You would think that a movie about a Red Sox player who later went on missions for the OSS during World War II, one that was apparently shot in Fenway Park (with some CGI to knock about 80 years off the place), and one that played into the idea that its hero (played by Paul Rudd with an impressive supporting cast) was bisexual would find a few scenes in Boston during Pride Month, but no. If you want to see The Catcher Was a Spy in this area, you're heading out to West Newton. Good thing Moe Berg was also Jewish, or it might not have played there!
I kid, a bit; that the proprietors of the West Newton Cinema are willing to zero in on a specific audience and cater to it is actually something I genuinely admire about the place. I've talked before about how this neighborhood 6-plex is a genuine independent theater, so I won't repeat too much now. There's a bad side to that - I would hate to visit the old place in a wheelchair, for instance, and I suspect they're the sort of theater that keeps costs down by trying to stretch protector bulbs (I've read reviews claiming Catcher has gorgeous cinematography, but I found it hard to see). But it's no-nonsense and kind of homey in the way a lot of theaters aren't, the kind of place you'd hope to end up if you do actually have to go looking for a movie, even if that's because the movie really isn't that good.
That said, I do think the movie is good enough and of enough interest to a local audience that I'm surprised Some Cinemas in Fresh Pond didn't book it; they'll run less commercial indies that don't have the likes of Rudd in the cast for two shows a day, even if it's also playing VOD. I half-suspect that's on the distributor - IFC and Magnolia don't seem to have the sort of relationship with places like Fresh Pond that newer labels like The Orchard do, or they try to shoot too high (if they can't get a full screen at Kendall Square, they maybe don't settle).
Anyway, I don't really mind doing the Red Line-70A-57-553 thing to get there. The 70A used to be my bus to work, and seeing the gentrification/ development going on there is kinds of weird, but it's not my neighborhood to complain about. And it does apparently mean another movie theater in the general area, and I can't complain much about that.
Following that was a trip back downtown (553-57-B Line) to catch another movie at a theater catering to its local audience - the Boston Common theater is right outside Chinatown - for another movie about folks going undercover. Fresh new lot of previews for Chinese movies - L.O.R.D. 2, Detective Dee 3, Oolong Courtyard, and The Leaker from Hong Kong - and I'm kind of glad I don't have to head out of town for those.
The Catcher Was a Spy
* * (out of four)
Seen 23 June 2018 in West Newton Cinema #4 (first-run, DCP)
Morris "Moe" Berg, this film tells us, was an enigma, and he had reason to be during his life; he was Jewish in a time when one didn't loudly declare it, a "lifelong bachelor" who zealously guarded his privacy, and an academic achiever who spent his youth as a professional baseball player before undertaking missions for the OSS during World War II. It's a shame that the filmmakers aren't more interested in cracking that shell in order to see what's underneath.
Screenwriter Robert Rodat takes a fair amount of liberties with the story, starting by moving a 1934 all-star tour of Japan to 1936, when he was a backup catcher for the Boston Red Sox. While there, Berg (Paul Rudd) meets a Japanese historian (Hiroyuki Sanada) who opines that their countries will inevitably go to war and then surreptitiously makes his way to the roof of one of Tokyo's tallest buildings to get footage of the city's layout, including the naval yards. After Pearl Harbor, he contacts a friend from Princeton who works in the State Department. There's a place for smart, physically capable who speak nearly a dozen languages like Berg in the Office of Strategic Services, and though he's initially placed on a desk, he's given a mission to accompany Dutch physicist Samuel Goudsmit (Paul Giamatti) to Rome to learn what progress Werner Heisenberg (Mark Strong) has made as the head of Germany's nuclear program - a mission that will take him to Zurich, where Heisenberg frequently visits colleague Paul Scherrer (Tom Wilkinson), tasked with assassinating Heisenberg if necessary.
You could cut about half of that out and still have a story that sounds too good to be true, but the trick is to tell it well. The basics of Berg's story are enough to capture the imagination, but the filmmakers seem a bit too willing to just let the audience fill in the details rather than stitch it together into a particular story. The through-line they do find is speculative, positing that his skill and passion for secrecy comes from being a closeted bisexual man in that era. It's entirely possible - Berg's ability to keep a secret might just have been good enough to leave no trace even when it might have made him a queer icon in the present - but it's a direction that can only have a limited payoff. The way they loudly tap-dance around his sexuality is right out of the era's playbook - shouted slurs rebutted by a heterosexual sex scene, assertions of open-mindedness only backed up by hints - so it's a kind of half-hearted commitment to the theme.
Full review on EFC
Long Xia Xing Jing (Lobster Cop)
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 23 June 2018 in AMC Boston Common #3 (first-run, DCP)
Lobster Cop may not necessarily be the best "undercover cops find they enjoy their cover story" comedy ever made, but a fairly decent one. It's got a brisk pace, a grimy messiness that seems to fit with its plot than the usual upscale setting, and gags that are just familiar enough to work without overplaying but not lazy. It's not groundbreaking, but it's a capable comedy that gets the job done.
