Movie Week

Another mediocre week for new releases, but a couple really nice rep house offerings, and another nifty American indie film (that is actually indie, actually looks and sounds and feels different than mainstream films) going unreleased, except at Art Museums. So here goes...

Days of Being Wild ****
In the Mood for Love - ***1/2 -
2046 - **** - lots of Wong Kar Wei over the weekend. I think I promised something like this last summer when 2046 came out - but it deserves more than a couple blurbs. I have to think about it, though. Alas! We'll get there.

Alles Auf Zucker - **1/2 - Yes, it was another slow week. Still, this is a perfectly passable German comedy. An aging one time East German TV star, currently running a bar (into the ground), with a bitter wife, a gay looking son, a former jock daughter, and a granddaughter whose name he can't remember, has one last chance to save the day - a big pool championship that he is sure he'll win. But then his mother dies, and his orthodox brother and his brood - an ultra-orthodox son, a slutty daughter, and a somewhat greedy wife - turn up for the funeral, with a will and a host of difficult conditions from their mother. Oh no! Zucker has to sit for shiva! how will he get to the pool tournament? Oh no! It works better than it could have - lots of comic business, not much style, probably better suited for a TV show than a movie, but amusing enough, with a charming skunk lead who nearly carries it.

A Day At the Races & A Night at the Opera - what it starts with is wanting to watch TV while I ate, and having nothing on but football and an interesting looking chambara that was already half done... so I pop in A Day At the Races... and who can stop with one Marx Brothers film? these MGM films are bloated and full of dull patches, but when the brothers are on, they are still on indeed.

Brokeback Mountain **1/2 - Boy, it sure was tough to be a gay cowboy in the 60s and 70s; but gay cowboys sure take a good picture.

There's not much to add to that. I have seldom seen a film so single-mindedly devoted to its thesis - every shot, every line of dialogue, every overwrought symbol makes one or both of those points. It's still a reasonably good film - the actors are fine, and they and those mountains sure do take good pictures - but you really don't need to see the film to get the point.

Talent Given Us *** - An odd set-up - directed by Andrew Wagner, and starring his family - father Allen, mother Judy, sisters Emily and Maggie - playing themselves, or at least, characters with the same names as themselves. The plot goes - Emily is an actress in LA - she visits the NY branch of the family, and they head to their beach house - but as they arrive, Mom demands they turn around and leave - and then, as they drive into the city, demands they keep on going, all the way to LA. They do! They argue and talk and carry on along the way... they talk about their lives (using their real names, mind you) in quite excruciating detail - old affairs, failures, betrayals - medications, sexual peccadilloes, liposuction... The material would get you squirming - the fact that the actors are playing themselves doing this stuff, in front of their son (as director/cinematographer) - well... But the fact is, it's very funny - very humane - and uses its casting well. It's a bit like Andrew Bujawski's films - maybe with a more explicitly documentary style, but with similar structure. Looks improvised, looks utterly casual, though in fact it is well structured and carefully written. It looks caught on the fly, but it has been carefully put together - the casting of his family works - their individuality brings out the best in in the story. It's very good, a true pleasure.

Rushmore & The Royal Tennenbaums: nice to see them in a double feature on a big screen; not so nice to see them in projected video. I don't know if the Brattle is having trouble getting prints or what, but this is the second time in less than a week they've shown a video: the weekend screening of In the Mood for Love was a DVD. Annoying! Throw in the line of kids behind me talking about all the great movies they haven't seen - "have you seen The Killing?" - "No. Have you?" - "No, but it's like Reservoir Dogs, only better." - and the fact that there were people there in costume (oh god) - and it could have been better. But the quality of these films, especially Rushmore, is such that once the film gets going, you forget everything else. I noticed this before - back some years, I saw a pan and scanned version of Rushmore on TV - a horrible mutilation indeed - but still remarkably effective. The story, characters, even the design of the film (though a lot of this you had to fill in from memory) came through.