Dilili in Paris & The Parts You Lose

Apple Cinemas Cambridge actually split the 18-seat screen #9 between three movies this week, with something called Semper Fi the third 90-minute movie getting two screenings a day, but I was kind of surprised to see that both of the two I saw were released by Samuel Goldwyn Pictures, which apparently also released them to the on-demand services at the same time. Like I said yesterday, I'm not sure how distribution works these days, but it seems weird for a studio to open two movies on the same day, but maybe it's a perfectly reasonable way to drop things to VOD. It also makes me wonder if Goldwyn is offering their VOD movies to places like this as a package deal. Not a double feature, but the studio recognizing that they can't ask for a whole screen under these circumstances, but maybe a half.

Sadly, neither is very good, although while writing the reviews, I did find one thing that amuses me: For all that I'm annoyed by the name-dropping Dilili in Paris does, it did not occur to me until a couple days later that at one point Dilili is saved through literal name-dropping. You kind of have to respect that.

Dilili à Paris (Dilili in Paris)

* * (out of four)
Seen 5 October 2019 in Apple Cinemas Cambridge/Fresh Pond #9 (first-run, DCP)

I'm not sure how completely an atrocious dub torpedoes Dilili in Paris in its American release, because it's got a lot of other problems, and it's entirely possible that the film's original soundtrack sounds just as flat and repetitive, only in French. Even if that's the case, this is the version that English-speaking kids will see, and while they've probably seen worse on YouTube, the way it's presented makes this film feels far more lazy than it likely is.

Dilili is a girl of about nine or ten who had a French father and a Kanak mother, and stowed away on a ship bound for Paris with a troupe of Kanak performers. Taken in by a Countess and taught the language by Louise Michel, she is disappointed that she is given as much trouble for her dark skin in Paris as she was her light skin in Africa, but on the last day of the troupe's performance, she meets a friendly delivery boy, Orel, who offers to help her see more of Paris from the seat of his tricycle. Orel seems to be a friend-of-a-friend of everybody in Paris, particularly opera singer Emma Calvé, and as such is a good friend to have in a dangerous time - a gang of "male-masters" has been kidnapping young girls throughout the city, and have their eyes on Dilili, who intends to solve the case herself.

Writer/director Michel Ocelot has made a number of films that have charmed audiences at kid-friendly film festivals, perhaps most notably Azur and Asmar, and for this one he recreates early-20th-Century Paris with mostly photographic backgrounds over which he places flatly-rendered characters that often have a certain charm but sometimes move in an odd manner, like the filmmakers are using a library of pre-programmed motions that neither quite mimic human activity nor take advantage of the room animation gives one to exaggerate. It looks like Colorforms, which is a nifty idea to have for this sort of movie, but isn't very expressive and sometimes has Ocelot caught in between, when he needs an original setting or complicate action.

Full review on EFilmCritic

The Parts You Lose

* * (out of four)
Seen 5 October 2019 in Apple Cinemas Cambridge/Fresh Pond #9 (first-run, DCP)

The Parts You Lose is a dreary movie about a boy finding a new father figure in a violent fugitive who seems like a minor improvement from his actual dad, with lots of nothing happening under the sort of grey sky that makes things feel more serious and as such does a much better job of making the film memorable just by being above Manitoba-subbing-for-North-Dakota in February than anything that actually happens. It's the sort of blandly generic movie whose very name starts to vanish even while one is watching it, becoming "The Pieces We Lost" or the like when a person tries to recall something about it.

The first person seen under that sky is Wesley (Danny Murphy), a ten-year-old with hearing impairment bad enough that he has to take special classes some distance away from his already-isolated home. His mother Gail (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) works hard to accommodate him; frequently-absent father Ronnie (Scoot McNairy) less so. The area is pretty quiet, but a fleeing gang of criminals got in a shootout at the local hotel, and one (Aaron Paul) turned up in the middle of the path Wesley takes to his bus, unconscious and bleeding. Unable to get his father's attention, Wesley hides him in an abandoned barn, sneaking food and otherwise helping him heal up.

