Opening
Flame & Citron Based on a true story, this is a companion
piece of sorts to Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious
Basterds. No, Danish Nazi hunters Flame (Thure Lindhardt) and
Citron (Mads Mikkelsen) don’t skin their victims, but they do
relentlessly go after anyone and everyone who has ever pledged
allegiance to Das Fuhrer. They start to question their assignments,
however, when it seems they might be assassinating innocent people, so
they strike out on their own and put together a renegade team of hit
men. Adding to the drama is the fact that Flame has trouble separating
himself from his girlfriend Ketty (Stine Stengade), whom he suspects
could be a sympathizer. Featuring a veteran group of Danish actors and
actresses, director Ole Christian Madsen’s film is one of the highest
grossing Danish movies of all time. You can see why. It’s visually
striking, and the numerous plot twists keep the story interesting right
to its brutal end. Cedar Lee Theatre. ***(Jeff
Niesel)
Herb & Dorothy (US, 2008) Herb and Dorothy Vogel have spent
40 years amassing one of the world’s best art collections. And they did
it without spending a ton of cash either; he worked as a postal worker
and she was a librarian. He paid for the art, and she paid the bills.
They just happened to be in the right place (New York) at the right
time (the ’60s). With an extensive collection of interviews and photos,
Megumi Sasaki’s documentary chronicles their journey from casual art
fans to collectors and includes vintage footage of guys like Chuck
Close, Christo and Robert Mangold, all of whom counted the Vogels as
their patrons from day one. While the Vogels aren’t particularly
sophisticated when it comes to talking about art (they essentially buy
what they like), they’re so down-to-earth, you can’t help but fall in
love with them. No wonder so many artists were willing to give them a
drastic discount. Cleveland Museum of Art Lecture Hall. At 7 p.m.
Friday, Sept. 11, and 1:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 13.
***(Niesel)
I Can Do Bad All By Myself Reviewed at clevescene.com.
Ice People (France/U.S., 2008) While beautifully filmed, this
documentary about four geologists looking for fossils in Antarctica
doesn’t have any real drama. Sure, the crew weathers a snowstorm or two
and on occasion has to climb to the top of a wind generator to fix a
turbine, but it’s all pretty dull stuff. We mostly see them digging
holes and pulling out fragments of ice and particles that we can only
assume have some kind of scientific significance. We get to know the
subjects (one is a avowed Christian, even though he admits it clashes
with his science background, and another guy figured moving 10,000
miles away from his ex-wife wasn’t such a bad idea), but Anne Aghion’s
film is nothing more than a slice of life, albeit in an exotic setting
that’s like no other. Cleveland Museum of Art Lecture Hall. At 7 p.m.
Wednesday, Sept. 9. **(Niesel)
The Limits of Control (Spain/US/Japan, 2009) Jim
Jarmusch-come-latelys who dug 2005’s (relatively conventional by
Jarmusch standards) Broken Flowers will probably grit their
teeth throughout The Limits of Control. Isaach De Bankolé
plays Lone Man, a typically taciturn, largely inscrutable 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. Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque.
At 9:10 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 12, and 6:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 13.
***(Paurich)
My One and Only George Deveraux (Logan Lerman) is a
15-year-old who shows up at a car dealership one day with enough cash
to buy a Cadillac. While the salesmen question his ability to make the
purchase, it turns out the money’s legit. George lives on New York’s
Upper East Side with his wealthy parents Dan (Kevin Bacon) and Ann
(Renee Zellweger), and his mother has sent him to buy a car so they can
leave their philandering father. So he gets the car and picks up his
mother, and they head off to Boston to start their life over, not
knowing that they’d wind up traipsing across the country before finally
ending up in sunny California. Directed by Richard Loncraine
(Wimbledon, Brimstone and Treacle), this period piece that’s
based on the childhood experiences of actor George Hamilton captures
the many contradictions of 1950s America, where promiscuity often ran
rampant despite outward appearances. But it takes far too long for the
plot to develop and ultimately is of little consequence. Shaker
Cinemas. **(Niesel)
9 Little surprise that Tim Burton is one of the producers of
this CG-animated story about a group of tiny creatures (they look like
grown-up versions of Little Big Planet‘s Sackboy) trying
to survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The film’s bleak look and
tone resemble the dark gothic mood of Burton’s best work. But director
Shane Acker’s movie (originally a short that was nominated for an
Oscar) isn’t nearly as playful as The Nightmare Before Christmas. In fact, it’s downright depressing at times (hint:
don’t get too attached to the little fellas). In an alternate world
where machines declared war on man and wiped out everyone, all that
remains is a small tribe of stitched-together individuals with
electronic innards that bring them life. The last in line — who’s
named 9 and voiced by Elijah Wood — accidentally rouses a
towering metal monster, which creates an army of walking, flying and
stalking machines to hunt down the nine sackpeople. 9 is
visually striking, with its backdrop of hissing factories and
washed-out landscapes. But it feels slight, clocking in at about 75
minutes. (And did we mention it’s kinda depressing? Don’t bring the
little ones.) Still, sci-fi and animation fans will relish the film’s
apocalyptic splendor. ***(Michael
Gallucci)
Sorority Row Reviewed at clevescene.com.