It starts with a drug bust that can best be described as going so-so, which is par for the course with Squad 8 - motormouth leader Du Yufei (Wang Qianyuan), scruffy Hua Jie (Yuan Shanshan), rookie Chen Li (Zhou You), and veteran Neng Shu (Liu Hua). It leads them up the chain to gangsters Song Hui (Zhou Yunpeng) and Dong Zi (Cao Xing), although Du would much rather be watching the ones all the way up. They stumble onto a run-down crayfish restaurant that offers them a perfect surveillance point for Song's "logistics company", and wind up buying it. The plan is to keep it closed, but it turns out that Neng is a natural chef, and they're soon packed to the walls, with one loyal customer (Zhang Jincheng) especially fond of Neng and his cooking.
There are times when it seems like writer/director Li Xinyun (sometimes credited on other films as "Sabrina Li" or "Li Xiaofeng") was substantially more ruthless in the editing room than most Chinese directors who see their films cross the Pacific; Lobster Cop is 94 minutes including credits whose outtakes hint at subplots that have only the very smallest portions still remaining in the film. That's not necessarily a bad thing overall - I wonder if Li's own experience as an actress put it in her head that that Hua Jie plays more interesting with less material if what's cut is just a perfunctory thread pairing her off with one of the male characters - but it does leave what feel a bit like odd stubs on the movie at times. Fortunately, most of the plot-advancing bits also have a good joke or two in them, and though many of them are just worth a chuckle, relatively few fall completely flat. Li gets good mileage out of both the "family-owned restaurant" and the "logistics company" pushing at each other while trying to hide their true nature, as well as Du's seething envy of Squad 1. Mileage will vary on some - given that the best surveillance point is in the bathroom, there's a fair amount of literal toilet humor and basic horror at the grunginess of the place, and Uncle Nine's apparent crush on Neng often crosses the line from "you're mistaken" to gay panic material.
Full review on EFC
Showing posts with label West Newton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label West Newton. Show all posts
Sunday, June 24, 2018
Monday, April 06, 2015
Mixed Message on Marriage: Effie Gray, Gett & Let's Get Married
Funny thing: I didn't realize I was doing a theme day until I was roughly halfway through. When Saturday started, my aggressive movie plans for that day were all about expedience: Effie Gray was only opening in West Newton, which meant that if I wanted to see a movie with a lot of people I liked, with one of them also writing the screenplay, I was seeing it that day, what with the difficulty in getting out there without spending a fair chunk of change and time on the commuter rail. Then, hey, I hadn't been able to fit Gett in while it was at the Kendall, so I might as well make it a double feature, and then take the bus into Kenmore Square to see Let's Get Married at Fenway, because being let out of work early on Saturday made Furious 7 in Somerville the most convenient option that night.
Oh, and I'm also doing laundry and the like, so the first time I'm sewing movies together comes when somebody in Gett mentions that "Mr. Turner gave him this painting", and my mind leaps back to this marquee above the door:
Yep, the people in one movie playing in a room make reference to the characters in another sharing that screen. No way to work The Imitation Game in, I'm afraid, but that was the coincidence that struck me until I sat down for Gett, saw one of the same trailers I'd seen in front of the day's first movie, and watched a long, hard fight to divorce kick off. Then it occurred to me that while Effie Gray had concluded before a court fight could start, the one followed from the other thematically, and at any rate, I would be spending the entire afternoon watching women try to escape miserable marriages.
So how do you follow that up? With a Chinese romantic comedy that features five couples, albeit with only two or three actually getting married during the film, although four of the women get to try on a wedding dress. And, you know, that's really not a bad way to go about it. It makes for a heck of a palate-cleanser after the bitterness of the previous movies without negating them, especially since there is divorce going on inside this movie - modern China is apparently much more tolerant of such things than mid-1800s Britain or Israel.
Imagine seeing them in the other order, though - the bubbly happiness of a romantic comedy followed by a bleak picture of the vicious battles to be rid of each other that the marrying couple has to look forward to. No, thank you, I'll take them in this order.
Oh, and while we're on the subject of the West Newton Cinema's marquees, check this out:
That is a six-screen cinema advertising 13 movies, leaving off Paddington (only playing weekend mornings), and the Belmont World Cinema screening playing Monday night. That is a full house. Remember this place in a few weeks when the downtown multiplexes with ten to twenty screens are showing something like a half-dozen films because there's so much pressure to get everyone in opening weekend.
Also, I kind of want to see "Home-Wrecking Crew"; it sounds like a sexy but ultimately sweet comedy about pretty young things hired to destroy marriages for one reason or another. Maybe one of them becomes friends with the wife of the person she's supposed to seduce while another falls in love with her target just because he is so honest and devoted.
Effie Gray
* * * (out of four)
Seen 4 April 2015 in West Newton Cinema #6 (first-run, DCP)
There is much more to the life of Euphemia "Effie" Gray than the film bearing her name presents; it limits itself to what are likely the three worst years of her life and maintains so tight a focus that the motivation behind the people making her miserable is rather opaque. It's easy to be disappointed in the picture for that, as it makes watching it a tremendously frustrating experience, but from another perspective this serves as a strength: This is likely how the situation was, and too often still is, with nothing vaguely resembling explanation for the cruelty involved.
We meet Effie (Dakota Fanning) at nineteen, recounting her life to her sister Sophie (Polly Dartford) as if it was a fairy tale on the eve of her wedding, albeit one where she met her husband-to-be - famed art critic John Ruskin (Greg Wise) - when she was a girl of twelve and he was rather older. Ruskin seems completely disinterested on her wedding night, and never attempts any sort of intimacy, often being casually cruel. The situation - and, likely, the tonics dispensed by Ruskin's mother (Julie Walters) - take a toll on Effie's health, which doesn't show much signs of improving until the couple take a vacation in her native Scotland, with up-and-coming painter Everett Millais (Tom Sturridge) along, commissioned to paint Ruskin's portrait.
