Opening
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (US, 1970) Paul Newman and
Robert Redford star as the infamous outlaws. Cleveland Institute of Art
Cinematheque. At 7:20 p.m. Saturday, June 6, and 8:50 p.m. Sunday, June
7.
Enlighten Up Determined to prove that under the right
circumstances, yoga can transform even the most jaded person, yoga
enthusiast and documentary moviemaker Kate Churchill selected Nick
Rosen, a New York City journalist, to be her guinea pig. She flies him
all over the world so he can be exposed to a variety of different
practices, each more spiritual than the next. He meets Dr. Madan
Kataria, the “Guru of Giggling”(who instructs him in the ways of
Laughter Yoga), and Diamond Dallas Page, a proponent of “Yoga For
Regular Guys.” He travels to India and then back to the U.S. And yet,
he remains unconvinced of yoga’s transforming powers, sending Churchill
into such a rage that she stops talking to him for a short time. While
the tension would normally make for a good documentary, here it just
feels awkward and uncomfortable, especially since neither Churchill nor
Rosen are particularly sympathetic characters. Cedar Lee Theatre.
** 1/2 (Jeff
Niesel)
Land of the Lost Sid and Marty Kroft’s original Land of the Lost was by no means a shining moment in television history, but it was harmless enough fun for the Saturday morning kiddie audience of the ’70s. This big screen version takes the basic premise of that series. While on an expedition, Marshall (Will Ferrell), Will (Danny McBride) and Holly (Anna Friel) are transported by a device of Marshall’s design to a strange world inhabited by an ape man Chakka (Jorma Taccone), dinosaurs and alien lizard men called Sleestaks. Unlike the show, however, the movie goes for intentional laughs with gratuitous breast fondling, gay jokes, dinosaur urine showers and a little light blasphemy. We’re a long way from Saturday morning here, and none of the jokes are even remotely funny. * (Robert Ignizio)
Leave Her to Heaven (US, 1945) A restored print of John M.
Stahl’s film about a femme fatale. Cleveland Institute of Art
Cinematheque. At 7 p.m. Friday, June 5, and 9:35 p.m. Saturday, June
6.
Mock Up on Mu (US, 2008) Culture jammer Craig Baldwin spins
an outlandish sci-fi story in this collage. Cleveland Museum of Art
Lecture Hall. At 7 p.m. Wednesday, June 10.
Red Psalm (Hungary, 1971) Miklós Jancsó won the
Best Director prize at Cannes for this film about a Hungarian farm
worker revolt. Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque. At 5:30 p.m.
Saturday, June 6, and 7 p.m. Sunday, June 7.
Rudo y Cursi One of the best films that screened at this
year’s Cleveland International Film Festival, Rudo y Cursi reunites Y Tu Mamá Tabién stars Gael Garcia Bernal
and Diego Luna as a pair of small-town siblings who have aspirations of
playing professional soccer. Tato (Bernal) and Beto (Luna) get their
chance to go pro when they’re “discovered” by a sleazy sports agent
who’s made it his mission to find young soccer players and place them
with major teams. Both players become minor celebrities, though each
has trouble controlling the wealth and fame that comes his way. The two
end up as bitter rivals, playing for opposing teams, and must try to
redeem themselves in one final showdown that features a surprise
ending. With Rudo y Cursi, Mexican writer-director Carlo
Cuarón, who co-wrote Y Tu Mamá Tabién with
his brother Alfonso, has crafted a terrific story that’s alternately
funny and tragic and deserving of every bit of critical praise it’s
received. Cedar Lee Theatre. *** (Niesel)
Shadows (Macedonia/Germany/Italy/Bulgaria/Spain, 2007) A
Macedonian doctor survives a car crash only to run into a number of
eccentric people who start speaking to him in code. Cleveland Institute
of Art Cinematheque. At 7 p.m. Thursday, June 4, and 9:10 p.m. Friday,
June 5.
