We begin on March 23 with Israel’s submission for the Best Foreign Language Oscar, Footnote. A rising Talmudic scholar sees his career-topping prize accidentally awarded to his grumpy father. It won the the screenplay award at Cannes.
The Kid with a Bike is the latest from the Belgian Dardennes brothers, two of my favorite film makers (The Son, Rosetta). A 12-year-old boy wants to find the father who dumped him at a children’s home, but meets a woman who becomes his de facto foster mom. The Kid with the Bike will be released in the US by Sundance Selects on March 23.
The Salt of the Earth (Gianni e le donne) stars and is written and directed by Gianni Di Gregorio, just like the very fun Mid-August Lunch. Releases March 30.
Having practiced law in my misspent youth, I often roll my eyes (or change the channel) when I see something in a courtroom movie that could NEVER happen in real life. Watching Elia Kazan’s 1957 Boomerang!, I saw the same District Attorney convict a guy of murder, change his mind and then successfully prove the guy’s innocence. Although scornful of the plot, I kept watching and was shocked to see that the ending credits claimed that this was a true story. In disbelief, I looked it up and found that, indeed, while state’s attorney for Bridgeport, Connecticut, Homer Stille Cummings convicted – and then cleared – Harold Israel of the same murder! Cummings then went on to become the Attorney General of the United States.
Once I got over my disbelief, I realized that Boomerang! is a pretty good movie. It’s one of Elia Kazan’s very first features, just before Gentleman’s Agreement, Panic in the Streets, A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, East of Eden, Baby Doll and A Face in the Crowd.
Boomerang! opens with a shocking scene – a man executes a priest with a pointblank gunshot on a busy downtown street and then melts away. Dana Andrews plays the prosecutor and Arthur Kennedy is the hapless convicted guy. The fine cast also features Lee J. Cobb, Ed Begley (in the first of his 103 screen credits) and (one of my favorites) Sam Levene. Look for Karl Malden and Brian Keith in bit roles.
Turner Classic Movies is airing Boomerang! on March 22.
In the unsettling Slovak film Visible World (Vidite ny Svet), the protagonist Oliver lives by himself in a high-rise apartment building and trains his binoculars on unsuspecting people in the high-rise across the street. The tag line is “There’s a man with binoculars at the window, watching the people across the street. And he’s definitely not James Stewart.”
It’s an uncommon voyeur film. First, the voyeur isn’t looking at any bad behavior by the people across the street. Second, although he is compelled to spy, he isn’t getting any apparent sexual kick out of what he sees. Instead – and this is the really, really disturbing aspect – he is using what he sees to interfere with their lives – and to insinuate himself into their lives.
Most women like a guy who makes that extra effort to find out what she likes. But going through a woman’s garbage to see what products she uses – before he has met her – that’s pretty high up on the Creep-O-Meter. “I like Chilean Carmenere. You do, too? Imagine that!”
Oliver is played by Ivan Trojan as an extremely terse and focused guy, but one who can surprise the audience by putting on an act of affability to get what he wants. He is an odd duck, for sure – often rudely abrupt with people who wander between him and his obsessions. But he is that unusually high functioning crazy who can hide how very, very sick he is.
I saw Visible World at its North American premiere at Cinequest 22.
Today and tomorrow, I’m catching up by commenting on two films from last week’s Cinequest 22.
In the thoughtful French film Four Lovers, two happily married couples hit it off socially. They quickly decide that it’s okay to have sex with each others’ spouses. It’s not “spouse swapping”. It’s an arrangement whereby both couples continue to live as couples, but each adds a permitted fling with one of the other couple.
Plenty of explicit sex follows, but this is not primarily an erotic film. Instead it explores what follows from this arrangement. What rules need to be agreed upon? Is there jealousy and/or insecurity? Will anyone go past the fling to fall in love with the new partner? Can one be in love with more than one lover? Can they keep this from their kids? How deeply do they need their new lovers? How will this affect the original marriages?
It’s all complicated. In fact, I think that watching this movie would be far superior than trying this out in real life.
Spoiler Alert: After the arrangement ends, the couples return to their original married lives. Something is missing in their lives, but it’s not the sexual thrill of the affairs. Instead each grieves the loss of a lover. Given this loss, all four are unhappy for the first time in the film and perhaps wishing that it had never happened.
It's not going well for Adrien Brody in DETACHMENT
The gripping new drama Detachment features a top-rate performance by Adrien Brody as a teacher in a hellish school system that decays teachers’ souls.