Where does this treatment come from? Screenwriter Emma Thompson clearly has some ideas, and occasionally gives the viewer hints, but she and director Richard Laxton leave our anything that might be explanatory enough to let Ruskin off the hook. It is just who he is, and Greg Wise plays the man with a sort of flatness; he's so self-centered that he barely gives Effie a thought. He presents intelligence but not empathy, and though he becomes colder as the movie goes on, it's seldom so overtly monstrous that he loses the sense of being a puzzle.
Full review on EFC.
Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 4 April 2015 in West Newton Cinema #6 (first-run, DCP)
If one has no other praise for Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem, say this about it: Probably no movie ever made gets more mileage out of the "X Months Later" caption than this one. In some ways, that's sibling directors Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz's best filmmaking weapon here, although they use everything else at their disposal as well to make a potentially dry film downright riveting.
The film could, apparently, start with such a caption, as this is the third film to feature co-director Ronit Elkabetz as Viviane Amsalem, with the previous establishing her and husband Elisha (Simon Abkarian) as separated. After three years living apart, she want a divorce, but this is not a simple procedure of civil law in Israel - it involves rabbinical arbitration and is almost impossible to manage without the husband's consent. Elisha does not even show up at the first hearing, and while Viviane has engaged to lawyer Carmel Ben Tovim (Menashe Noy) to represent her, Elisha eventually brings his brother, Rabbi Shimon (Sasson Gabai), in only reluctantly.
To look at the way the Elkabetzes stage Gett, one would almost think that it would work just as well as a play; it takes place it two or three connected rooms that are sparsely and simply furnished, and the camera work is relatively simple. And yet, that is decidedly not the case; those frequent cuts from one time period to another with the location and cast staying mostly constant are something only film and television can really do. As the film goes on, they select more first-person shots, especially as the lawyers questioning those offering testimony become almost horrific figures.
Full review on EFC.
Let's Get Married
* * * (out of four)
Seen 4 April 2015 in Regal Fenway #8 (first-run, DCP)
Let's Get Married is the third Chinese film based upon a popular television series in roughly as many months to get a simultaneous American release, although I can attest that no prior experience is necessary to enjoy it. It's probably not a transformative new take on the story, but it's an enjoyable little four-pack of romantic comedies.
Most of it takes place in Beijing, where Ye Wenwen (Gao Yuanyuan) manages a bridal boutique. She's just had a visit from her ex-boyfriend Li Jianfeng (Ming Dao) and a demanding bride by the name of Wang Ke Er (Mo Xiaoqi) who insists upon wearing a display model that dressmaker Chen ZhenXuan (Jiang Wu) will have to alter. It's also where Tian Haixin (Tamia Liu Tao) manages a hotel and is married to its duck-obsessed chef Gao Dapeng (Wang Zijian), although that may be threatened as Haixin is being offered a new job and is ambivalent about her new pregnancy. It's also home base for pilot Ling Xiao (Ryan Zheng Kai), whose girlfriend Guo Xiaolei (Ivy Chen Yihan) is a security guard and impatient waiting for him to propose. One flight takes violinist Wen Yi (Haden Guo Biting) to Italy where she is entered in a contest, although she meant to come as part of a couple. Then again, tour guide "Luca" Li Xiang (Jerry Li Chen) seems pretty fond of her.
The four stories don't intersect nearly as much as one might expect - Wenwen's shop actually can't serve as a hub until most of the stories are nearly over, after all. None of the stories are particularly complex, actually pretty close to being two-person love stories, with the ones that could turn into triangles keeping the third vertex well out of the picture. Most tend to introduce the situation with director Liu Jiang seeming to hope that the audience won't notice that the stories aren't exactly moving forward as he cuts between them, sometimes keeping things on the back burner for long enough that the viewer is apt to wonder just where some of these people have gone.
Full review on EFC.
Oh, and I'm also doing laundry and the like, so the first time I'm sewing movies together comes when somebody in Gett mentions that "Mr. Turner gave him this painting", and my mind leaps back to this marquee above the door:
Yep, the people in one movie playing in a room make reference to the characters in another sharing that screen. No way to work The Imitation Game in, I'm afraid, but that was the coincidence that struck me until I sat down for Gett, saw one of the same trailers I'd seen in front of the day's first movie, and watched a long, hard fight to divorce kick off. Then it occurred to me that while Effie Gray had concluded before a court fight could start, the one followed from the other thematically, and at any rate, I would be spending the entire afternoon watching women try to escape miserable marriages.
So how do you follow that up? With a Chinese romantic comedy that features five couples, albeit with only two or three actually getting married during the film, although four of the women get to try on a wedding dress. And, you know, that's really not a bad way to go about it. It makes for a heck of a palate-cleanser after the bitterness of the previous movies without negating them, especially since there is divorce going on inside this movie - modern China is apparently much more tolerant of such things than mid-1800s Britain or Israel.
Imagine seeing them in the other order, though - the bubbly happiness of a romantic comedy followed by a bleak picture of the vicious battles to be rid of each other that the marrying couple has to look forward to. No, thank you, I'll take them in this order.