Summer Hours “Beauty is beauty .. .you notice it,” elderly
matriarch Hélène Berthier (screen veteran Edith Scob)
remarks at the beginning of French chameleon Olivier Assayas’
exquisite, ineffably lovely new film, and that pretty well sums up this
sublime achievement as well. After Helene’s death, her three grown
children (Juliette Binoche, Charles Berling and Jérémie
Renier) descend upon her country home to divvy up the estate and their
mother’s belongings. Shockingly, there are no tearful recriminations or
buried family skeletons to spark phony melodrama. The Berthiers are
that rare screen family that genuinely seems to like each other. The
delicacy of emotions conveyed through the pitch-perfect performances
and Assayas’ rigorous, unfussy mise-en-scene is so palpable and
genuinely touching that it bears comparison with Jean Renoir’s humanist
masterpieces. Here is that rare film so infused with feeling that it
can literally take your breath away. Cedar Lee Theatre.
***(Milan Paurich)
Theater of War (US, 2008) Documentary filmmaker John Walter’s
(How to Draw a Bunny) probing, in-depth look at a 2006 Public
Theater production of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her
Children provides filmgoers with a fascinating look into the
creative process. It’s as much about Brecht’s legacy and how his
seminal late ’30s work — set against the backdrop of the Thirty
Years’ War — holds up a mirror to U.S. involvement in Iraq as it
is about the prodigiously talented individuals, including director
George C. Wolfe, Tony Kushner (who did the new translation) and stars
Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline, responsible for breathing new life into a
70-year-old play. There’s something wonderfully ennobling about
watching art come to life before your eyes, and Walter doesn’t stint on
cataloging the blood, sweat and tears that go into creating theatrical
alchemy. Cleveland Museum of Art Lecture Hall. At 7 p.m. Friday, June
5. *** 1/2 (Milan Paurich)
In Theaters
Angels and Demons Director Ron Howard’s 2006 Da Vinci
Code adaptation relieved the book of its one saving grace:
briskness. Critics panned the movie as bloated and contrived. Stung by
the reviews, Howard rethought his approach before adapting Brown’s
Angels and Demons (which was published before Da Vinci,
but which Howard treats as a sequel). With writers David Koepp and
Akiva Goldsman, he condensed the plot and made things less stagy, using
the handheld camera techniques he employed in Frost/Nixon. Tom
Hanks reprises his role as Harvard professor Robert Langdon, who’s
summoned to the Vatican to investigate a plot to kill four cardinals
and destroy St. Peter’s Basilica with a stolen anti-matter device,
whose developer, physicist Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer), teams up with
Langdon. There’s a lot of dashing about, some ghastly killings, a
possibly murdered pope, ominous pseudo-Carmina Burana choral
music and a visually impressive scene involving an airplane. Hanks
seems strangely detached, even though he’s the central character. The
movie lacks even the frisson of the forbidden. The Vatican isn’t
protesting it, as it did The Da Vinci Code, since the story is
more or less pro-church. What fun is that? *** (Pamela Zoslov)
Brothers Bloom A couple of orphans, Stephen (Mark Ruffalo)
and Bloom (Adrien Brody) learn at an early age that they have a knack
for conning people. It all starts when they trick their classmates into
thinking there’s a monster in a cave, and they charge their fellow
students admission to see said monster, really just one of the
brothers. Of course, they get caught on a regular basis and move from
foster home to foster home. Flash-forward a few years. Stephen and
Bloom, now young adults, have figured out how to pull off heists
without getting caught. They’ve partnered up with Bang-Bang (Rinko
Kikuchi), an Asian woman who doesn’t speak, and have pulled off one
lucrative job after another. They could retire on their earnings, but
they decide to pull off one last con and find an heiress, Penelope
(Rachel Weisz), who could easily be bilked of her millions. The problem
is that Bloom falls in love with her. Much like Wes Anderson, director
Rian Johnson (Brick) relies on quirky characters and distinctively
colorful cinematography to create an alternate, anachronistic universe.