In a sizzling performance, Woody Harrelson plays a corrupt and brutal LA cop trying to stay alive and out of jail in Rampart.
The searing and brilliantly constructed Iranian drama A Separation won the Best Foreign Language Oscar.
Joshua Marston, writer-director of the brilliant Maria, Full of Grace has made a fine drama set in Albania, The Forgiveness of Blood.
Safe House is a fine paranoid action spy thriller with Denzel Washington and the director’s pedal jammed to the floor. Thin Ice is a Fargo Lite diversion.
The Best Picture Oscar-winning The Artist is still playing in theaters.
Detachment is a gripping drama about the failure of American public schools from the teachers’ point of view. Adrien Brody plays a long-term sub on a 60-day assignment at a high school that has burned out virtually every other teacher. I can’t use the words “grim” or “bleak” to describe this school environment – it’s downright hellish. It’s making their very souls decay.
The students are rebellious and disrespectful, and somehow manage to be zealously apathetic. No parents support the teachers, but some enthusiastically abuse and undermine them. Administrators demand better test results but offer little support beyond “flavor of the month” educational fads. The ills of the high school in Detachment are exaggerated – this is not a documentary – but there isn’t an urban public high school in American that hasn’t endured some elements of Detachment.
Brody won an Oscar for 2002’s The Pianist, and, in Detachment, he makes the most of his best role since. Brody plays a haunted and damaged man with strong core beliefs, who, faced with a menu of almost hopeless choices, picks his battles.
Detachment’s cast is unusually deep, and the performances are outstanding. James Caan is particularly outstanding as the veteran educator whose wicked sense of humor can still disarm the most obnoxiously insolent teen. Christina Hendricks (Mad Men) is excellent as the young teacher hanging on to some idealism. Blythe Danner and William Petersen (CSI) are the veterans who have seen it all. Lucy Liu plays the educator who is clinging by her fingerprints, trying not to flame out like the basket case played by Tim Blake Nelson. Marcia Gay Harden and Isiah Whitlock Jr. (Cedar Rapids) are dueling administrators. Sami Gayle and Betty Kaye are superb as two troubled kids. Louis Zorich delivers a fine performance as Brody’s failing grandfather. There’s just not an ordinary performance in the movie.
For all its despair, Detachment doesn’t let the audience sink into a malaise. Director Tony Kaye (American History X) keeps thing moving, and his choices in structure and pacing work well. This is an intense film with a dark viewpoint. It is also a very ambitious, thoughtful and originally crafted movie – one well worth seeing.
David Kelly's unforgettable naked motor scooter ride in WAKING NED DEVINE
For St. Patrick’s week, I recommend the 1998 comedy Waking Ned Devine in memory of one of it stars, David Kelly, who died last month. Kelly and the late Ian Bannen play two mischievous geezers who learn that someone in their tiny Irish village has won the national lottery, and they connive to share the wealth. It’s very Irish and very funny.
San Jose’s Cinequest 22 film festival has ended. For me, Cinequest 22 meant seeing 17 features, a short and several interviews and Q&As with filmmakers – all including several world and US premieres. I saw my share of American films, but I also saw movies from China, Spain, Belgium, the Slovak Republic, Argentina, Hungary, Russia, Sweden and Norway.
Among the festival crowd, movies about overcoming disability and disease seemed to be the most popular. I generally preferred the comedies and romances that prove that it is still possible to write a good movie in those genres.
I especially liked two of the biggest movies in the festival: the zany Chinese action film Let the Bullets Fly and the drama about the American education system Detachment (I’ll be commenting on Detachment on Wednesday before its release this weekend).
There were some smaller films that I hope gain distribution: King Curling, the Norwegian comedy about a curling star who must go off his psych meds to win the big match; the Argentine modern-day spaghetti western Salt; and the hipster screwball comedy Percival’s Big Night. If given the chance to see these films, American audiences will love them.
Turner Classic Movies is airing a real guilty pleasure of mine on March 16: She Freak from 1967. A nasty and manipulative skank mistreats all the slimeballs in a carnival until they disfigure her and she becomes the unwilling monster star of the sideshow. It’s fun to mock the lame-o acting, the dim dialogue and the low, low, low budget.
It’s also a time capsule – with real 1967 carnival crowds in Bakersfield, Sacramento and Los Angeles. You may recognize the diner-in-the-middle-of-nowhere because it was filmed at Piru, California (look it up on a map), where at least 50 movies have been filmed.
Look for Bill McKinney (famed for the infamous “Squeal like a pig” scene in Deliverance) as Steve St. John.