Oh, and while we're on the subject of the West Newton Cinema's marquees, check this out:
That is a six-screen cinema advertising 13 movies, leaving off Paddington (only playing weekend mornings), and the Belmont World Cinema screening playing Monday night. That is a full house. Remember this place in a few weeks when the downtown multiplexes with ten to twenty screens are showing something like a half-dozen films because there's so much pressure to get everyone in opening weekend.
Also, I kind of want to see "Home-Wrecking Crew"; it sounds like a sexy but ultimately sweet comedy about pretty young things hired to destroy marriages for one reason or another. Maybe one of them becomes friends with the wife of the person she's supposed to seduce while another falls in love with her target just because he is so honest and devoted.
Effie Gray
* * * (out of four)
Seen 4 April 2015 in West Newton Cinema #6 (first-run, DCP)
There is much more to the life of Euphemia "Effie" Gray than the film bearing her name presents; it limits itself to what are likely the three worst years of her life and maintains so tight a focus that the motivation behind the people making her miserable is rather opaque. It's easy to be disappointed in the picture for that, as it makes watching it a tremendously frustrating experience, but from another perspective this serves as a strength: This is likely how the situation was, and too often still is, with nothing vaguely resembling explanation for the cruelty involved.
We meet Effie (Dakota Fanning) at nineteen, recounting her life to her sister Sophie (Polly Dartford) as if it was a fairy tale on the eve of her wedding, albeit one where she met her husband-to-be - famed art critic John Ruskin (Greg Wise) - when she was a girl of twelve and he was rather older. Ruskin seems completely disinterested on her wedding night, and never attempts any sort of intimacy, often being casually cruel. The situation - and, likely, the tonics dispensed by Ruskin's mother (Julie Walters) - take a toll on Effie's health, which doesn't show much signs of improving until the couple take a vacation in her native Scotland, with up-and-coming painter Everett Millais (Tom Sturridge) along, commissioned to paint Ruskin's portrait.
Where does this treatment come from? Screenwriter Emma Thompson clearly has some ideas, and occasionally gives the viewer hints, but she and director Richard Laxton leave our anything that might be explanatory enough to let Ruskin off the hook. It is just who he is, and Greg Wise plays the man with a sort of flatness; he's so self-centered that he barely gives Effie a thought. He presents intelligence but not empathy, and though he becomes colder as the movie goes on, it's seldom so overtly monstrous that he loses the sense of being a puzzle.
Full review on EFC.
Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 4 April 2015 in West Newton Cinema #6 (first-run, DCP)
If one has no other praise for Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem, say this about it: Probably no movie ever made gets more mileage out of the "X Months Later" caption than this one. In some ways, that's sibling directors Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz's best filmmaking weapon here, although they use everything else at their disposal as well to make a potentially dry film downright riveting.
The film could, apparently, start with such a caption, as this is the third film to feature co-director Ronit Elkabetz as Viviane Amsalem, with the previous establishing her and husband Elisha (Simon Abkarian) as separated. After three years living apart, she want a divorce, but this is not a simple procedure of civil law in Israel - it involves rabbinical arbitration and is almost impossible to manage without the husband's consent. Elisha does not even show up at the first hearing, and while Viviane has engaged to lawyer Carmel Ben Tovim (Menashe Noy) to represent her, Elisha eventually brings his brother, Rabbi Shimon (Sasson Gabai), in only reluctantly.
To look at the way the Elkabetzes stage Gett, one would almost think that it would work just as well as a play; it takes place it two or three connected rooms that are sparsely and simply furnished, and the camera work is relatively simple. And yet, that is decidedly not the case; those frequent cuts from one time period to another with the location and cast staying mostly constant are something only film and television can really do. As the film goes on, they select more first-person shots, especially as the lawyers questioning those offering testimony become almost horrific figures.
Full review on EFC.
Let's Get Married
* * * (out of four)
Seen 4 April 2015 in Regal Fenway #8 (first-run, DCP)
Let's Get Married is the third Chinese film based upon a popular television series in roughly as many months to get a simultaneous American release, although I can attest that no prior experience is necessary to enjoy it. It's probably not a transformative new take on the story, but it's an enjoyable little four-pack of romantic comedies.
Most of it takes place in Beijing, where Ye Wenwen (Gao Yuanyuan) manages a bridal boutique. She's just had a visit from her ex-boyfriend Li Jianfeng (Ming Dao) and a demanding bride by the name of Wang Ke Er (Mo Xiaoqi) who insists upon wearing a display model that dressmaker Chen ZhenXuan (Jiang Wu) will have to alter. It's also where Tian Haixin (Tamia Liu Tao) manages a hotel and is married to its duck-obsessed chef Gao Dapeng (Wang Zijian), although that may be threatened as Haixin is being offered a new job and is ambivalent about her new pregnancy. It's also home base for pilot Ling Xiao (Ryan Zheng Kai), whose girlfriend Guo Xiaolei (Ivy Chen Yihan) is a security guard and impatient waiting for him to propose. One flight takes violinist Wen Yi (Haden Guo Biting) to Italy where she is entered in a contest, although she meant to come as part of a couple. Then again, tour guide "Luca" Li Xiang (Jerry Li Chen) seems pretty fond of her.