While the film predictably blurs the lines between what’s a con and
what’s not, its intriguing narrative holds it together. Cedar Lee
Theatre. ** 1/2
(Niesel)
Dance Flick There are so many Wayans family members listed in
the credits of this parody film, it’s got to be a joke. It’s a fitfully
funny spoof of the sub-genre of urban hip-hop/R&B dance melodramas
like Stomp the Yard, How She Move, Roll Bounce and
Step Up 2 the Streets. Not that such dancerz-n-the-hood
programmers don’t deserve it or are somehow beyond parody. But there
just isn’t much sport in knocking Honey off its perch. The main
achievement for the Wayanses would seem to be delivering their lampoons
within the confines of a PG-13 rating (they nearly got an NC-17 for
their original cut of Scary Movie). Flick mainly
satirizes 2000’s Save the Last Dance, with shoutouts to
Fame, Hairspray, Dreamgirls, Halle Berry’s driving
mishaps, etc. After family tragedy, would-be ballerina Megan (Shoshana
Bush) attends showbizzy inner-city Musical High School and strikes up
interracial romance with Thomas (Damon Wayans Jr.), a classmate whose
“crew” participates in dance-offs at the nearby Club Violence. Team
Wayans have some fun with the clichés, like one young thug so
at-risk he literally has guns for hands. But for the Wayanses at their
best, check out their In Living Color TV show on DVD.
**(Charles
Cassady)
Drag Me to Hell Sam Raimi, who made the Evil Dead series before moving on to mainstream success with movies like
Spider-Man, effortlessly blends scares, laughs and thrills in
Drag Me to Hell. It’s a film that should satisfy fans waiting
for Evil Dead 4, as well as general audiences looking for a
summer roller-coaster ride. We’re given believable characters we
actually care about, and there’s even some thematic depth concerning
the idea that a good person can commit one misdeed and wind up in a
living hell. But mostly this movie just wants to entertain. Raimi uses
plenty of his trademark gross-outs, slapstick gags and creative camera
moves to that end, but those elements never overwhelm the film. Where
the Evil Dead series was the work of a raw but talented
newcomer, Drag Me to Hell shows a mature and assured
directorial hand that knows exactly what buttons to push with an
audience while still telling a decent story. *** 1/2 (Robert
Ignizio)
Limits of Control Isaach De Bankolé plays Lone Man, a
typically taciturn, largely inscrutable Jim Jarmusch protagonist who
gives every appearance of being a somnambulist, despite the fact that
his character never seems to sleep. A pointedly obfuscating series of
encounters with equally confounding, baldly monickered types (Tilda
Swinton is Blonde, Gael García Bernal is Mexican) passes for
plot (never a big deal in Jarmusch land anyway). Like most Jarmusch
films, The Limits of Control is basically a series of
repetitions, and the transcendental beauty of cinematographer Chris
Doyle’s gorgeously lit, rigorously composed images makes the experience
damn near hypnotic. Cedar Lee Theatre. ***(Paurich)
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian The original
Night at the Museum basically ran on the premise of “What
happens at the museum after the doors are locked for the night?”
Apparently, it’s some wacky stuff. Lock Ben Stiller in there with all
the historic artifacts, and you’ll get even more wackiness. This
CGI-heavy and pop- culture-speckled sequel to the 2006 hit is more of
the same. This time, Stiller’s former night watchman Larry — now
a successful entrepreneur behind a bunch of infomercial crap, including
a glow-in-the-dark flashlight — must save his old natural history
museum pals from an evil resurrected pharaoh (played by a lisping Hank
Azaria) who’s stolen the magic tablet that brings them to life. Adding
to that otherworldly problem, most of the museum’s artifacts have been
packed away and shipped to the Smithsonian for storage. All of the
first film’s characters return: Owen Wilson’s cowboy, Robin Williams’
Teddy Roosevelt, the talking Easter Island statue, the monkey. The
Smithsonian adds a bunch of new historical and pop-culture icons to the
mix, including Amelia Earhart (a peppy and excellent Amy Adams),
General Custer, Ivan the Terrible, Darth Vader and Oscar the Grouch.
