Now Playing

Written by Dan Pulick

As the glitter and sequins of the seemingly endless Oscar season settle to the dirty red carpet and Hollywood returns to the mundane steady pace of its sunny, sunny days, we are given a moment to breathe and take in the current view. The underbelly of the movie-release calendar is upon us and with it comes a break in the compulsive push to "see" everything that’s a "must see". This is April and May, this is baseball season and outdoors season and longer days and shorter nights and a spring forward in our temperamental clocks. Who wants to be cooped up inside when there’s so much to do, and such weather to do it in, out, under the open sky? Hollywood knows this and strategizes appropriately, releasing its duds of the year—or what’s worse, its duds from last year that it has been afraid to release—hoping that a slack in the competition will garner a few more stray attendees than usual. This post-Oscar period can feel like an eternity but really only lasts from the end of March until Memorial Day. There is usually one gem released in there somewhere around April 3rd, or May 7th, like Memento was in 2000, or last year’s Unfaithful, and one can only hope that the Academy will remember that far back and not overlook a fine script or performance the following winter when it publishes its nominations. So often these springtime gems are instead forsaken, marred with the stigma of their early release date.

This was an unusually well-played Oscar season, with considerate nominations, and appropriate winners, and it leaves us, I believe, more primed to participate in the process, more willing to go to the theaters. There are rewards for good work, for well-thought out and well-executed films—sometimes. Off that wave of good will, I look around to see…what’s playing at the movies?

There’s a slew of basic, Hollywood-machine synthesized films that hit all the usual marks, are written by the numbers and are produced with all the typical bells and whistles. The Hunted with Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio Del Toro is basically Rambo with better actors and a better director. I’ll sit through anything William Friedkin directs for the rest of his life, no matter how bad, for two reasons: The French Connection and The Exorcist. Any man that can pump those two masterpieces out in three years’ time has carte blanche for life. The fact is The Hunted isn’t as good as the first Rambo, but the two stars are great, the action is carried out with professionalism and Friedkin does give us another interesting car chase (Car chases Subway in The French Connection, Car drives full speed against Traffic on a Freeway in To Live and Die in L.A., and now, Car-stuck-in-gridlock somehow bumper-cars its way free in The Hunted), so it may be worth its two stinkin’ stars.

Next on the marquee is Basic, the John Travolta-Sam Jackson vehicle. A military loose cannon out in the jungle, out of contact, out of touch, and out of control. A former student is brought in to help counter his moves and try and reel him back in. That sounds like that movie with Brando…and…oh yeah, Martin Sheen, what was that? Apocalypse Now. Hello. Or even worse, it’s the inverted relationship in Rambo and The Hunted. Basic is actually not worth its one star.

The Core is the next offering from Tinstletown, with a wonderful premise but too many special effects and too much CGI for my taste. Too much of the film feels like it’s a computer game. But the kids’ll love it, so all of you who have to babysit the teenage nieces and nephews have a solution for the night.

The Stephen King adaptation Dreamcatcher is another failed attempt to translate King to the screen. How legendary screenwriter William Goldman and director Lawrence Kasdan combined to create this effort is mind boggling (a topic to be explored below with …David Gale), but they did and Dreamcatcher is finally trite and convoluted. The question of how to deal with being telepathic is always an interesting exploration. Goldman unfortunately doesn’t explore it and instead gives us coincidental set-up after coincidental set-up. Damian Lewis, from HBO’s Band of Brothers, is subtle, even chilling, but Morgan Freeman is surprisingly awkward, struggling to sell lines that he never really owns to begin with.

There’s Bringing Down the House with Queen Latifah and Steve Martin, if you have the patience for that type of thing. I could personally do without dumbed-down integration of racial stereotypes, on both sides of the aisle, intertwined with prepubescent comedy. Martin is capable of soooo much more, as is the great Queen (who was my pick for supporting actress this year).

And then there is The Life of David Gale. Whoa. I don’t think I’ve ever given a movie a half of a star, so this is a first for me. Talk about the underbelly of the release calendar… I had heard this was a weak movie, but, as with Dreamcatcher, I saw the collaborative team—director Alan Parker, actors Kevin Spacey, Kate Winslet, Laura Linney, and a subject matter that has not been exposed enough on film—and didn’t believe the early boos. I was wrong. They were easy on this film. …David Gale is over-written, over-dramatized, over-architected, and quite frankly, never stops emoting from the first frame. The only natural sounding sequences are when one of the characters launches into dialogue which speaks directly to the death-penalty issue. But even these stretches are totally politicized and only present one side of the argument—a side I happen to agree with, mind you. So it wasn’t that I was offended by what was being preached; I was bored by it. A film like Dead Man Walking presents an unconditional and complete discussion of the issue, and ultimately does a better job. The most compelling aspect of The Life of David Gale is a question: How do so many talented people come together and create such lacking, unimaginative, and non-engaging work? If I could answer it, I’d be making great movies myself.

