April 2003

• Bend It Like Beckham (4/5, Madison [2002])--Completely formulaic, completely predictable, and completely irresistible. Two things are really praiseworthy about it: (1) it takes female athletes seriously, without the leering camerawork that is sometimes seen in such films, and (2) the filmmakers went to the trouble of getting women who could actually play the game for the action sequences, so the game action and especially the drills are more realistic than most sports films of either gender.
• Nowhere in Africa (4/5, Madison [2002])--Not a great film, but certainly a different perspective on the Holocaust, and the climactic scene of biblical plague is quite remarkable.
• Raising Victor Vargas (4/12, Orange [2002])--A surprisingly sweet film, and I mean that in a good way. The title character is a young Dominican in East Harlem who is, though cocky, just as inept about love as is every boy his age. With just a handful of characters we get a slice of a life we'll never see. Victor's grandmother--the custodial parent for him and a younger brother and sister--is particularly memorable, trying to hold a family together about as skillfully as Victor pursues girls.
• The Good Thief (4/20, YSC [2002])--Neil Jordan's remake of Bob le flambeur, which I've never seen but need to. Nick Nolte delivers every line as if he's double-parked, the effect being that you often don't register the humor of what he's said until a line or two of dialogue later. The film is an intentionally pulpy heist flick, and it's excellent on that level, but it's also about truth and lies--especially the lies one tells oneself. Not perfect, but pretty damned good.
• Better Luck Tomorrow (4/26, NoHa [2002])--Am I Asian-American? I dunno--I sure identified with the protagonist, and sympathized with his looniest compatriot. The films plays beautifully with Asian-American stereotypes, both endorsing them and departing from them disturbingly. I believed even the most implausible elements of the plot, including the disastrous climax. And the final line of the film is delicious in its ambiguity--is it a proclamation of amorality or Dostoevskian fatalism? [20]
• It Runs in the Family (4/27, Orange)--Note to self: never forget that just because Stephen Holden says something isn’t sentimental, it isn’t. Basically, this is On Golden Pond with Douglases instead of Fondas. Bernadette Peters is excellent as the wife-who-finds-another-woman’s-panties-in-her-husband’s-coat-pocket, and the woman and girl who play the sons’ girlfriends are both lots of fun to look at, but this was mostly a waste of time I could have spent on my proofreading project.