Under our Skin (US, 2008) A documentary about an alleged Lyme
disease epidemic. Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque. At 6:30 p.m.
Thursday, Sept. 10, and 8:45 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 13.
The Unmistaken Child (Israel, 2008) Pedestrian documentary
about Nepalese monk Tenzin Zopa’s four-year search for the
reincarnation of his Tibetan master. The most intriguing parts of the
film involve anxious stage parents “auditioning” their gurgling infants
for this plum gig. The fact that none of the toddlers has the slightest
idea who Zopa is or what’s expected of them gives their testing
sequences the feel of slightly surreal Stupid Pet Tricks. You’re never
remotely convinced that the child Zopa ultimately decides is his reborn
master was the reincarnation of anyone. But maybe you have to be a
Buddhist to accept that sort of thing on faith alone. While an
abbreviated version of Nati Baratz’s overlong, prosaic movie could have
made serviceable TLC or Discovery Channel fodder, it seems
conspicuously out of place on the big screen. Cleveland Institute of
Art Cinematheque. At 9:05 p.m. Friday, Sept. 11, at 7:05 p.m. Saturday,
Sept. 12, and 4 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 13. ** (Paurich)
Whiteout Reviewed at clevescene.com.
A Wink and a Smile (U.S., 2008) A documentary about 10 women
who all sign up for a class on burlesque stripping, Deirdre Allen
Timmons’ film is guilty of overanalyzing things. In a series of
interviews with the participants, we hear the usual things about body
types and empowerment. Miss Indigo Blue, headmistress at Seattle’s
Academy of Burlesque, helps the women develop their stage personas and
learn dance moves during the six-week course. Behind-the-scenes footage
includes classroom lectures (“please wear a tampon and cut the string”)
and intimate interviews with the subjects. And yes, there’s plenty of
footage of burlesque strip shows, some of which include brief bits of
nudity. The film culminates with a show at a local coffeehouse. Indigo
Blue calls the performance an “amazing spectacle” and then goes on
about how much the participants’ confidence has grown. She gets no
argument here, but that’s really stating the obvious in a film that
tells more than it shows. Cleveland Museum of Art Lecture Hall. At 7
p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 16. ** (Niesel)
In Theaters
All About Steve Much like Drew Barrymore’s Flower Films
and Reese Witherspoon’s Type A Films, Sandra Bullock’s production
company Fortis Films nurtures projects featuring strong female leads.
It produced the silly All About Steve, a harmless and
really quite sweet romp that finds Bullock sporting a honeyed auburn
shag and shiny red knee-high boots. She plays Mary Horowitz, a
crossword puzzle creator whose one — very short — blind
date with blue-eyed news cameraman Steve (Bradley Cooper) breaks her
free from a sheltered, rather antisocial life with her parents (the
delightful Howard Hesseman and Beth Grant). She follows Steve on
assignment around the country, chasing big new stories with his
producer Angus (Ken Jeong) and the ambitious and generally clueless
— at least about, you know, news and the proper tone to use when
reporting it — journalist Hartman (a hilarious Thomas Haden
Church). Mary is an enthusiastic, sex-starved woman who goes looking
for love and finds friends, fans and a few practical uses for her
encyclopedic knowledge. Clever writing — especially the
news-seeking trio’s smart slapstick — buoys the silliness to a
higher level of fun. ***(Wendy Ward)
District 9 On the surface, District 9 is about aliens.
But its subtext is pretty clear to anyone familiar with segregation.
District 9 is about oppression. And standing up for rights. And
wanting to go home. It’s a rebel movie, but the rebels are aliens who
have been crammed into a South African slum for more than 20 years.