The four stories don't intersect nearly as much as one might expect - Wenwen's shop actually can't serve as a hub until most of the stories are nearly over, after all. None of the stories are particularly complex, actually pretty close to being two-person love stories, with the ones that could turn into triangles keeping the third vertex well out of the picture. Most tend to introduce the situation with director Liu Jiang seeming to hope that the audience won't notice that the stories aren't exactly moving forward as he cuts between them, sometimes keeping things on the back burner for long enough that the viewer is apt to wonder just where some of these people have gone.
Full review on EFC.
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
Recent Russian: Hard to Be a God & Leviathan
These were two surprisingly crowded screenings, given that the one was for a 170-minute black & white Russian fantasy and the other was 140 minutes and an art house movie that had already played the better part of a month. In short, I've got no idea why some things do well and others don't.
To a certain extent, it's a matter of compacting the screenings - there are just enough people in the Cambridge area who would be interested in some combination of Aleksey German's last film and any black-and-white fantastik film and will come out on Wednesday or Thursday evening. Spread it out over a week, it's not impressive, but two days is apparently just enough.
Leviathan, on the other hand, I'd kept not quite fitting in my schedule until it left Kendall Square, which meant I would have to head to West Newton to see it (not realizing it would open in Arlington a week later). Pain in the neck, as it was raining and takes two buses to get there and the place only takes cash and I just had three bucks in my wallet and there wasn't an ATM for my bank in easy walking distance so that $9 ticket wound up costing $12...
Not a bad crowd, considering it was a pretty niche movie on a Saturday afternoon. I've said it before, but the West Newton Cinema kind of fascinates me just in terms of being really weird outlier as these places go, an art house in a place where you'd think a mainstream place could thrive which in apparently knows its local audience well enough to thrive with its idiosyncratic programming. I kind of love the place, in part because it is the opposite of the carefully designed, highly-polished theaters I often go to. It's got plain white walls with posters taped or tacked to them, screens located at the end of snake-like hallways, and a balcony that overlooks the lobby. The popcorn is good and the place is surprisingly big for the amount of frontage it has on the street. The screen I saw Leviathan on was smallish (seating about 100 people) and the holes at the ends of the armrests, if they are supposed to be cupholders, to not hold a large beverage. Pretty cool until the person who has to sit right next to you knocks your popcorn and soda into your lap.
That'll stop the waxing rhapsodic about old-fashioned movie houses right quick.
Still, it's always neat to go out there, and I'm disappointed that the transit options will be making it all but impossible to see some of the Belmont World Film festival selections that will be playing there with the Belmont Studio currently shut down. It's a neat place that more folks in Boston should check out.
Trudno byt bogom (Hard to Be a God)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 12 March 2015 in the Brattle Theatre (first-run/special engagement, DCP)
Hard to Be a God may deserve your ten bucks just for the sheer level of will and effort it took to get made, with decades of working on the script, six years of filming, and another seven of post-production, during which time filmmaker Aleksey German passed away, leaving his similarly talented wife and son to complete it. Appreciate that, because the film itself is an endurance test - impressive but decidedly not for everybody's taste.
The premise of the film and the novel by Arkadiy & Boris Strugatskiy that it is based upon sounds like an episode of Star Trek - a group of scientists have arrived on a world that is much like Earth, except that it is stuck in the middle ages, never having experienced the Renaissance. A group of thirty scientists have been observing for a while, but are under orders not to interfere with its development. One, Don Rumata (Leonid Yarmolnik), hs been there some time, posing as the bastard offspring of a noble and a local god. He has been given the job of rescuing an intellectual by the name of Budakh (Evgeniy Gerchakov) from warlord Don Reba (Aleksandr Chutko), but getting there is apparently far from a straight line.
Indeed, it's a long, meandering one; the film runs nearly three hours and the story as such doesn't really kick into gear until some time after the two-hour mark. Until then, it's a lot of getting to know the world and Rumata's place in it, and that's a tough, tough slog. German does not shrink from how ugly the equivalent time period was on Earth or Arkanor, with the latter planet apparently being made almost entirely of mud just as a start. That isn't quite grimy enough for German, of course, so he makes sure that it gets mixed with blood, pus, snot, excrement (animal and human), and any other nasty material one can come up with as it sticks to Rumata, and that's just the obvious gross-out material. The people are uncouth and barbaric, cringing as Rumata plays jazz on his flute, burning any writing almost by reflex, and just as really visiting violence and degradation upon each other. There is some discussion of competing factions - "blacks" and "grays" - but who can tell any difference based upon how they act?
Full review on EFC
Leviafan (Leviathan)
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 14 March 2015 in West Newton Cinema #6 (first/second-run, DCP)
What is it that makes a movie jump from a solid drama with an interesting premise to borderline-great, the sort of film that doesn't just get chosen as its country's Oscar submission, but makes the final cut? Obviously, if there were an easy universal answer, everyone would do it; for Leviathan, it seems to be tying an exquisite knot: Able to tighten and come undone with the minimum amount of the right kind of pressure.
It starts with Kolya (Aleksey Serebryakov), a handyman and mechanic in the north of Russia whose family home may be humble, but it is located on a very desirable patch of land. Desirable enough that the city has made moves to legally seize it to build a communications center. It's difficult to fight City Hall anywhere, but an old buddy from the Army, Dmitriy "Dima" Seleznyov (Vladimir Vdovichenkov) is a high-powered lawyer from Moscow, and comes to argue his case - or, failing that, apply some leverage to the Vadim (Roman Madyanov), the religious but highly corrupt mayor. It will take some days, during which time Dima can see the tension between Kolya, second wife Lilya (Elena Lyadova), and son Roman (Sergey Pokohdaev).
