25TH REEL MUSIC FESTIVAL
All screenings take place at the Northwest Film Center’s Whitsell
Auditorium.
FABRICATING TOM ZÉ
Tom Zé was the oddball in the Brazilian
Tropicália movement of the late ’60s. Creating artful, bizarre
music from disparate sources (including traditional favela folksongs
and musique concrète), he fell into obscurity while peers
Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil became titans of the Brazilian musical
establishment. David Byrne championed Zé’s music many years
later, and here, we see Zé and band on a recent European tour.
The film contains little backstory and virtually no examination of what
makes his music so unique, other than his claim that, lacking any
conventional musical talent, he was compelled to rely on creativity to
be noticed. Zé’s freakout at a Montreux Jazz Festival sound
check notwithstanding, it’s a mostly dull tour documentary, and a
missed opportunity to study a remarkable and unconventional artist. NED
LANNAMANN
LES PAUL: CHASING THE SOUND
A documentary on the fellow who made that damn rock ‘n’ roll music
that the kids like so damn much so damn loud.
A LIFE IN THE DEAH OF JOE MEEK
There’s a terrific movie in the story of crazed British record
producer Joe Meek. This documentary isn’t it. Meek was homosexual
at a time when it was illegal in England, had a paranoid fascination
with the occult, and shot himself and his landlady in 1967, leaving
behind a legacy of broken promises and some very weird music. The
film gives us a bunch of Brits incomprehensibly jabbering at the camera
who reveal more about themselves and their own prejudices than they do
about Meek’s life and work. We never gain a real understanding of
this strange, tormented individual. Perhaps that’s the point. NED
LANNAMANN
MY NAME IS ALBERT AYLER
Listen to “Zion Hill” again, and be reminded that avant-garde jazz
saxophonist Albert Ayler is one of the greats. Here’s a documentary
about his life, from his first album (1962’s Something
Different!!!!!) to his mysterious death at age 34.
RUNNIN’ DOWN A DREAM: TOM PETTY AND THE
HEARTBREAKERS
This four-hour, Peter Bogdanovich-directed documentary is most
interesting during the early, hungry years, but there are plenty of
full-length live performance clips throughout Petty & Co.’s three
decades in the business. Record company trouble, band squabbles,
divorces, drug overdoses, arson, Stevie Nicks—it’s all here, and
so are some pretty damn great songs. The thing’s far too long to watch
in the theater, but if you’re a Heartbreakers fan, you’ll probably want
to get the DVD. NED LANNAMANN
SOUL DEEP: THE STORY OF BLACK POPULAR
MUSIC
This six-hour, BBC-produced primer on the roots and manifestations
of American soul music does an admirable job of trying to get its arms
around this massive subject. Beginning with Louis “Let the Good Times
Roll” Jordan and whimpering out with J. Lo (evidently the producers
weren’t ready to tackle the divided psyche of the 21st century African
American male as reflected in the Kanye/Fiddy feud), Soul Deep succeeds as a basic “this begat that” story of R&B. Unfortunately,
American history is presented at remedial levels for the intended
British audience, and cheesy reenactments litter the whole show.
Highpoints include tons of archival footage and a few good anecdotes
here and there, but they should have called this one Soul Music for
Dummies: We’ll Explicate Sexual Innuendo for You. CHAS BOWIE
THE TALENTED MR. RABINOWITZ
Composer, conductor, and Portlander Harry Rabinowitz presents clips
and selections from some of his “favorite film projects,” from
Remains of the Day (yay!) to Cold Mountain (boo!).
YOU’RE GONNA MISS
ME
I’d never heard of Roky Erickson or his band—the 13th Floor
Elevators, pioneers of ’60s psychedelic music—before watching
You’re Gonna Miss Me, and that’s a damn dirty shame. This
wonderful documentary about Roky’s adult-onset schizophrenia, drug use,
and imprisonment in a high-security mental hospital after pleading
insanity to a trumped-up marijuana charge is a film of quiet beauty.
Under the skillful direction of Keven McAlester, it doesn’t matter if
you’ve ever heard of the Elevators or Roky, because this compassionate,
layered story evokes rather than shows the recluse’s past and present,
giving the audience time to feel and appreciate the musician’s life and
family. You’re Gonna Miss Me brilliantly crafts the tale of a
forgotten musical genius and the dysfunctional family that helped him
get lost in personal darkness. COURTNEY FERGUSON
27 Dresses
See review. Various Theaters.
The Amateurs
See review. Clinton Street Theater.
Atonement
The first hour of Atonement, based on the book by Ian McEwan and
set in a pre-war English country house, is faultless: a pungent stew of
pleasure and dread, shrill suspicions and pouting revenge. The film’s
casting is brilliant, the production design impeccable, the
point-of-view switchbacks beautifully turned. Sloughing off the novel’s
pretentious narration, the film nonetheless bows to his conceit by
weaving the sounds of a typewriter into the score. And even if the
second half of the film is disappointing, relative to the first, it’s
not entirely wrongheaded. ANNIE WAGNER Various Theaters.