So that’s what Hollywood is giving us to chew on until the summer season. However, outside of Hollywood, there are some real treats now playing in theaters. I’m a lover of spectacular films. Spectacular is usually easier to create with the money of Hollywood, so I’m not here to wave the Indie banner. I love a film that keeps me engaged and makes me think and, most importantly, entertains me. Hollywood at its finest does this just fine. Indie films simply tend to do it more often. Looking at the Indie line-up, it’s currently no different.

Laurel Canyon is a modern Chekhovian cat’s cradle. Dynamic people of different ages stuck in a house with lines drawn all over the place delineating who belongs to whom. And the lines are totally screaming to be crossed. There is quite clearly a map laid out for this film, and, although the execution of that map is obviously premeditated (evident in writer/director Lisa Cholodenko’s staging and editing) and never "sits" in a natural flow, Frances Mac Dormand and her supporting cast make it worth our while.

Bend it Like Beckham is the lightest, wispiest sprite of a film and keeps one lifted throughout its main character’s rather typical coming-of-age. The conflict of a traditional Indian house set against the modern British world of Hounslow, England is a perfect place to drop Jess (Parminder K. Nagra), a teenage girl who secretly prays to the soccer star Beckham that she will someday play for England, despite her parents’ wish for her to follow a more traditionally Indian life-path. It’s a refreshing take on the tried-and-true genre, and never strays from its totally organic center.

Assassination Tango crosses the worlds of a hit man and Argentinean romance and tango dancing, and it is directed by and stars Robert Duvall, so for many people that will make it worth its weight. Spider is an intriguing study of a mental patient in England struggling to piece together his past through his recollections in a journal. Ralph Fiennes is riveting in the title role as he battles with his unresolved disease and his undefined past. Somehow you know the key to both will be one and the same. Irreversible is a sharp look at a woman’s rape and the subsequent vigilante efforts by her boyfriend and his friend in hunting down the rapist. Another gem from Lions Gate Films, Irreversible is graphic and brutally honest with a French flair that just isn’t possible to create in America.

And last but surely not least, is the finest film playing right now. City of God. Released last year, this is perhaps the largest oversight the Academy has made in a very long time. City of God didn’t even get nominated in the Best Foreign Film category. Made in Brazil, it is the story of Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues) and Li’l Ze (Firmino da Hora), two kids growing up in the slums of Rio de Janeiro in the late ‘60s and ‘70s. Both have brothers who run a gang of hoodlums. We are given a most visceral sense of poverty via the early scenes in the ghetto, and somehow the lawless rule of the hoodlums makes complete sense. Rocket and Li’l Ze see their brothers’ lives and make opposite decisions based on those models. Rocket isn’t a killer, plain and simple, and is doomed to live a sucker’s life because of it; all he wants to do is be a photographer. Li’l Ze is born with a penchant for blood, and grows up to become the most feared and vicious gang leader in all of Rio. Where this tale, of two boys forever bound by their common roots, thrusts forward to is an urban tragedy of poverty and cyclical violence that has no rival. Fernando Meirelles both tells a creative story and tells the story creatively. It is the very best of traditional film and modern filmmaking. Two aspects of the creative process—mode and story—that usually get in eachother’s way synthesize here to create this vibrant spark of lyrical violence. The City of God is run by the gangs because of the vacuum that’s left in the wake of governmental apathy. The people need order of some kind, and as long as everyone pays Li’l Ze, the people get it. Life is not a commodity. It almost isn’t anything at all. We see at the lowest level—at the youngest level (little 6 and 7 year old boys with guns)—that there is almost no acknowledgement of one’s own existence. The breathing stops without anyone ever noticing. Meirelles tells what seems like five to ten short stories, the action racing to a halt and a freeze frame every time a new title card pops up, but it soon becomes evident that the segmentation is only a form that he has fit a much larger story into, one that can only unfold itself as the characters determine it to do so. We are presented with two options life will always put forth, and we watch as two characters are compelled into one or the other alternative, and we are finally convinced that there never is a choice in the first place; one’s nature and one’s environment will always determine one’s end.

So there it is. That’s what’s playing, and I daresay, it’s not such a shabby selection. Hollywood will always give us its leftovers this time of year, but the rest of the film world is still making an honest effort. So take some time out of your day and slip into a matinee of what will be next year’s forgotten pleasures. Big deal, the weather’s changing and you wanna get outside. If that’s the case, walk to the theater and smell the blossoms along the way. But don’t avoid the movies, because before you know it, it’ll be summer and that annual infernal Invasion of the Blockbusters to fend off.

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