Written and directed by Neill Blomkamp (from a short film he made in
2005), District 9 came together after he and producer Peter
Jackson couldn’t get their Halo movie off the ground. And in a
way, the kinda creepy and totally bloody District 9 plays a lot
like Halo, with some very awesome guns capable of blasting the
hell out of anything that gets in their way. But District 9 is
more subtle than the hit videogame franchise, building conflict and a
sense of confinement before turning into a limb-severing showdown
between military pricks, displaced aliens and a good-guy researcher
who’s slowly transforming into one of the creatures. The movie’s
handheld-camera, documentary- style approach is played out by now, but
it serves District 9‘s narrative, even if it sorta breaks the
rules during the movie’s final act. By the end, the big-ass weapons
come out, and District 9 swerves a little into popcorn-movie
territory. But not even a ginormous robot suit can divert from the
film’s undertones of what it means to be an alien in a place where
you’ve lived for so long. ***(Gallucci)
The Final Destination While at a racetrack, Nick (Bobby
Campo) has a premonition that one of the cars will crash into the
stands, causing considerable death and mayhem. He makes a scene, and
along with his friends and a few other spectators, leaves the track
just in time to miss seeing the vision come true. Any relief is short
lived, however, as the survivors soon begin dying in various grisly
ways. Sound familiar? If you’ve seen any of the previous Final
Destination films, you’ve seen this one. The only difference is
this latest installment is playing in 3-D at selected theaters. Since
director David Ellis doesn’t do much with the technology, that’s not
much of a selling point. The acting is bad, there’s no suspense and the
premise is feeling awfully tired at this point. As is par for the
course with the series, there are at least a few inventive kills. One
death involving a swimming pool drain and another in an escalator are
particularly nasty, but even gore fans have to be getting bored with
this series by now. *(Ignizio)
Halloween 2 Halloween 2 starts with an explanation of
the symbolic meaning of a white horse, which immediately raises a red
flag that director Rob Zombie is taking himself too seriously. However,
the sequence that immediately follows — essentially a condensed
remake of the original Halloween II — offers up some
pretty effective moments. That is, until it all turns out to have been
a dream. It’s hard to say which is more numbing: the relentless
brutality, the heavy-handed symbolism, the overabundance of dream
sequences and flashbacks, or the seemingly endless stream of scenes and
ideas lifted from other films. Zombie even goes so far as to steal the
endings of both Psycho and Night of the Living Dead, because apparently one plagiarized ending that calls attention to a
better film just isn’t enough. There are some good performances and
even a few decent scenes scattered about in Halloween II, but
it’s not worth having to sit through the rest of the movie to get to
them. *(Ignizio)
Inglourious Basterds Opening with a “Once upon a time in
Nazi-occupied France” intro, Inglourious Basterds’ first chapter
(yes, Tarantino divides his film into episodes again) introduces a
couple characters — an SS colonel and a Jewish girl whose family
he kills — who weave in and out of the movie. It’s 1941, and
Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt, with cocked eyebrows, a Tennessee
accent and Clark Gable’s mustache) recruits eight Jewish-American
soldiers to “kill Nazis.” But because Aldo is descended from Native
Americans, his gang doesn’t just kill Nazis; they scalp them too.
Aldo’s warriors eventually hook up with a German spy (National Treasure’s Diane Kruger), and they hatch a plan to take out most
of the Third Reich’s top tier, including Hitler and Goebbels. Even
though Tarantino isn’t on rapid-fire here, there are parts of
Inglourious Basterds that are every bit as accomplished as
Pulp Fiction. He still gets a kick making movies, and the
evidence is onscreen. ***(Gallucci)
Taking Woodstock Director Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain, The
Ice Storm) used Elliot Tiber’s memoir as the basis for a film that
follows Tiber (Demetri Martin) — a young, closeted gay Jewish kid
— as he helps bring the music festival to Bethel, New York. As he
tries to help his parents (Henry Goodman and Imelda Staunton) keep
their tiny Catskills motel from foreclosure, Elliot sees a newspaper
article about the cancellation of a nearby concert and contacts
organizer Michael Lang (Jonathan Groff) and puts him in touch with Max
Yasgur (Eugene Levy), who owns an enormous dairy farm down the road.
The two work out a deal and the concert is scheduled, though Elliot
(and everyone else, for that matter) has no idea about the scope of
what’s about to take place. As more and more people start arriving on
the site, Elliot befriends a cross-dressing Marine (Liev Schreiber) and
a half-psychotic Vietnam vet (Emile Hirsch) who open his eyes to a
larger world. While the movie includes nearly a dozen snippets of songs
that were played at Woodstock, you never see a single live performance.
And in that respect, the movie stays faithful to the concert’s true
spirit and captures the way it became a cultural happening.
*** (Niesel)
The Time Traveler’s Wife Told out of sequence, The Time
Traveler’s Wife begins with the death of young Henry’s mother,
who’s killed in a horrible car accident. But Henry, in the back seat at
the time of the accident, manages to live, thanks to his ability to
travel through time. Flash forward a few years and Henry (Eric Bana) is
all grown up, working in a library. When Clare (Rachel McAdams)
approaches him, she realizes she knows him. Turns out an older Henry
befriended a much younger Clare on his time travels, and they would
meet regularly in a large field on the property where Clare grew up.
Confusing, yes, but the filmmakers go to great lengths to simplify
things. The two get married, and everything is going smoothly until
they try to have a baby. It turns out the fetus is a time traveler too,
and one miscarriage follows another until they get some help from a
somewhat skeptical doctor (Stephen Tobolowsky). While the
time-traveling sequences are artfully done (thanks to some nifty
digital effects, Henry simply fades away on the screen), the love story
is the film’s focus. Much like The Curious Case of Benjamin
Button, the film is about a couple who have to fight against the
odds so they can be together. The movie definitely falls into the
chick-flick realm, but don’t hold that against it.
***(Niesel)
This article appears in Sep 9-15, 2009.
