Also this issue:

Hollywouldn't
A look back reveals Hollywood's failure to address the real world.
-Sam Adams

Double Trouble
2002's best movies worked the combinations.
-Cindy Fuchs

Naughty and Nice
How to tell the holiday-movie presents from the lumps of coal.
-Sam Adams and Cindy Fuchs

December 25-31, 2002

screen picks

by Sam Adams

Performance (Sat., Dec. 28, 8 p.m., $6, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-895-6542, www.ihousephilly.org) Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg's trippy gangster movie -- which, incidentally, features Mick Jagger's best screen performance (sorry, Freejack) -- celebrates 22 years with a restored print that screens at International House on Saturday.

New Voices for the New Year (Fri., Dec. 27-Tue., Dec. 31, 9 p.m., Sundance Channel) While you're taking stock of all the things you forgot to do this year, get a jump on 2003 with Sundance Channel's five-day series of debut features, a new one airing each night at 9. (Each repeats once, at varying times.) Unfortunately, I haven't seen Bill Morrison's Decasia, which kicks off the series, but it's worth seeing on concept alone. Set to a score by Bang on a Can co-founder Michael Gordon, Morrison's otherwise silent film knits together pieces of found footage united only by their state of disrepair -- where skewed colors, cracked emulsions or projector scratches might be distractions or obstacles in other films, here they're the subject. Morrison, whose previous work is all in the short form, calls it "a portrait of humanity using decay, our battle with time, as its common language."

Also on the agenda is The Slaughter Rule (Dec. 28), written and directed by Andrew and Alex Smith, whom you might remember as the floppy-haired short film programmers of the Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema during the Phyllis Kaufman era. With roles for Fest guest Clea DuVall and local favorite (and, ugh, Hack star) David Morse, it's clear the Smiths made good use of their brief sojourn in Philly, but more importantly, Slaughter feeds off a thoughtful, laconic sensibility that's miles away from your standard calling-card indie. Ryan Gosling (The Believer) stars as a small-town Montana boy whose life falls apart after his estranged father is killed in an "accident" that looks a lot like suicide, and he subsequently loses his prized spot on the high-school football team. Enter Morse as a disgraced football coach with a penchant for "six-man," a semi-established gridiron offshoot with a much higher smash-mouth quotient. (Think of it as the XFL without cheerleaders.) Morse's character's habit of spitting out the group and year of release whenever anyone refers to a song lyric is textbook bad writing, and the centrality of football to the story inevitably leaves a whiff of after-school special in the air. But there's a rare tenderness to the Smiths' approach, and a texture to the image that evokes memories of Terrence Malick.