jeff Nichols’s modern Western is laconic and lazily captivating, its silence slowly building to rage. Shannon’s blunt face, heavy with gravity, doesn’t do much emoting, but it’s hard to tear your eyes away from it and from the scarred welts on his back, the result of a shotgun blast that goes unexplained. A lot happens, but it doesn’t feel like it, even as we are tensely absorbed. Instead, Nichols casually threads the theme of loyalty into the dark story of the Hayes clan and then pulls it tightly into a noose. (Amy Nicholson) (Laemmle’s Sunset 5, Laemmle’s One Colorado)

Then She Found Me

Helen Hunt’s output since 2000’s What Women Want and Cast Away has consisted of mostly forgotten indie outings – a trend unlikely to reverse course with her directorial debut. Also the star here, Hunt gives a decidedly unglamorous turn, appearing with little to no makeup or masking of her age. The choice serves the character, 39-year-old schoolteacher April Epner, whose desperation to get pregnant brings her nascent marriage to Ben (Matthew Broderick) to an end, followed in short order by the death of her devoutly Jewish mother. These major life changes open the doors, however, for a new romance with Frank (Colin Firth), the father of one of her grade school students, and a relationship with Bernice Graves (Bette Midler), the local TV celebrity who is April’s birth mother.

There are some lovely moments here, as when April describes never having been pregnant as “bleak,” but Frank finds it “painful …and beautiful.” And the theme of betrayal – by husband, lover, mother, and God – is potent, particularly in a scene of scary rage unleashed by Firth. But there’s also the fact that, despite her occupation and desperate desire to have children, April behaves awkwardly and inappropriately around them. (Annlee Ellingson) (Pacific’s ArcLight, The Landmark West Los Angeles, Laemmle’s Monica 4, Laemmle’s Town Center 5, Laemmle’s Playhouse 7)

Also Opening This Week:

Baby Mama. A driven businesswoman (Tina Fey) hires a working-class woman (Amy Poehler) to be a surrogate mother, in this comedy written and directed by Michael McCullers; the cast also includes Greg Kinnear, Dax Shepard, Sigourney Weaver, Steve Martin, and Maura Tierney. (AK) (Citywide)

Body of War. Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue directed this documentary about Tomas Young, a 26-year-old soldier, who was shot and paralyzed from the chest down during his first week in Iraq and who has since become passionately antiwar. (AK) (Nuart)

A Plumm Summer. It’s 1968... in Montana... and kiddie show host Happy Herb (Henry Winkler) isn’t happy. His puppet, Froggy Doo, has been kidnapped! Two young boys team up with the FBI to crack the case. Caroline Zelder makes her feature directorial debut, from a script she cowrote with T.J. Lynch and Frank Antonelli; the cast includes William Baldwin, Lisa Guerrero, Chris J. Kelly, Owen Pearce, Brenda Strong, and Peter Scolari, with Jeff Daniels narrating. (AK) (Citywide)