25TH REEL MUSIC FESTIVAL
All screenings take place at the Northwest Film Center’s Whitsell
Auditorium.
LET’S GET LOST
A look at jazz musician Chet Baker.
NINA
SIMONE: LA LEGENDE
& LA LUPE, QUEEN OF LATIN
SOUL
A documentary from the fierce chanteuse’s adopted home of France,
Nina Simone: La Legende captures some valuable interviews with
Simone’s family members in North Carolina, and better yet, with the
lady herself. Footage of live performances takes the cake, of course,
and the raw emotion in her delivery is underscored by the film’s
ability to put the songs in the context of history. Still, one gets the
sense that there is a much better documentary to be made here, one
that’s less scattershot and meandering. Nina Simone is followed
by La Lupe, Queen of Latin Soul, a doc about Lupe Yoli, who came
from an obscure town in Cuba to become one of the most striking figures
in America’s Latin soul scene. A whirling dervish of false eyelashes,
manic performances, and frenetic speed, the woman known as La Lupe was
enigmatic and exciting. This film benefits from the undeniable
fascination of its subject—La Lupe is impossible not to watch,
and her story is funny, sad, and awesome in equal parts. MARJORIE
SKINNER
NOUBA OF GOLD AND LIGHT
A documentary about nouba, “a traditional Algerian song with
five movements.”
SLIM GAILLARD’S
CIVILIZATION: PART
II
The second chunk in an epic four-part look at jazz musician Slim
Gaillard.
AFRICAN FILM FESTIVAL
The 18th Annual Cascade Festival of African Films begins Friday,
February 1, and runs until Saturday, March 1. Films weren’t screened
for critics, but they’re all free and open to the public. More info:
africanfilmfestival.org.
ALEX’S WEDDING
Jean-Marie Teno’s documentary about a polygamous marriage ceremony.
Director in attendance. PCC Cascade Campus.
BAMAKO
I don’t know if Bono was somewhere behind this film, but it sounds
like it. Bamako asks, “Are Western financial institutions
responsible for African poverty? Is globalization the cause or the
solution of economic injustice?” And I mean it literally asks: The film
plays out as a mock trial set in a Mali village, judging the impact of
World Bank policies on Africa. As such, it moves along just like a mock
trial, with heady, policy-specific diatribes from both sides. Overall,
it’s tedious, and its slowness defies all laws of physics. But if
you’re looking for a date movie for that hottie you met at the
anti-globalization protest, have I got a movie for you! SCOTT MOORE
PCC Cascade Campus.
BLACK GIRL
A young woman working in Senegal moves to France, finding “dashed
hopes in the realm of neo-colonialism.” Preceded by the short
film Borom Sarret. PCC Cascade Campus.
COLONIAL MISUNDERSTANDING
Another Jean-Marie Teno documentary, this one examining German
missionaries in Namibia. Director in attendance. PCC Cascade
Campus.
DRY SEASON
A revenge film set in “the aftermath of Chad’s bloody 40-year civil
war.” PCC Cascade Campus.
GUELWAAR
Ousmane Sembène’s film about clashing Muslim and Catholic
communities. PCC Cascade Campus.
INDIGÈNES
A WWII drama about the war’s “indigenous soldiers.” Hollywood
Theatre.
FILM SHORTS
27 Dresses
A rage-inducing waste of Knocked Up‘s lovely Katherine Heigl.
Ripping off nearly every moment from My Best Friend’s Wedding,
this crappy rom-com storms your sensibilities with a blitzkrieg of
clichés. (Sing-along? Check. Annoying blonde bride? Check.
Unrequited love? Check.) Designed for walking stereotypes, 27
Dresses will only bring enjoyment to treacly tweens and
husband-hunting sorority girls. COURTNEY FERGUSON Various
Theaters.
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 McEwan’s 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.
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 Academy
Theater, Laurelhurst, Living Room Theaters,
Mission Theater.
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.
Cloverfield
A short, punchy, exhilarating riff on the Godzilla flicks of the ’50s
and ’60s and the disaster epics of the ’70s. But Cloverfield‘s
decidedly personal and postmodern, too: Unlike the polished bluster of
Bruckheimer or the popcorn thrills of Spielberg, director Matt Reeves’
film is messy and clunky, thanks to its gimmick of shooting epic-sized
disaster with digital camcorders. It’s a contrivance, sure, but what
impresses is how well it’s done: I’ve seen countless monsters demolish
countless New York landmarks, but I can’t think of any time it’s felt
as fresh and fun as it does in Cloverfield. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Various Theaters.
Control
More obsessed with mood than factual realism, Control, the
much-talked-about Ian Curtis story, doesn’t have an immediately
striking emotional impact, but rather a lingering, haunting effect.
Perhaps director Anton Corbijn’s greatest success in adapting Curtis’
story to film is in Control‘s stylistic similarity to Joy
Division’s music, which on the surface is stubbornly simplistic yet
moodily compelling. Likewise, the film’s look is stark and almost old
fashioned, but quietly, darkly powerful. MARJORIE SKINNER
Laurelhurst.
The Eye
Starlet Jessica Alba has said in interviews that she hopes this remake
of a 2002 Hong Kong horror flick will help establish her as a serious
actress. Which is weird, because The Eye wasn’t screened for
critics. We bet it’s because Alba’s performance was so good that
the studio wanted to keep it secret! Oh, wait. That doesn’t make any
sense. At all. Sorry, Jess. Various Theaters.
Getting Out Alive
A benefit screening of Shani Heckman’s “documentary on foster child
success,” accompanied by music, prizes, a silent auction, and a
screening of the short film Wrong Bathroom. Zaytoon.
