Some things were deemed 'relevant' at the cusp of the Seventies. Others weren't. Among the latter was the generation of artists and craftsmen by whom, in a very real sense, the movies had been invented.
MSN.com/Movies has posted the results of its fourth annual Ten Best poll among the site's movie-related contributors - this year, 13 in number. Two of them are people you know. Clicking this will get you there. Kathleen Murphy writes briefly about the extraordinary not-just-a-documentary Sweetgrass; I focus on some Polanski movie. Oh, the picture alongside here? Yeah, The Social Network did well for itself. Again. -RTJ
There's no shortage of chuckles in Will Ferrell's new movie Everything Must Go—but it's not exactly a comedy, and certainly not a typical Will Ferrell comedy. Kathleen Murphy says why at http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie-critic-reviews/everything-must-go/#Review_0
...Kechiche's film breaks your heart and hurts like hell to watch. Black Venus insists that we put skin in the game. It won't allow us to lean back and look at this African life through a happy haze of unreality.
What if Blair Witch Project had been made in Norway, only it turned out to be a comedy and a fairy tale? Trollhunter purports to consist of unedited found footage from a presumably doomed expedition, a collegiate video crew tracking the hunter of their nation's fabled monsters through truly spectacular backcountry. That the film's a mockumentary doesn't guarantee fairy-tale ogres won't wreak havoc. Wonderful deadpan performance from Otto Jesperson in the title role. —RTJ
From the moment the distant figure of a man approaches out of the foggy whiteness of a snowfield, Kosmos appears to be a movie bent on allegorizing something elemental. Don't worry about it. What matters is that Kosmos, whether metaphysical mystery or a bit of a mess, grabs one's eyes and interest at the outset and holds them for most of the ensuing two hours.
Japan, 2010; Takeshi KitanoKitano's often bleakly hilarious movie is a nihilistic roundelay of double- and triple-crosses and truly grotesque violence, acted out by an ever-diminishing community of yakuza. Kitano plays an old-school, Zen'd-out hitman who persists in believing there are meaningful rituals, rules, and reasons in the ongoing mayhem. A far less resonant take on the fate of Peckinpah's anachronistic outlaws, Outrage keeps fatalistic count as the members of Kitano's wild bunch are co-opted by the future of crime: colorless stockbrokers and bureaucrats. —KAM
Bill Hunter (1940-2011), a character-acting mainstay of Australian cinema, died May 21. A household name in his native land, he appeared in more than a hundred films and TV episodes, starting with an unbilled bit in the 1957 The Shiralee. He had a twinkle both wry and weary, and a hardpan voice that seemed ordained to pronounce the word kookaburra, though I can't recall that I ever heard him say that. Key roles? Toni Collette's father (Bill Heslop!) in Muriel's Wedding, the Major in Peter Weir's Gallipoli, the preposterous Barry Fife in Strictly Ballroom, the gallant escort and longtime worshipper of Terence Stamp's Bernadette in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and the dentist in Finding Nemo. But above all these, he was Len Maguire, the dogged newsreel journalist in Phillip Noyce's Newsfront (1978)—the first international hit of the Australian New Wave and the occasion of Hunter's winning Best Actor at the Aussie equivalent of the Oscars. I loved the movie and I loved Len Maguire. And only part of that was because Hunter—and Len Maguire too—uncannily reminded me of my father as he looked in Len Maguire's time; Dad had died several years before Newsfront came out. I suppose it was the father connection that led me to assume Bill Hunter was "old," as a line in the accompanying Newsfront appreciation gives away. Actually, he was only four years my senior. -RTJ
U.S.A., 2010; John GrayDon't let the title throw you. White Irish Drinkers isn't a study of alcoholics (well, there's one) but an honorable and sympathetic addition to several durable subgenres: the coming-of-age story, the ethnic neighborhood crime chronicle, and the nuclear family saga. Nick Thurston gives an appealing performance as a post–high-schooler in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, torn between abetting his petty-criminal brother or busting out to pursue his gifts as an artist, gifts he's mostly concealed. Cast mates include Stephen Lang and Karen Allen as the parents and Peter Riegert as an avuncular moviehouse operator. Writer-director John Gray's old neighborhood plays itself. —RTJ
