Opening
Carry It On (US, 1970) Arrested by federal marshals for
dodging the draft, peace activist David Harris was the rare radical who
could speak eloquently about revolution and heroism. No wonder folk
singer Joan Baez, his wife at the time, was drawn to him. This film
documents Baez’s concert tour in the wake of his arrest. Singing
staples like “We Shall Overcome,” Baez was as articulate as her husband
when it came to speaking about social change. The film collects
numerous performances as well as behind-the-scenes footage of Baez at
home and preparing for a spot on The Joey Bishop Show. What the
film lacks, however, is a clear narrative, and it comes off as a rather
haphazard collection of old home movies, albeit ones that feature
several inspiring musical performances. Cleveland Museum of Art Lecture
Hall. At 7 p.m. Wednesday, August 5. ** 1/2 (Jeff Niesel)
The Country Teacher (Czech Republic/France/Germany, 2008)
When a smart prep-school teacher (Pavel Liska) leaves Prague to go to a
countryside school, the locals suspect something in his past made him
flee the big city. They’re right — it takes them some time to
figure out what it is. We get our first clue when a farm woman (Zuzana
Bydzovská) makes advances toward him, and he shuns her for no
particular reason. It’s not long before we find out he’s gay —
something that comes to the fore when he becomes fixated on the
farmer’s teenage son (Ladislav Sedivy). The longer the teacher stays in
the closet, the more uncomfortable things get. Written and directed by
Bohdan Sláma, The Country Teacher juxtaposes big city and
rural values and ultimately shows that humanity can be possible for
both. Cleveland Museum of Art Lecture Hall. At 6:45 p.m. Wednesday,
July 29, and 6:45 p.m. Friday, July 31. ***(Niesel)
Funny People Reviewed at clevescene.com.
Oliver Twist (Britain/Czech Republic/France/Italy, 2005)
Roman Polanski’s gray version of the oft-filmed Charles Dickens classic
has the noble implicit aim to rescue the iconic material from the
Disneyesque overtones evoked by the upbeat musical Oliver! and
get back to Dickens’ original cry of anger over society’s injustices
and abuse of helpless children. Still, for all the talents involved,
this is off-the-rack Masterpiece Theatre stuff, surprising only
in that the screenwriter dispensed with Dickens’ complicated third-act
revelations about Little Orphan Oliver’s true parentage as a lost boy
of noble London aristocracy, dumped into the brutish
workhouse-orphanages of Victorian England and shanghaied into a
pick-pocketing street gang. The much-told tale gets a little better as
it goes along, thanks to Ben Kingsley’s performance as criminal
ringleader Fagin, part kindly granddad, part loathsome exploiter (the
character’s infamous Jewish origins are never noted; at least Ron Moody
had some soundtrack cues as giveaways). And yet there’s little here
that tops David Lean’s magnificently stark 1948 version or even Sir
Carol Reed’s flavorful 1968 G-rated film of the musical, with its
lavish production numbers that grabbed the Best Picture Oscar away from
2001: A Space Odyssey. Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque.
At 7 p.m. Friday, July 31. ** 1/2 (Charles Cassady Jr.)
A Shot in the Dark (US, 1964) Peter Sellers reprised his role
as bumbling inspector Jacques Clouseau in this, possibly the best of
the Pink Panther series. Its mention tends to get blank stares
from casual moviegoers because of the studio’s failure to mention
“panther” in the title (indeed, even Henry Mancini’s theme music is
entirely different and quite good). A wordless pre-credit sequence,
suggesting that director Blake Edwards was studying Jacques Tati at the
time, is a complicated intrigue involved different men skulking around
the estate, just avoiding each other. One is killed — the
ex-lover (also possibly the rapist, we’re told) of the mansion’s
blonde-bombshell maid Maria (Elke Sommer), who was found holding the
gun but claiming no memory of the event. Hot on the trail, Clouseau is
immediately smitten with Maria and defends her as an innocent being
framed, even when other characters turn up dead left and right around
her. This was the comedy that set up the elements that would become
familiar in the Edwards/Sellers collaborations: disaster-causing
Clouseau, his wrathful chief Dreyfus (Herbert Lom), his attack-ready
manservant Kato (Burt Kwouk). It works wonderfully, more remarkably
because the source material was actually an unrelated stage comedy
about a judge, retro-fitted to the Clouseau-niverse. Cleveland
Institute of Art Cinematheque. At 9:15 p.m. Saturday, August 1, and 1
p.m. Sunday, August 2. **** (Cassady)
In Theatres
G-Force You could do worse than this for a generally OK
summer kiddie frolic, an alliance between Jerry Bruckheimer and Disney.