Autism:
The Musical
This excellent documentary follows five kids with autism as they join
the Miracle Project, a musical theater production designed to give
these kids an environment where they can be themselves—as opposed
to their everyday lives, which are constantly under the strain of being
manipulated to conform them into the status quo as best they can. But
this film is, naturally, more about the kids and their parents than the
production itself. With alarmingly high rates of autism, it’s
bittersweet to see how these children cope with their condition. More
harrowing are the emotional journeys of the parents, who see marriages
ripped apart, struggle with depression, and suffer from constant
anxiety over how to maintain their children’s dignity and safety in a
world that undervalues their very existence. MARJORIE SKINNER
Clinton Street Theater.
Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead has a lot going for it: a sinfully
exciting story, an all-star cast, and veteran director Sidney Lumet
(Network). A crime thriller, it centers on two brothers, Andy
(Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Hank (Ethan Hawke). Andy, the older of the
two, concocts a scheme in which the two knock over their own parents’
suburban jewelry store; needless to say, things go wrong. Devil has an underlying pulse on what hurts about middle-class American life,
and its action is like a clusterfuck symphony of family gone the worst
kind of wrong. It’s a wild, grimy ride, but you’ll be able to get off
without looking back. MARJORIE SKINNER Hollywood Theatre.
The Bucket List
The Bucket List? Seriously? Who fucking green-lit that title?
Can you imagine actually walking up to the box office and being all,
“Yes, um, I would like two tickets for The Bucket List, please”?
I’m embarrassed just typing it. Surely this isn’t meant to be a review
of a movie title, but The Bucket List‘s very name is strangely
indicative of the kind of awkward misfire clearly behind the boardroom
gavel drop that set this mess out to spawn. “All right, so we got this
sort of morbid, geriatric Odd Couple thing going, okay? So we
need like one guy to convey the sage wisdom of the humble poor, but the
thing is, he’s got to be old, too. Hmmm… I got it! Morgan Freeman!
And we’ll get him to do that cool voiceover thing he always does at the
beginning and the end of every movie he’s in. This is shaping up
nicely.” Soon they’ve got rich asshole Jack Nicholson (who, frankly,
looks like he might actually be dying) coughing blood into a
handkerchief like he’s one of the Brontë sisters or something, and
then rattling off Nicholsonisms that lost their cool about the time
that he started to look like Mickey Rooney. There is also a
mind-blowingly ill-conceived skydiving scene. If you have even a
marginal interest in paying to see this film, you deserve what you get.
ZAC PENNINGTON Various Theaters.
Cassandra’s Dream
See review. Fox Tower 10.
A
Clockwork Orange
A bit of the old ultra-violence. ERIK HENRIKSEN Living Room
Theaters.
Cloverfield
See review. Various Theaters.
Daughters of Wisdom
A documentary about Kala Rongo, a rare Buddhist monastery in Tibet that
allows women, as nuns, the opportunity to experience the same spiritual
rigors that men do. For many of the women who live at Kala Rongo, this
offers an option besides the life of hard labor that is the status quo
in Tibet’s remote countryside. Daughters, while itself a rather
placid film, is something of a reality check—it’s easy to forget
that on the other side of the world, becoming a nun is the cutting edge
of women’s liberation. MARJORIE SKINNER Hollywood Theatre.
The
Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Movies that are “based on a true story” are usually dismal
affairs—extraordinary human experiences flattened into
pseudo-inspirational morality tales. An emphatic new exception is
Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, based on
the autobiography of the completely paralyzed Jean-Dominique Bauby
(Jean-Do to his friends). Diving Bell is that rare case where an
amazing story and amazing filmmaking collide, a rich and beautiful film
that does full justice to its source material. ALISON HALLETT Fox
Tower 10.
Divorce, Italian Style
Pietro Germi’s 1961 Italian sex comedy. (Just FYI,
Pietro—changing your last name would have done wonders for the
sexy factor in your sex comedies.) Northwest Film Center’s Whitsell
Auditorium.
First Sunday
There’s no justification for this level of dumb: Durell (Ice Cube) and
LeeJohn (Tracy Morgan) are junior criminals on the fast track to doing
some hard time. After a bungled theft leaves them in debt to some
fearsome Jamaican gangsters (yes, really), they decide to rob their
local church. But instead of cash, they end up with something way more
valuable: redemption. For example! In what’s probably the most
uncomfortable moment ever captured on film, Sister Doris (played by
Loretta Devine, from Boston Public—and actually, now that
I think about it, everyone from Boston Public is in this, for
some reason. Except for Seven of Nine. She’s not in it. Big mistake,
Hollywood!) sings a hymnal-y happy birthday song to a tearful LeeJohn.
