Also this issue:

Good Grief
The heartfelt but confused Moonlight Mile processes real-life tragedy.
-Cindy Fuchs

From a Scream to a Whisper
Werner Herzog’s quiet Invincible.
-Sam Adams

Interview:Werner Herzog
-Sam Adams

Continuing

repertory film

Screen Picks
-Sam Adams

Showtimes

October 3- 9, 2002

movie shorts

New

DAS EXPERIMENT

The shock of the Stanford Prison Experiment was its demonstration that “ordinary” human beings, given the power and left to their own devices, would discover fascism on their own. Oliver Hirschbiegel’s fictionalized account, set in modern Germany, builds backwards from that conclusion, so you always know what’s coming. Tarek (Run Lola Run’s Moritz Bleibtreu) is a reporter who goes undercover within a scientific experiment whose parameters are devilishly simple: break a group of men in half, assign half of them to be prisoners and half to be guards, and watch what happens. Since the results are foreordained, the drama has to come from character, but the film gives us so little insight into who these people were before the experiment that they never seem like more than puppets, pawns in a grad-school thesis. Though it mercifully holds off invoking the Holocaust until near the end, Das Experiment’s not-so-sub-text couldn’t be clearer: the Germans are just waiting to turn back into fascists at the first opportunity. Of course, given Germany’s steadfast opposition to a U.S. invasion of Iraq, you have to wonder that says about us. --Sam Adams (Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz 16)

RED DRAGON

As Red Dragon begins, we’re invited to titter as Hannibal Lecter, many years before The Silence of The Lambs, serves the brains of an inept flautist to the symphony orchestra’s board; Lecter’s transformation into a cannibalistic comedian is complete. Serial killer movies have spread like mold in the years since Silence, often featuring a profiler who can catch the killer because somewhere, deep down, they’re just alike. Never mind that profiling is a borderline sham science with a success rate about equal to ESP; the profiler’s presence is the rationale for the movie’s existence -- it’s not prurient or seedy or exploitative, it’s about us. Red Dragon, based on the same book that spawned 1986’s Manhunter, steals more than a few pages from Silence’s book; plot dictates that Lecter be found in the same cell where he’d be visited by Clarice Starling years later, but director Brett Ratner (the Rush Hours) seems like he’s determined to copy the infinitely superior film shot for shot, at least in the confrontations between Lecter (Anthony Hopkins, once again) and profiler Will Graham (Ed Norton). The setup is similar to Silence, with Lecter enlisted to help catch a killer (Ralph Fiennes) who’s been murdering families and replacing their eyes with shards of mirror. It’s the most vicious of Thomas Harris’ books -- at one point, the killer bites the lips off a tabloid reporter who’s gotten in the way -- but Ratner’s affectless hack direction abandons any moral sense; it’s all show business, folks. At this point, you’d have to say the series’ true auteur is producer Dino de Laurentiis, who’s steered the films ever more towards cheap sensationalism, to the point where they’d have to climb up to be in the gutter. --S.A. (AMC Andorra; AMC Orleans; Baederwood; Bryn Mawr; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)