March 2003

• Lost in La Mancha (3/1, Sunshine [2002])--Even more painful than it is hilarious, Murphy's Law at its most brutal. An ethical question: is it kosher to have the subject of a documentary controbute to it creatively? (Though in fact, the end credits suggest that the Gilliamesque animation sequence that illustrates his career sweep is in fact done by someone else.) [10]
• All the Real Girls (3/1, Angelika)--Quintessential indy--and I mean that in a good way. A story of young love between two people whose only intelligence is spiritual, so real it hurts. Zooey Deschanel's eyes should be a franchise unto themselves.
• Amandla! (3/1, Film Forum [2002])--Somehow I was expecting this to be all music and uplift, but in fact it focuses on the horrors of apartheid to seat-squirming effect. A remarkable film--it's possible that I saw more Oscar-nominated documentaries in one day than I did all last year. Note: Nelson Mandela is the least funky black man alive.
• Morvern Callar (3/1, Cinema Village [2002])--I seem to have lost the ability to distinguish between Irish and Scottish accents. I have noticed this also in watching Man U games on TV, where one of the announcers has an extreme Celtic accent, but I keep going back and forth between which. Anyway, this has one of the most extraordinary opening scenes I've seen, and Morton makes the title character interesting to follow (it was, though I watched at at 9:10 p.m., the only one of these 4 films I never drowsed in even for a second), but my reaction after it was over was pretty much, yeah? so?
• City of God (3/15, YSC [2002])--Astonishing, The Godfather meets Reservoir Dogs in Río. Shows children wielding guns as a perfectly logical result of slum life--and shows that, despite the guns, these are still children.
• Russian Ark (3/29, YSC [2002])--Geez, I don't know what to say about this except "ballsy": Russian history via art and an arty one-shot stream-of-consciousness filmic technique. Jennie found this nothing but boring, but I thought the interplay between the two constant characters--the unseen "stranger" (I guess) and the "European"--was an effective narrative device to hold things together as they wander through the Hermitage and through time. [15]
• Spider (3/29, YSC [2002])--Creep city, Ralph Fiennes in a tour-de-force of mumbledom as a man with ongoing issues about his childhood, Miranda Richardson in a delightfully wicked double-and-sometimes-triple role, and Gabriel Byrne as another of his weak strong men. Interesting to double-feature this with Ark, as both films feature ahistorically present narrative figures.
• Laurel Canyon (3/30, Orange [2002])--I associate this somehow with The Big Chill, though I probably didn't love this as much as that on first viewing (but then I was much younger and stupider then). It's possible that if I ever watch this as often as I've watched that, it will ring as false and contrived, but for today, I found this enormously fun. And I want Frances McDormand, want her bad.