Arabian Nights
Do you need to know more than this film is not rated, but the Film Center is insisting “mature content, age 18 and over”? Want more? How about, a 1974 Italian film that “pushes the boundaries of sex and violence”? Yes, storytelling the way it should be. Exotic, hectic and wild. The story of a spunky slave girl who saves her hide by telling captivating stories.
Beyond Borders
Beyond Borders opens and closes in London, with jaunts to such cheery locales as Ethiopia, Cambodia, and Chechnya along the way. It stars the great Clive Owen and the rapidly deteriorating Angelina Jolie. It aims to be an important, life-affirming romance. It is, in a word, a disaster. (Bradley Steinbacher)
Cannibal! The Musical
Combine the gore of Blood Feast with the nonsense of Blazing Saddles, then throw in a few of the choreographed dance scenes of Waiting for Guffman, and what you get is Cannibal! the Musical. Trey Parker directs and stars as Alferd Packer, the only person ever convicted of cannibalism in the United States.
* Dead Alive See My What a Busy Week pg 19
* The Entity
Supposedly based on a true story, Carla (played by Barbara Hershey) is tortured and raped by an invisible force. After being shunned by her friends and family, who think she’s insane, she consults a group of parapsychologists.
The Event
Parker Posey and Sara Polley are among the notable actors starring in this film, and they’re smooth. But this is an AIDS drama, aka the cheapest shot in the history of cinema. The only thing worse than watching an AIDS drama is watching a film about the Twin Towers. And they use the freaking Twin Towers in this movie to illustrate the passing of time. Oh, child. It’s also about the legality and morality of assisted suicide. This aspect is sufficiently interesting, but also fidget inducing. It does have colorful characters and a few glowing sparks of down-to-earth, charming humor. However, the film could be a very effective assistant to suicide itself. (Marjorie Skinner)
* Illuminated Texts: Recent Films by David Gatten
Watching the films of David Gatten (or most any of the programs at Cinema Project for that matter) feels like getting a deep tissue massage for your brain. Gatten’s experimental film projects skip narrative and linear structure in favor of sensual, process-based images and abstractions that evoke deep memories without becoming nostalgic. Once your brain accepts that there’s no plot line to flesh out, and adapts to the silence of many of his pieces, it kicks into a curious, meditative space where the beauty of Gatten’s work can shine through. Cinema Project will screen his recent film works over two nights of austere experimentation. (Chas Bowie)
Intolerable Cruelty
The Coen brothers give us a pleasant comedy with Intolerable Cruelty, which is worth seeing for Clooney’s performance alone, but the film doesn’t breach any new territory, and certainly doesn’t measure up to Fargo or Miller’s Crossing. (Katie Shimer)
* Kill Bill: Volume 1
Unlike the meandering plots of Tarantino’s previous films, Kill Bill is dead-on simple: Uma Thurman stars as “The Bride”–an assassin who’s shot in the noggin on her wedding day by a band of killers sent out by her former boss, Bill. The Bride, however, didn’t die–and after snapping out of a coma, she commissions a samurai blade from a venerable sword-maker (Sonny Chiba) and sets off to slice and dice everyone who dared ruin her perfect day of wedded bliss. (Wm. Steven Humphrey)
Mambo Italiano
The décor at The Olive Garden takes more of a stab at intelligent humor about Italians than this played-out “comedy” does. The premise, as if it even matters, involves an old-world Italian couple who just “can’t get used to this cuckoo American world of ours.” (Jennifer Maerz)
* Melvin Goes to Dinner
A true-to-life comedy about a group of regular people who not only happen to be eating dinner together, but also have secrets to hide.
Mystic River
For all the “inexorability” and “meditation” of its violence, Mystic River feels desperately contrived. Whether director Clint Eastwood has some deep understanding of the nature of violence remains unclear. What is certain is that he knows how to make a movie, even a dumb one, well worth watching. I only wish someone would send him some better books. (Sean Nelson)
* Party Monster See review this issue.
Radio
Combining the two most odious tools at Hollywood’s disposal–celebrities portraying the mentally handicapped and Cuba Gooding Jr. —Radio is something like Rudy meets The Waterboy. With “heart.” Oh, the heart.
* Runaway Jury
Runaway Jury is not the greatest movie ever made about juries. That honor remains firmly with The Verdict (1982). But then again, The Verdict lacked foot chases, no-holds-barred fight scenes, high-tech gadgetry, and Gene Hackman. Where other Grisham screenplays have been tired and predictable, this story is a fun romp, careening through hairpin plot turns. (Phil Busse)
Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom
Based on the notoriously dirty and gruesome book by Marquis de Sade. Adopted to a small town and a group of depraved fascists at the end of World War II, sixteen young men and women are held and tortured. Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini in 1975, it is considered one of the most widely censored films–and justifiably so.
Scary Movie 3 See review this issue.
* Space is the Place
Set in Oakland, Space is the Place (1974) is about Sun Ra, an astronaut/jazz pianist who takes a spaceship to Earth with his orchestra (or Arkestra, as he called it). Upon their arrival, they find black people who are spiritually ready to make the galactic trip to a distant planet, where blacks are happy and free. Wear your own intergalactic space outfit to celebrate not only this classic film, but Halloween. Best costume wins a Plexifilm library. (Charles Mudede)
State of Denial
South Africa managed to shake off apartheid and decades of violence only to run headfirst into an AIDS epidemic. An estimated five million people there are infected. What’s most troubling is that the current administration has no idea how to handle this massive problem, choosing to ignore it rather than face it. Six short films take very personal and very touching looks into the epidemic. Definitely not a date movie.
* The Station Agent
Fin McBride (Peter Dinklage), The Station Agent‘s protagonist, was born a dwarf, and has built up a stone-faced resistance to the stares and slurs directed at him daily. When he inherits a small abandoned train station in rural New Jersey, he leaves the city and makes the shack his home. Within a day, the locals notice him and are banging on his door. (Brian Brait)
Stealing Time
Filmed in Eugene and Portland, a locally made film about a bank heist.
* Strange and Peculiar Educational Films
See Destination Fun pg 17
Sylvia See review this issue.
* Texas Chainsaw Massacre
What the new TCM lacks in rivers of flesh, it makes up for in emotional trauma. It’s obvious the filmmaker’s intention was to maintain the feel of the original–that you’re there with the characters, claustrophobic and terrified. (Julianne Shepherd)
Veronica Guerin
Taking its title from an opportunistic columnist, the movie tells the true story about a writer who helped to unravel the heroin drug trade in Dublin. Cate Blanchett plays the title role. Following leads and flirting her way into dangerous places, Guerin truly did bring about justice with the use of her pen. But largely leaving out how Guerin scarified her family life and minimizing how she used her sex appeal to lure in leads, the story turns into a paint-by-numbers morality tale. (Phil Busse)
Wild Style
A faithful preservation of the underground hiphop scene of the early ’80s. See film pg 41.
Wonderland
Though John Holmes plays a major part in the film, Wonderland has disappointingly nothing to do with the porn industry. Instead, it focuses on the true story of a grisly mass murder that took place in the summer of 1981, and the hopped-up coke fiends who made it happen. Wonderland is told in the Rashomon style of filmmaking; imparting the story through the perspectives of several different characters. And though cliché, the style works; however, other than its grisly aspects and celebrity (Holmes) pedigree, the story itself isn’t very interesting. (Wm. Steven Humphrey)