U.S.A., 2011; Christopher Munch Just coming off a bad relationship, forest service hydrologist Sarah Smith (Lily Rabe, an engaging presence ... and voice) heads deep into nature—southwestern Oregon wilderness—for healing. Thankfully, director Christopher Munch (The Hours and Times) doesn't just show us a pretty lady posing in scenic settings. When Sarah works, checking streams in burned-out stretches, she pays real attention to what she's learning. Striding on impressively muscled legs through magnificent landscapes, she projects self-sufficiency, strength, skill. For a long time, we watch her trek these Edenic environs, silent except for natural sound. The light falls richly down streambeds and through ancient trees, and night is blacker, more palpable than anywhere humankind resides. (Cinematographer Rob Sweeney does gorgeous work here.) A dark, towering figure (Bigfoot, played by Isaac C. Singleton Jr and suited up by Lee Romaire) tracks Sarah, watching her as we do, even emulating her lotus pose as she meditates beside a stream. No sense of threat here, just a curious Other, on the order of Chingachgook checking out Deerslayer. At this point, you wish this pilgrimage would go for the duration of the movie, so magically beautiful and affecting are these places, the passage of time. A silent movie, you think, without jabbering or obligatory plotlines. Maybe Beauty will encounter Beast—a Bigfoot whose hairy visage projects the nobility of, say, Chief Seattle—and they'll become a brand-new Eve and Adam, our second chance at natural innocence. Well, forget that scenario. Letters soon sinks into incredible silliness, comprised of equal parts environmental lectures (logging's bad), government plots (seems Bigfoot cannot only go invisible, but also broadcasts soothing or enraging soundwaves), and mystical mumbo-jumbo, courtesy of an American Indian lady who stares soulfully at her White Buffalo. What began so promisingly—and so mysteriously—loses its way in a ginned-up love connection, phony dialogue, scattergun plotting, and bad acting. And just to make sure you get the Message, there's an amateur-night performance of The Tempest—see, Bigfoot is Caliban, and maybe Sarah's just the Miranda he needs.... Oh, it doesn't bear thinking about. -KAM
One virtue of film festivals is that they provide an opportunity for small-scale, unheralded movies of distinction to get discovered, if only by a less than mainstream audience. It's not necessary that they be great; being unexpectedly good carries its own satisfaction. Small Town Murder Songs, a 75-minute picture from Canada, is the best example so far in this year's Seattle International Film Festival. It's now out on DVD.
UK/France/Belgium/Italy/Spain, 2010; Kenneth LoachHaving addressed much of the politically charged warfare of the 20th century in such films as Land and Freedom, Hidden Agenda, and the superb The Wind That Shakes the Barley, Ken Loach now probes the involvement of mercenaries in the war in Iraq. Not that the film is set there, save for a flashback that doesn't show up till halfway through. Our POV character is a case-hardened Liverpudlian named Fergus (Mark Womack) who turns up for the funeral of the best friend so racked up while working for a Blackwater-like outfit that his coffin must remain closed. Fergus breaks into it anyway, and proceeds further to delve into just how his mate came to die that day on Route Irish, as they call the perilous stretch of road between Baghdad Airport and the Green Zone. Someone in the local film press snarked about Route Irish that it's hard to have a thriller without suspense. The comment is ill-informed on both ends: Route Irish doesn't try to be a thriller, and the suspense it has aplenty derives from Fergus's descent into not only the mystery behind his friend's death but also his own character and moral culpability. Incidentally, the film marks Loach's reunion with Chris Menges, who shot such early Loach features as Kes and Poor Cow and became one of the several finest cinematographers in the world over the intervening four decades. —RTJ
"Folks will either embrace the 'real' in Mike Mills' biographical Beginners or recoil from the reek of indie twee. Though drawn from the director's life-altering personal experiences, this amiable dramedy seems oddly lightweight and remote. A strung-together series of vignettes, montages and threadbare French New Wave tropes, the movie could have been storyboarded by Oliver (Ewan McGregor), Mills' cartoonist alter ego, who inks a Jules Feiffer–esque comic strip titled 'The History of Sadness.'" Read on with Kathleen Murphy at http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie-critic-reviews/beginners/#Review_0
Poland/Japan, 2010; Dorota Kedzierzawska In her dark, totally unsentimental films about children, Polish director Dorota Kedzierzawska has always gifted her youthful, mostly female protagonists with old, outlaw souls hungry for family and freedom....
Two days of trying to see a movie at SIFF press screenings make it pretty clear that no one is paying attention.NOTE addendum from SIFF Publicity.