There’s barely any breathing room in the CGI-dependent,
Ritalin-deficient, action-spazz narrative about a team of superspy
guinea pigs, rodents and bugs trained by an eccentric scientist to talk
and act as a secret-agent task force. Imagine Spy Kids’ Pets as
an alternate title, although — refreshingly — there are few
child characters. The wonder critters, a.k.a. G-Force, try to expose a
standard spy-flick bad-guy-with-a-suave-British-accent (Bill Nighy, out
from under his Pirates of the Caribbean makeup), who has
household appliances around the world timed to detonate with an evil
mystery chip. Not to spoil things too much, but shape-shifting
“Transformer” robots are getting pretty stale as plot devices. That
said, you’re in for visual treat if you go to the 3D version.
** 1/2 (Cassady)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince As the
penultimate story in the series, The Half-Blood Prince plays a
lot like The Two Towers, the middle part of The Lord of the
Rings trilogy. In a way, it’s just a stepping stone between
exposition and climax. But it’s also a crucial part of the tale —
perhaps the most important link, the chapter that tidies up some past
questions and opens up a crapload of others. In The Half-Blood
Prince, evil Voldemort’s presence lurks in the corridors of
Hogwarts, even though he’s MIA in the movie. Something bad is
definitely brewing, and grand old wizard Dumbledore (Michael Gambon)
wants to make sure Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and his trusty schoolmates,
Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint), are prepared. Harry,
Hermione and Ron’s relationships — with each other and with
various other young wizards and witches — take up a sizable chunk
of the movie’s narrative. Much is made of these budding romances; the
horny teens’ raging libidos fuel much of the onscreen tension. The
movies and actors have gotten more assured over the years. It helps
that The Half-Blood Prince is one of the best Potter books, but
this is also one of the best films — assertive, thrilling and
funny. *** (Michael Gallucci)
The Ugly Truth At this late date in movie history, it seems
almost unnecessary to provide detailed narratives, since the tropes are
so familiar. Case in point: this romantic comedy starring Katherine
Heigl as a lovelorn TV producer and Gerard Butler as the crass
misogynist her station hires to boost ratings. The audience can recite
the formula (hate at first sight turns to love), so the movie can
largely ignore plot development and just revel in the charisma of its
leads. Fortunately, it’s blessed with genuinely appealing players
(unlike, say, The Proposal). Heigl is an Amazonian beauty with
comedic flair, and Butler, a Scotsman known chiefly for kicking ass in
300, displays a twinkling Clooney/Crowe charm. He plays Mike,
host of a ribald cable-access show debunking feminine notions of
romance, who’s recruited over the objections of Abby (Heigl) to salvage
her sagging morning-news program. He also helps salvage her sagging
love life in a sort of reverse Pygmalion: transforming her from strong
woman into cleavage-baring Barbie doll. Director Robert Luketic’s track
record is spotty (Legally Blonde, Monster-in-Law), but this one
benefits from an amusing, if uneven, screenplay by Nicole Eastman and
Karen McCullah Lutz that’s innocuously raunchy — a combination
you might not have thought possible. ***(Pamela Zoslov)
This article appears in Jul 29 – Aug 4, 2009.