Director and co-writer Andrey Zvyagintsev begins the film as Kolya's chances at an official remedy are drawing to a close; it's barely ten minutes before the court reads out how Kolya will take what the city says his land is worth because his claims that he deserves more are baseless. It's a numbing declaration - few other languages can truly communicate the system grinding a man into paste like Russian spoken in a monotone - that both establishes an air of fatalism and signals the real plot is about to begin. It's time to start trying to make the rampant corruption work in this family's favor. Everybody, from Vadim down to Roman, is breaking the rules in some way, with the common thread being that seizing advantage also creates leverage that can be used against that person, depending upon how ruthless his or her enemies are.
Full review on EFC
To a certain extent, it's a matter of compacting the screenings - there are just enough people in the Cambridge area who would be interested in some combination of Aleksey German's last film and any black-and-white fantastik film and will come out on Wednesday or Thursday evening. Spread it out over a week, it's not impressive, but two days is apparently just enough.
Leviathan, on the other hand, I'd kept not quite fitting in my schedule until it left Kendall Square, which meant I would have to head to West Newton to see it (not realizing it would open in Arlington a week later). Pain in the neck, as it was raining and takes two buses to get there and the place only takes cash and I just had three bucks in my wallet and there wasn't an ATM for my bank in easy walking distance so that $9 ticket wound up costing $12...
Not a bad crowd, considering it was a pretty niche movie on a Saturday afternoon. I've said it before, but the West Newton Cinema kind of fascinates me just in terms of being really weird outlier as these places go, an art house in a place where you'd think a mainstream place could thrive which in apparently knows its local audience well enough to thrive with its idiosyncratic programming. I kind of love the place, in part because it is the opposite of the carefully designed, highly-polished theaters I often go to. It's got plain white walls with posters taped or tacked to them, screens located at the end of snake-like hallways, and a balcony that overlooks the lobby. The popcorn is good and the place is surprisingly big for the amount of frontage it has on the street. The screen I saw Leviathan on was smallish (seating about 100 people) and the holes at the ends of the armrests, if they are supposed to be cupholders, to not hold a large beverage. Pretty cool until the person who has to sit right next to you knocks your popcorn and soda into your lap.
That'll stop the waxing rhapsodic about old-fashioned movie houses right quick.
Still, it's always neat to go out there, and I'm disappointed that the transit options will be making it all but impossible to see some of the Belmont World Film festival selections that will be playing there with the Belmont Studio currently shut down. It's a neat place that more folks in Boston should check out.
Trudno byt bogom (Hard to Be a God)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 12 March 2015 in the Brattle Theatre (first-run/special engagement, DCP)
Hard to Be a God may deserve your ten bucks just for the sheer level of will and effort it took to get made, with decades of working on the script, six years of filming, and another seven of post-production, during which time filmmaker Aleksey German passed away, leaving his similarly talented wife and son to complete it. Appreciate that, because the film itself is an endurance test - impressive but decidedly not for everybody's taste.
The premise of the film and the novel by Arkadiy & Boris Strugatskiy that it is based upon sounds like an episode of Star Trek - a group of scientists have arrived on a world that is much like Earth, except that it is stuck in the middle ages, never having experienced the Renaissance. A group of thirty scientists have been observing for a while, but are under orders not to interfere with its development. One, Don Rumata (Leonid Yarmolnik), hs been there some time, posing as the bastard offspring of a noble and a local god. He has been given the job of rescuing an intellectual by the name of Budakh (Evgeniy Gerchakov) from warlord Don Reba (Aleksandr Chutko), but getting there is apparently far from a straight line.
Indeed, it's a long, meandering one; the film runs nearly three hours and the story as such doesn't really kick into gear until some time after the two-hour mark. Until then, it's a lot of getting to know the world and Rumata's place in it, and that's a tough, tough slog. German does not shrink from how ugly the equivalent time period was on Earth or Arkanor, with the latter planet apparently being made almost entirely of mud just as a start. That isn't quite grimy enough for German, of course, so he makes sure that it gets mixed with blood, pus, snot, excrement (animal and human), and any other nasty material one can come up with as it sticks to Rumata, and that's just the obvious gross-out material. The people are uncouth and barbaric, cringing as Rumata plays jazz on his flute, burning any writing almost by reflex, and just as really visiting violence and degradation upon each other. There is some discussion of competing factions - "blacks" and "grays" - but who can tell any difference based upon how they act?
Full review on EFC
Leviafan (Leviathan)
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 14 March 2015 in West Newton Cinema #6 (first/second-run, DCP)
What is it that makes a movie jump from a solid drama with an interesting premise to borderline-great, the sort of film that doesn't just get chosen as its country's Oscar submission, but makes the final cut? Obviously, if there were an easy universal answer, everyone would do it; for Leviathan, it seems to be tying an exquisite knot: Able to tighten and come undone with the minimum amount of the right kind of pressure.
