April 22-28, 2004

movie shorts

new

13 GOING ON 30

See Cindy Fuchs’ review here (AMC Orleans; Bridge; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)

BON VOYAGE

In comedy, they say, timing is everything. So while there’s not disputing the virtues of Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s well-mounted farce, it’s perhaps not unfair to suggest that this isn’t quite the moment for a wacky comedy about Nazi-era France. Starring Isabelle Adjani, Gérard Depardieu, Virginie Ledoyen and Peter Coyote, Bon Voyage recreates Vichy France with a luxuriousness that borders on nostalgia. The era of "les collaborateurs" is an open wound in the French body politic, one the recent debate over (non-)involvement in Iraq clearly ripped the scabs right off. But unlike André Téchiné’s Les 'garés or, from the sound of it, Bertrand Tavernier’s Safe Conduct (going straight to DVD in May), Bon Voyage is a mere Band-Aid, a cup of warm milk instead of a wake-up call. Were it released in a hermetically sealed bubble, Bon Voyage might be a minor triumph; in the open air, it seems like a pitifully inadequate response. --Sam Adams (Ritz East; Ritz 16)

CLIFFORD'S REALLY BIG MOVIE

(Not reviewed.) A haiku:

Mighty crimson beast,
what awful pain hides behind
those googly white eyes?

(AMC Orleans; Narberth; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Riverview)

I'M NOT SCARED

Adapted by Niccol Ammaniti from his novel, Gabriele Salvatores’ film paints a simultaneously grim and romantic portrait of a child’s disillusionment. One hot summer’s day in southern Italy, 9-year-old Michele (Giuseppe Christiano) is playing with his friends, their bare legs dark against the sunburnt fields. After he proves himself the bravest of the group (walking along an old building’s exposed ceiling beam by narrating himself as the "Lizard Man," his own invention), he goes back to their play area to retrieve his younger sister’s glasses. At this point, his life changes forever, when he discovers a boy in a hole. His leg chained, his body bruised and bloodied, Filippo (Mattia Di Pierro) is also nearly blinded by the weeks he’s been living in darkness. Michele overcomes his fear to feed and befriend this poor child, also 9. Even as Michele spends his evenings with his gentle mother (Aitana Sánchez-Gijõn) and stern father (Dino Abbrescia), he comes to understand Filippo’s fear, to empathize with his trauma. At the same time, he learns terrible truths about his parents, loyalty and desperation. Though the plot occasionally lurches into melodrama, Italo Petriccione’s stunning cinematography and Massimo Fiocchi’s delicate editing make Michele’s journeys -- emotional and physical -- feel nuanced. --Cindy Fuchs (Ritz East; Ritz 16)

JAMES' JOURNEY to jerusalem

"I know you’re just here to make money," says a skeptical Tel Aviv customs agent, but all James (Siyabonga Melongisi Shibe) really wants is to see the Holy Land and to take news of it back to his African village. Initially trapped in Tel Aviv, and forced to work as a house cleaner for the opportunistic Shimi (Salim Dau), James develops a taste for the luxuries even his meager wages can buy. Director Ra’anan Alexandrowicz puts the audience in the unusual position of rooting against the protagonist’s financial success: The more money James earns, the further his trip to Jerusalem slips down the agenda. To an extent, the film uses James as a mirror to reflect the crisis of secularism in Israeli society, but the character never becomes a plot device. Shibe conveys innate decency without seeming ingenuous; when he feels something is wrong, you feel it, too. Buoyed by a bouncy Afro-pop score, James’ Journey vibrates with bright colors and visual energy, though Alexandrowicz starts putting up signposts as the film nears its climax (a first-timer telltale). Until then, though, Journey is a highly pleasant trip. --S.A.(Ritz Five)

KITCHEN STORIES

It’s easy to imagine Bent Hamer’s charming comedy as a Warner Bros. cartoon, perhaps with Swedish scientist Folke (Tomas Norstr°m) as Elmer Fudd, and his Norwegian object of study, Isak (Joachim Calmeyer) as Bugs Bunny. The tone of Hamer’s dry, gentle tale couldn’t be less antic, but the battle between the two has a timeless feel, as if the post-WWII antagonism between Swedes and Norwegians (Sweden stayed neutral; Norway didn’t) is just a stand-in for any kind of cultural misunderstanding. Transplanted from his home to study the cooking habits of the Norwegian bachelor, Folke lives in a teardrop-shaped camp in Isak’s yard, ascending a tennis-umpire-style chair to spy on him from the corner of his kitchen. At first, Isak regards his airborne guest with suspicion, but their relationship begins to thaw, in the process challenging Isak’s friendship with his similarly solitary neighbor. Doutbless too understated for some tastes, Kitchen Stories has visual flair to match its wry wit, and beating heart under its frosty Nordic surface. --S.A.(Ritz Five)

MAN ON FIRE

Either Donald Rumsfeld’s wet dream or the sequel to The Passion of the Christ, Man on Fire features Denzel Washington as God’s Warrior (Creasy to the ungodly), a Bible-reading former covert ops agent and current alcoholic whose vengeance is unleashed when the cuddly kid he’s bodyguarding (the preternaturally astute Dakota Fanning) is kidnapped and killed by a group of Mexican thugs. With scars on his hands and wounds (from the kidnapping) that won’t stop bleeding, he’s Dirty Harry with stigmata. You can only imagine adaptor Brian Helgeland saved all his good vengeance-related lines for Mystic River, leaving Christopher Walken to choke on shit sandwiches like "Creasy’s art is death, and he’s about to paint his masterpiece." By comparison, Irreversible seems like a work of philosophy and moral conviction. --S.A. (AMC Orleans; Ritz 16; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)

WILBUR WANTS TO KILL HIMSELF

He does, he really does. Wilbur (a soon-to-be famous Jamie Sives) is an acerbic, angsty Glaswegian with a checkered family medical history coping with the recent death of his father. Older brother Harbour (Adrian Rawlins) is this film’s Laura Linney: the selfless, wise, responsible sibling who by necessity has become a surrogate parent. Harbour is just the sort to befriend, then marry, one of his bookstore customers, a down-on-her-luck cleaning woman (Shirley Henderson) with a 9-year-old daughter (Lisa McKinlay). Meanwhile, Wilbur mopes, attempts several different flavors of felo-de-se, flirts with nurses by demanding that they lick his ears (they do) and gets kicked out of suicide group therapy, apparently for bragging about having seen the other side: "It’s dull as dishwater, it’s silent and completely dark. It’s like being in Wales." With the help of her spot-on cast, director/co-writer/Dogma 95 alum Lone Scherfig (Italian for Beginners) deftly mixes love, death, pathos and mordant black comedy into an odd, but strangely appealing, confection. A film by, about and for contrarians, Wilbur’s all-access emotional gamut will not be for all tastes; it’s the cinematic equivalent of fish on tacos, pineapple on pizza, or strawberry cream cheese on an everything bagel. --Ryan Godfrey (Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz 16)