This Museum is also loaded with cameos by various Office stars, Saturday Night Live alum and Jonah Hill, who plays an
overzealous guard who squares off against Larry in one of the movie’s
funniest scenes. But a few new twists — classic paintings and
photographs now come to life — can’t hide the blah plot, which is
pretty much an excuse to trot out some clever sight gags. Some of them
are funny; some of them are spectacular in a CGI kinda way. Too bad the
story is neither. ** 1/2 (Michael Gallucci)
Star Trek J. J. Abrams’ much-anticipated
remake/reboot/prequel/sequel to Paramount’s Star Trek series
isn’t your father’s Star Trek, not by light years. It’s more
like your snotty little iPod-plugged nephew’s. The plot: In the 23rd
century, Starfleet up-and-comer George Kirk is killed with his ship
when a time-space warp materializes a gang of nasty, vengeful Romulans
from 127 years in the future, piloting their own enormous Death Star
(more like a Death Squid, given the production design). George’s wife
gives birth to a nervy punk named James T. Kirk (Chris Pine), who grows
up a motorcycle delinquent around the space-shipyards of Iowa.
Meanwhile on Vulcan, planet of serene logic and repressed emotion, the
persecuted half-human prodigy Spock (Zachary Quinto) grows up with a
mild anger-management problem. It’s a good thing this is so
entertaining, because the eventual return to deep-space naval battle
with the Romulan Death Squid (the villains just conveniently disappear
from the narrative for a quarter-century) is hardly stuff Where No One
Has Gone Before. *** (Cassady)
Terminator Salvation Arriving on the heels of Star
Trek, a film that successfully re-launched a franchise that had
grown tired and stale, Terminator Salvation isn’t going to seem
as inventive as J. J. Abrams’ flick. Directed by McG, a former
music-video guy who’s successfully made the jump to the big screen, the
film commences in 2003 as a prisoner named Marcus (Sam Worthington)
decides to give his body to science right before he’s executed. Flash
forward to 2018, and John Connor (Christian Bale this time around)
heads up a group of resistance fighters who are taking on the
“machines” dead-set on wiping out the human race. The explosive opening
battle scene sets the tone for the movie. It’s one loud, vicious fight
that finds the red-eyed Terminator machines and an arsenal of
spaceships giving the humans all they can handle. As far as
sequel/prequels go, Terminator Salvation does the trick. Bale is
terrific as the steely John Connor, and Worthington is solid as the
half-human Marcus. It’s just too bad it has to compete with the
superior Star Trek. ***(Niesel)
Up Up is an eyes-wide-open fantasy about Carl
Fredricksen (voiced by the always-cranky Edward Asner), whose lifelong
dream of being a globe-trotting adventurer has been halted every step
of the way. He marries his childhood best friend, a girl who shares his
dreams and quest for adventure. Over the years, they live and love and
try to scrape up enough cash to visit Paradise Falls, a mythical
wilderness in South America. After his wife dies, Carl — now an
old man with a bad back and an even worse temperament — spends
his days in his ramshackle house, which stands in the middle of a
construction site (Carl refuses to sell, even as high-rises go up
around him). After he assaults a worker on his property, the court
orders him to a retirement community. So Carl hatches a plan to escape
to Paradise Falls by attaching hundreds of balloons to his house.
Surprisingly, it works, and he sets sail serenely above the city
streets. All goes well until he hears a knock at the door and finds
Russell, an overweight and chatty Wilderness Explorer (it’s like a Boy
Scout) who needs one more badge to advance to the next level. A brutal
storm steers Carl and Russell miraculously in the middle of Paradise
Falls’ outlining forest. And then Carl’s real adventure begins. Unlike
the meditative WALL-E, Up is filled with thrilling action scenes
and colorful set pieces. Like WALL-E, it’s a stunning visual
work with an eco-friendly message. *** 1/2 (Gallucci)
This article appears in Jun 3-9, 2009.