It starts with Kolya (Aleksey Serebryakov), a handyman and mechanic in the north of Russia whose family home may be humble, but it is located on a very desirable patch of land. Desirable enough that the city has made moves to legally seize it to build a communications center. It's difficult to fight City Hall anywhere, but an old buddy from the Army, Dmitriy "Dima" Seleznyov (Vladimir Vdovichenkov) is a high-powered lawyer from Moscow, and comes to argue his case - or, failing that, apply some leverage to the Vadim (Roman Madyanov), the religious but highly corrupt mayor. It will take some days, during which time Dima can see the tension between Kolya, second wife Lilya (Elena Lyadova), and son Roman (Sergey Pokohdaev).
Director and co-writer Andrey Zvyagintsev begins the film as Kolya's chances at an official remedy are drawing to a close; it's barely ten minutes before the court reads out how Kolya will take what the city says his land is worth because his claims that he deserves more are baseless. It's a numbing declaration - few other languages can truly communicate the system grinding a man into paste like Russian spoken in a monotone - that both establishes an air of fatalism and signals the real plot is about to begin. It's time to start trying to make the rampant corruption work in this family's favor. Everybody, from Vadim down to Roman, is breaking the rules in some way, with the common thread being that seizing advantage also creates leverage that can be used against that person, depending upon how ruthless his or her enemies are.
Full review on EFC
Monday, March 17, 2014
Omar
It's been a while since I've been out to the West Newton Cinema; in fact, it's quite possible I haven't been there since that one time the Sci-Fi marathon ran there a little under a decade ago. I haven't been avoiding it so much as it's a tough trip for those of us without cars: It may be located right next to both a bus stop and a Commuter Rail station, but those are both focused on getting Newtonians into Boston for work and back at the end of the day. You're not getting there on Sunday, and you're not getting back in the evening without a pretty serious hike down Washington Street to Newton Corner, where you can catch the 57 bus to Kenmore.
That was the route I took getting back to the city, although I took the 553 between the two sections of Newton. It meant that I could not quite make it to Kendall Square in time to catch Bethlehem, which would have made a heck of a double feature with Omar, a real shame (Omar is a Palestinian movie about an Arab turned informant trying to avoid serving his friends up to the Israelis; Bethlehem comes from Israel and has a case-worker finding himself sympathizing with the Palestinian youth he's recruited to spy on his brother). Maybe it's better that way, though, so that the two don't merge too much in my mind.
The getting there was kind of surreal, though, as the first leg on the 70[A] bus is the route I used to take to work every day, so I was constantly noting what had changed and what had not in the ensuing couple of years. It kind of saddens me to see The Construction Site's storefront sitting empty but still having its distinctive facade; it was a great little toy store with lots of building toys and train sets, and my nieces are the right age to dig its wares. Of course, I'd also forgotten that the schedule for the 70 &70A was occasionally optimistic, and that sometimes the two buses on the same route until they diverge in Waltham Center will often pass each other, despite starting out with tween minutes between them. Almost made me miss my connection to the 553!
It was, however, fun to visit the West Newton again. It's one of the most unusual theaters in the general area from the black marquee with white lettering to the cash-only policy at the box office. Unlike a lot of the neighborhood theaters in the Boston area, they don't focus on first-run studio films at all, instead focusing almost all six of their screens on boutique films that on some occasions don't even play Cambridge or Brookline, although it's rate that they only have six movies playing, with kids' movies hanging around for extra weekend matinees and senior-targeted films playing afternoons. Movies aimed at a Jewish audience also seem to do especially well there. In many ways, it seems to be the very model of the sort of theater that should have died in the last few years, crippled by megalopolises and the conversion to digital, but the surprisingly robust crowd for a Saturday matinee of a foreign film that couldn't find big-city screens says otherwise. I suspect that this is the result of the building being owned free and clear and the owners knowing their area and its tastes much better than the guy booking for a whole chain from hundreds of miles away.
Of course, some part of that survival likely comes from not doing a whole lot to modernize the place beyond the digital projectors that are likely there. The architecture betrays that this was one a palace that has been cut into smaller screens (there's a tell-tale asymmetry to the room I was in downstairs, and I suspect that at least some of the four upstairs were once balcony seating. The general open feel of the lobby, more designed to hold people than sell them popcorn, speaks to this. So doors the design of some of the fixtures as well. It is likely not nearly as efficient as many newer - or contemporary-but-remodeled - theaters, but it gets the job done.
I like it. Not enough to make my way out there when something is playing elsewhere in the Boston area - it is still a best-case 70 minutes each way on the bus and using MoviePass is obviously right out - but I will stop discounting it as an option when a film only opens there or hands around the place longer than anywhere else.
Omar
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 15 March 2014 in West Newton Cinema #2 (first-run, DCP)
Omar starts with its title character scaling a wall to travel between two Palestinian areas of Jerusalem, and while I don't know the exact rationale for that arrangement, a spy movie can do a heck of a lot with a wall like that. In fact, it might be tempted to do everything it can, crushing the story under more symbolism that it can really handle. This one, fortunately, knows the story it wants to tell and doesn't miss a beat with it.
Omar (Adam Bakri) is climbing that wall to meet with Tarek (Iyad Hoorani), a lifelong friend who is active in the Jerusalem brigades, with Omar and their other friend Amjad (Samer Bisharat) under his command; a chance to see Tarek's cute sister Nadia (Leem Lubany) is just a bonus. And while their operation is something of a success, it doesn't take the Israelis long to track them down and capture Omar. An agent by the name of Rami (Waleed Zuaiter) offers him freedom for delivering Tarek, but Omar is not about to simply roll over and do what Rami demands.