Hannah Montana Concert
Tour in 3D
Apparently, regular ol’ 2D Hannah Montana just isn’t enough. Various
Theaters.
Honeydripper
See review this issue. Fox Tower 10.
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 Clinton Street Theater,
Hollywood Theatre.
Juno
There’s a perfect little gem of a movie buried inside of Juno,
an offbeat-yet-honest portrayal of a precocious high school girl, Juno
(played by an acerbic Ellen Page), who gets pregnant, finds herself
unable to go through with an abortion, and decides to give the baby up
for adoption. Unfortunately, it’s not enough that Juno is funny,
well written, and perfectly acted; director Jason Reitman seems
determined to get his piece of the saccharine twee-cinema pie, and the
film has a too-precious lacquer that can distract from its best
moments. ALISON HALLETT Various Theaters.
Mad Money
Fans of semi-geriatric Diane Keaton gettin’ randy with semi-geriatric
Ted Danson, of Mrs. Tom Cruise’s uncontrollable Play-Doh face, and
especially of excessively rapturous money-throwing sequences: Your ship
officially has come in. For the rest of us, Mad Money stands to
offer little more than the potential “formatted to fit your television”
sort of diversion you’ll need whilst nursing that Sunday morning
hangover sometime around 2011. ZAC PENNINGTON Various
Theaters.
Meet the Spartans
Another spoof movie from the unfunny douchebags who’re culpable for
Epic Movie and Date Movie. This time, 300,
Spider-Man 3, and Borat get parodied. Guys, just…
please stop. Just… fucking stop. Various Theaters.
Millions: A Lottery Story
Millions follows six lottery winners, including Phylis Breth, a
dishwasher in a Minnesota high school who won a 16th of $95 million on
Powerball along with her fellow canteen workers. Breth keeps her job,
but buys a fridge with an ice-maker, asking with tears in her eyes,
“Who would have thought I could have gotten the things I want?” There’s
also Louis Eisenberg and Curtis Sharp, the first New Yorkers to win $5
million from the lottery in the ’80s. Both are now broke, although
Eisenberg doesn’t regret it, and Sharp found God at rock bottom. He
visits prisons as a pastor these days. It’s well-told, existential
stuff. MATT DAVIS Hollywood Theatre.
Over Her Dead Body
See review this issue. Various Theaters.
Persepolis
Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novels, Persepolis and Persepolis II, are reimagined in an excellent animated
treatment that condenses the events of the two books into a frank,
poignant coming-of-age story that surpasses its source material in both
visual elegance and storytelling economy. ALISON HALLETT City Center
12, Fox Tower 10.
Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead
Admittedly I’m only a casual fan of Troma films (The Toxic Avenger,
Chopper Chicks in Zombietown, Tromeo and Juliet), but I found
Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead to be especially
grating. Even with good production values, it’s extremely hard to sit
through over 90 minutes of shit, blue ooze, zombie sodomies, and
racism—all for a send-up of the horrors of fast food (yawn).
Tromaville’s Native American burial ground gets ‘dozed for a new fried
chicken joint and the result is an influx of zombie chicken people.
Gore and songs ensue. It’s sure to leave a fowl taste in your mouth.
COURTNEY FERGUSON Mission Theater.
Rambo
Rambo, Stallone’s attempt to keep ringing the retro cherries
after the success of last year’s Rocky Balboa, stays on the
verge of being a rousing dumbass flick at all times—you’ve never
seen so many mid-air organs—yet its combination of outrageous
bodily trauma and beagle-eyed moments of reflection never quite makes
it go over the top. Stallone’s script finds our hero recovering from
the events of 1988’s Rambo III (AKA “the one where he drove a
tank into a helicopter”) by catching cobras in Thailand. Said idyllic
life is disrupted, however, with the arrival of a bunch of clueless
do-gooder Americans attempting to cross the border into Burma. When
they get captured by a cartoonishly evil platoon of soldiers, Rambo
reluctantly teams up with a stereotyped bunch of mercenaries to stomp
righteous ass. It’s only in this final act, particularly when Stallone
gets the chance to go ape-shit with a Jeep-mounted machine gun, that
Rambo starts to approach the kind of idgit Valhalla that it’s
been promising all along. ANDREW WRIGHT Various Theaters.
Revolver
See review this issue. Hollywood Theatre.
Shrooms
From the official synopsis: “It sounded like it would be great fun. Now
that they are tripping, things don’t seem so funny.” We did not subject
any of our critics to this film. Living Room Theaters.
Starting Out in the Evening
See review this issue. Fox Tower 10.
Strange Wilderness
So speaketh IMDB.com: “With the ratings dropping for a
wilderness-themed TV show, two animal fans go to the Andes in search of
Bigfoot.” Not screened for critics, and produced by Adam Sandler.
Various Theaters.
SUPERTRASH
See Film, pg. 43. Bagdad Theater.
Teeth
Dawn (Jess Weixler) is a sexually repressed high school student who,
unbeknownst to her, has vagina dentata—i.e., her red snapper has
really, really sharp teeth. Calling Teeth an emotionally charged
fable would be the understatement of the year. Combining black humor,
monster-movie horror, and the best of ’70s sexploitation flicks,
writer/director Mitchell Lichtenstein’s fascinating film manages to
avoid the Fatal Attraction cautionary tale pitfalls and
successfully aims for a message of female sexual empowerment. COURTNEY
FERGUSON Fox Tower 10.
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.
Untraceable
Filmed and based in Portland, Untraceable—in which a
maniacal, kitten-killing computer hacker uses the web to murder
people—manages to easily surpass both Feast of Love and
The Hunted as the single worst movie to ever take place in our
fair city. EZRA ACE CARAEFF Various Theaters.