Squirmy. KIALA KAZEBEE Various Theaters.
I’m Not
There
Six different films in at least as many styles weave through I’m Not
There, and after the opening credits announce that the movie was
“inspired by the music and many lives of Bob Dylan,” we never hear the
singer’s name again (although his music is used to maximum effect
throughout). Each of the film’s fictionalized-Dylan characters,
including those played by Cate Blanchett and 14-year-old African
American actor Marcus Carl Franklin, come with their own names
(including “Woody Guthrie” and “Billy the Kid”), and represent a unique
strand of Dylan’s creative path, career, or persona. As a whole, I’m
Not There is one of the smartest, most innovative, and beautiful
films of this era. CHAS BOWIE Various Theaters.
In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
Uwe Boll’s latest film is a magnum dopus so utterly inept that it
somehow comes off as perversely admirable. The other two people at
Friday’s matinee seemed to enjoy it, too. ANDREW WRIGHT Various
Theaters.
It Is Fine, Everything Is Fine, & What Is
It?
A selection of new films and a feature from Crispin Glover. The evening
also includes a slide show, a Q & A with Glover, and a book and
poster signing. Feel free to shout out “You were the bomb in
Beowulf, yo!” But whatever you do, don’t bring up Back to the
Future. It’s a sore, sore subject with Mr. Glover. Trust us.
Clinton Street Theater.
King: A
Filmed Record From Montgomery to Memphis
It’s a day ON, not a day OFF, people! Archival newsreel footage of
Martin Luther King, Jr. in action. Clinton Street Theater.
Mad Money
See review. Various Theaters.
One Missed Call
I’m sorry, but voicemail is not scary. COURTNEY FERGUSON Various
Theaters.
The
Orphanage
There is nothing new in the horror flick The Orphanage. There is
a haunted house. There are ghosts. There are deformed kids, there are
masks, there are unsettling old/young people, there are flickering
video screens filled with grainy night vision, and there
are—totally unironically—things that go bump in the night.
In short, screenwriter Sergio G. Sánchez and director Juan
Antonio Bayona are content to dig up and exploit every worn-out horror
cliché they can think of—which’d be a problem if The
Orphanage wasn’t so goddamn scary. ERIK HENRIKSEN Various
Theaters.
Pete Seeger:
The Power of Song
Hey wait, where’s the Silver
Bullet Band? Just kidding. Pete Seeger’s life is given the proper
legend treatment with director Jim Brown’s fantastic documentary The
Power of Song. Seeger was a rare visionary who placed art before
commerce and went out of his way to personalize his music, establish a
legacy, and school future generations in the ways of American folk
music. For this, he was hounded by the FBI, nearly jailed for his
comments at the House on Un-American Activities, and suffered greatly
to bring the music to the masses. But in the end, he prevailed,
launching numerous folk revivals the world over, and establishing
himself as one of the few untouchable icons in musical history. EZRA
ACE CARAEFF Hollywood Theatre.
The Savages
Siblings Jon (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Wendy (Laura Linney) are
quietly unhappy adults whose dysfunctionality is traceable to their
disturbed childhood, thanks to an absent mother and abusive father
(Philip Bosco). As their father’s health declines, Wendy and
Jon—despite years of estrangement from the volatile old
man—relocate him to a nursing home near Jon’s house. The
Savages is bleak, but it will likely resonate strongly with the
boomer crowd, who are starting to deal with these issues themselves.
The film’s impact is somewhat diminished by a tacked-on, redemptive
ending (which will also probably resonate strongly with the boomer
crowd), but there are enough small, powerful insights here to forgive a
little happily-ever-after. ALISON HALLETT Various Theaters.
Street
Fight
A must-see documentary for anyone with even a passing interest in
American politics, Street Fight follows the 2002 mayoral
elections in Newark, New Jersey, in which the young reformer Cory
Booker ran against beloved incumbent Sharpe James. The film is a
compelling, frustrating look at city politics and the increasingly
complicated role of race in government. Screens as a benefit for
City Council candidate John Branma. ALISON HALLETT Mississippi
Studios.
There
Will Be Blood
“I have a competition in me. I do not wish to see anyone else succeed,”
confides Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) in a moment of rare
candor. “I hate most people.” This is Plainview’s secret, which emerges
slowly from his veneer of confident sophistication until it becomes a
misanthropic force too large for any man to harness. Plainview’s greed
and loathing is at the heart of There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas
Anderson’s new film of astounding depth, intensity, and brutality.
Based loosely on Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel Oil!, Blood finds Anderson with a refined vision and cinematic maturity that not
even his best films could have prepared us for. CHAS BOWIE Various
Theaters.