The basic plot of Omar is that of a spy movie, but because of the way geography and politics are set up in the West Bank, it in many ways has the feel of cops trying to develop sources inside the mob, and I suppose that from inside, which type of situation is the proper analogy depends on which side one is on. Writer/director Hany Abu-Assad takes how close walls are in this situation and takes great advantage of it, highlighting how, to a certain extent, cloak-and-dagger is part of everyday life in Palestine, from the dead-serious but almost comical amount of feelers Omar receives from various groups when his in prison to the way that courting involves sneaking over walls and exchanging notes like they were state secrets. This is how he finds new and exciting ways of tightening the screws toward the end, when many other filmmakers might have settled for the solution to the mystery that the movie is pointing to or just acknowledge that, in a city claimed by two groups, there's never any getting out.
Full review at EFC
That was the route I took getting back to the city, although I took the 553 between the two sections of Newton. It meant that I could not quite make it to Kendall Square in time to catch Bethlehem, which would have made a heck of a double feature with Omar, a real shame (Omar is a Palestinian movie about an Arab turned informant trying to avoid serving his friends up to the Israelis; Bethlehem comes from Israel and has a case-worker finding himself sympathizing with the Palestinian youth he's recruited to spy on his brother). Maybe it's better that way, though, so that the two don't merge too much in my mind.
The getting there was kind of surreal, though, as the first leg on the 70[A] bus is the route I used to take to work every day, so I was constantly noting what had changed and what had not in the ensuing couple of years. It kind of saddens me to see The Construction Site's storefront sitting empty but still having its distinctive facade; it was a great little toy store with lots of building toys and train sets, and my nieces are the right age to dig its wares. Of course, I'd also forgotten that the schedule for the 70 &70A was occasionally optimistic, and that sometimes the two buses on the same route until they diverge in Waltham Center will often pass each other, despite starting out with tween minutes between them. Almost made me miss my connection to the 553!
It was, however, fun to visit the West Newton again. It's one of the most unusual theaters in the general area from the black marquee with white lettering to the cash-only policy at the box office. Unlike a lot of the neighborhood theaters in the Boston area, they don't focus on first-run studio films at all, instead focusing almost all six of their screens on boutique films that on some occasions don't even play Cambridge or Brookline, although it's rate that they only have six movies playing, with kids' movies hanging around for extra weekend matinees and senior-targeted films playing afternoons. Movies aimed at a Jewish audience also seem to do especially well there. In many ways, it seems to be the very model of the sort of theater that should have died in the last few years, crippled by megalopolises and the conversion to digital, but the surprisingly robust crowd for a Saturday matinee of a foreign film that couldn't find big-city screens says otherwise. I suspect that this is the result of the building being owned free and clear and the owners knowing their area and its tastes much better than the guy booking for a whole chain from hundreds of miles away.
Of course, some part of that survival likely comes from not doing a whole lot to modernize the place beyond the digital projectors that are likely there. The architecture betrays that this was one a palace that has been cut into smaller screens (there's a tell-tale asymmetry to the room I was in downstairs, and I suspect that at least some of the four upstairs were once balcony seating. The general open feel of the lobby, more designed to hold people than sell them popcorn, speaks to this. So doors the design of some of the fixtures as well. It is likely not nearly as efficient as many newer - or contemporary-but-remodeled - theaters, but it gets the job done.
I like it. Not enough to make my way out there when something is playing elsewhere in the Boston area - it is still a best-case 70 minutes each way on the bus and using MoviePass is obviously right out - but I will stop discounting it as an option when a film only opens there or hands around the place longer than anywhere else.
Omar
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 15 March 2014 in West Newton Cinema #2 (first-run, DCP)
Omar starts with its title character scaling a wall to travel between two Palestinian areas of Jerusalem, and while I don't know the exact rationale for that arrangement, a spy movie can do a heck of a lot with a wall like that. In fact, it might be tempted to do everything it can, crushing the story under more symbolism that it can really handle. This one, fortunately, knows the story it wants to tell and doesn't miss a beat with it.
Omar (Adam Bakri) is climbing that wall to meet with Tarek (Iyad Hoorani), a lifelong friend who is active in the Jerusalem brigades, with Omar and their other friend Amjad (Samer Bisharat) under his command; a chance to see Tarek's cute sister Nadia (Leem Lubany) is just a bonus. And while their operation is something of a success, it doesn't take the Israelis long to track them down and capture Omar. An agent by the name of Rami (Waleed Zuaiter) offers him freedom for delivering Tarek, but Omar is not about to simply roll over and do what Rami demands.
The basic plot of Omar is that of a spy movie, but because of the way geography and politics are set up in the West Bank, it in many ways has the feel of cops trying to develop sources inside the mob, and I suppose that from inside, which type of situation is the proper analogy depends on which side one is on. Writer/director Hany Abu-Assad takes how close walls are in this situation and takes great advantage of it, highlighting how, to a certain extent, cloak-and-dagger is part of everyday life in Palestine, from the dead-serious but almost comical amount of feelers Omar receives from various groups when his in prison to the way that courting involves sneaking over walls and exchanging notes like they were state secrets. This is how he finds new and exciting ways of tightening the screws toward the end, when many other filmmakers might have settled for the solution to the mystery that the movie is pointing to or just acknowledge that, in a city claimed by two groups, there's never any getting out.
Full review at EFC
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