August 2003

• Northfork (8/7, YSC)--Golly, what a weird flick, and I’m not sure it earns all its weirdness. At its best, it’s like a Faulkner or O’Connor short story, simultaneously funny and weird and wise. But too often, I miss the humor and the wisdom. Good to see Daryl Hannah again, though, even if she is bald.
• Camp (8/8, YSC)--Sweet, engaging, and completely unoriginal. I sat there watching it and thinking, "Jennifer & Drew could do this--and will do better than this if they keep at it." It’s like a ’30s musical whose "plot" is just an excuse to cobble together the musical numbers. But the musical numbers are mostly worth the cobbling.
• Dirty Pretty Things (8/9, YSC [2002])--The best film I’ve seen in a long time about illegal immigration and the black-market kidney trade. In fact, a good mystery film, though Audrey Tatou is about as convincing as a Turk as Conan O’Brien would be. I hope we see more of the lead actor, whose long African name I can’t recall.
• The Holy Land (8/10, YSC [2001])--This was barely on my list to see, but I liked it far more than I would have imagined: part familiar story, part exotic culture; sweet with an undercurrent of inevitable terror; and partly a good episode of Cheers set in Jerusalem.
• Masked and Anonymous (8/15, YSC)--Imagine a universe in which everyone talks like a Bob Dylan song. . . . Once you get past the annoyance that all the characters talk alike, it’s actually a lot of fun to visit that universe, and the soundtrack is a must. Not nearly as aimless and confusing as the critics say. A bit reminiscent of Repo Man in the postapocalyptic L.A. street scenes--and then Tracey Walters shows up as a sleazy hotel desk clerk! [60]
• Secret Lives of Dentists (8/17, Cine [2002])--Very funny, and far more heartbreaking than funny: Campbell Scott as the emotionally repressed husband, Hope Davis as his unfaithful wife, and Denis Leary as the Greek chorus. I’m in love w/ Davis, of course, and I can’t think of anything Scott has done that wasn’t just about perfect.
• Freaky Friday (8/24, NoHa)--Yes, it’s just a silly, gimmicky movie, but the performances by Lindsay Lohan and especially Jamie Lee Curtis (I’m not kidding!) make this more than just worthwhile. This is not the sort of movie the Academy pays attention to, so Curtis probably won’t get the Oscar nomination she so richly deserves.
• The Magdalene Sisters (8/30, Orange)--Or One Flew over the Crucifix. A perfectly competent film that reveals something else creepy we didn’t know about the Catholic Church, but aside from that revelation, there’s nothing new or special here--or nuanced, either. I did not love The Secret Lives of Altar Boys, but at least Jodie Foster’s terrifying nun in that film was, in the audience’s eyes, if not in the characters’, a human being with defensible reasons for her behavior; the mother superior here is simply Sister Ratched.
• Thirteen (8/30, YSC)--Is it a measure of how squirmy this film made me that I initially rendered the title as Sixteen. The film flirts with exploitativeness, but ultimately it earns everything it demands of us, and its demands are as scary as anything Ridley Scott has ever done. And weirdly, it is much the same film as Freaky Friday, albeit from a perspective 180 degrees removed: for in that film, mother accidentally becomes daughter and thus gains understanding and empathy, while in this one, mother (Holly Hunter, in yet another amazing and fearless performance) tries to be like a teenager, but in so doing forfeits any possibility of understanding and empathy. Probably the toughest film of the year (City of God having been a 2002 pic), if not one of the best.
• The Other Side of the Bed (8/31, Loew’s 34th Street)--Spanish musical sex farce--need I say more? Actually, that said, there’s nothing else fresh here--the musical numbers are a kick, but there aren’t enough of them, and ultimately the whole thing just drags.
• Autumn Spring (8/31, Quad [2001])--Utterly charming Czech film about an elderly man’s refusal to grow up. Funny, sad, irresistible.
• Venus Boyz (8/31, Quad [2001])--Amazing documentary about drag kings. I don’t claim to know much about drag queens, but my impression is that there are two ways to go: beautiful or famous, and given the sizable overlap between the two, that’s really only about 1½ ways to go. Women who perform as men, we learn, not only occupy every spot on the male-to-female continuum, they veer off into other dimensions where that continuum is irrelevant. I have never had such an education in the meaning of gender. Moreover, much of the film is hilarious. Definitely the highlight of this M4.
• Suddenly (8/31, FF [2002])--An Argentine film, reminiscent of Gasoline in its portrayal of lesbians on the run in a violent world, but infinitely less formulaic and more satisfying, and in the end, surprisingly sweet and hopeful.