Hate crime

Mistakes-were-made M4

But first, a couple of general notes: (1) The Quad, which was closed for remodeling for two years (meaning that most of us were sure it would never open again), is back, and beautiful: a sleek, modern lobby and concession area and--are you sitting down?--clean, chromy, and spacious restrooms (well, I'm assuming the plural applies). One too-cutesy but harmless change: the screens, formerly 1, 2, 3, and 4, are now designated . . . Q, U, A, and D. (2) Apparently it's official: it is now perfectly acceptable behavior to play loud videos on your phone in the theater, though (so far) only before the movie begins.

Dim the Fluorescents

CV

What a strange, existentially confused film about two young (but no longer all that young) women, a playwright and an actor, who eke out a living and barely keep their artistic dreams alive by presenting short instructive dramas to companies hoping to improve customer service or avoid sexual harassment.

That sounds like a promising film, and I think it would have been better had the focus not been allowed to stray to peripheral characters with their own peripheral subplots. That said, it's a definitive M4 film: it's barely showing in Manhattan (opened yesterday, showing at 11 & 11) and will never turn up in New Haven, and for all its faults, I'm glad to have seen it.

L'Insulte (The insult)

Quad

In the context of an unforgiving history, two good men say and do a bad thing each, and the bad snowballs and threatens to efface if not erase the good.

For a welcome change, Israel is reduced to bogeyman status rather than given its customary role as oppressive force and/or embattled survivor: the antagonists are Lebanese Christians and Palestinian refugees. 

A couple of sentimental wobbles en route to a conclusion with just the right balance of hope and dread.

My Brother's Wedding (1984)

Quad

One wedding and a funeral you might say, with protagonist Pierce (Everett Silas) failing to balance obligations of family and friendship, the latter having the stronger tug on him.

Charles Burnett made this five years after Killer of Sheep, with which it shares rough-hewn filmmaking and a palpable emotional investment in working-class African-American Los Angeles.

Azad

CV

Wow. Really, wow. To be fair, this not-very-futuristic tale of a "West" (no specific nation is named, but there are clues) in thrall to alt-right racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism--enough, you get the idea--is not 100% risible: it contains a handful of images worth contemplating for a moment, and one clever line of dialogue (which, sadly, I've forgotten), and good golly, its heart is manifestly in the right place. Oh, and it was made for $10,000, and I have a soft spot for that kind of budget. 

But in every respect, creatively and technically, in front of and behind the camera, this is something a group of intelligent and politically aware fifth graders could have done. This may well be the worst feature film I've ever watch beginning to end.