Does Wesley have any idea how this man got shot? It's a potentially intriguing question; there are multiple scenes where Wesley is naturally less aware of the world around him unless someone goes out of their way to get his attention, and the filmmakers tend to drip information about the first major crimes in the area out in the background without doing much to indicate Wesley is seeing the television or that his hearing aid is picking up some muffled version of the news. Writer Darren Lemke and director Christopher Cantwell are building their movie around an isolated kid who finds one person to connect with, and this would be a good way to show just how alone he is.

Full review on EFilmCritic

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 4 October 2019 - 10 October 2019

Basically only one thing of any note opening this weekend, and I'm not sure why everyone else is running so scared.

• I mean, I'm as excited to see the new Takashi Miike movie playing local theaters, I don't know why the big studios wouldn't take the chance to open something else. But that just means everyone has no reason not to see First Love, which has a boxer and a prostitute falling in love over the course of a crazy night involving yakuza, assassins, ghosts, and more. It's at Kendall Square, which also opens Swedish comedy Britt-Marie Was Here and documentary Where's My Roy Cohn?, with the latter also playing at The West Newton Cinema.
• The only thing that the studios counter it with is Joker, which Warner Brothers is dumping in hope that nobody will pay much attention to a movie that gives an origin story to a Batman villain famed for having a completely unknown history. To see that one, you will have to go to the Somerville (including 70mm), the Coolidge, Fresh Pond, Kendall Square, Jordan's Furniture (in Imax), West Newton, Boston Common (including Imax), Fenway (including RPX), the Seaport (including Icon-X), South Bay (including Imax & Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Imax & Dolby Cinema), the Embassy, Revere (including XPlus), or the SuperLux.
  
  Repertory screenings this week include Monty Python and the Holy Grail at Fenway on Saturday and 35th anniversary shows of Ghostbusters at Fenway and Boston Common on Sunday and Thursday. Fantasia selection Little Monsters with Lupita Nyong'o plays South Bay and Assembly Row (it looks like the Fenway show has been dropped) on Tuesday before hitting Hulu for the weekend. There's also Mister America at Fenway and the Kendall on Wednesday night (possibly as a preview, possible as a one-off), which some places have mislabeled as a documentary because Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington play characters with their own names in this comedy about a man acquitted of murder who runs for district attorney despite being deeply unquaulified. Roger Waters: Us + Them plays Sunday afternoon at Boston Common, the Seaport (in Icon-X), and Revere, while S&M2, a concert film of Metallica playing with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, plays Wednesday at Boston Common, Kendall Square, and Revere.
• The Coolidge Corner Theatre also opens Becoming Nobody, a documentary on Ram Dass, with most of its screenings in the Goldscreen, so order ahead if that interests you. .
  
  Larry Fessenden's Depraved gets a midnight slot on both Friday and Saturday, with the other screen going to the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Friday and a 35mm Universal Monsters double feature of The Wolf Man & The Creature from the Black Lagoon on Saturday, the latter in red/blue anaglyph 3D. On Sunday morning, the Goethe-Institut presents All About Me, a cinematic biography of German comedian Hape Kerkeling directed by Caroline Link.
• The 70mm shows of Joker at The Somerville Theatre push this month's Slaughterhouse Movie Club late on Friday, with the 35mm presentation of Beetlejuice starting at 11pm (and the pre-show burlesque starting at 10pm). The Weekend's Jack Attack! shows - About Schmidt, Something's Gotta Give, and The Departed on Saturday/The Bucket List and How Do You Know? on Sunday will mostly be in 35mm (The Bucket List being the exception) but not on the main screen.
• Apple Fresh Pond continue Syeraa and War after their Wednesday openings (and Dream Girl & Chhichhore from earlier), while also opening Tamil action/adventure Asuran and Tamil thriller Chanakya (through Monday) and having a single show of Rato Tika Nidhaar Maa on Wednesday. They also appear to be splitting one screen between three English-language indies: Semper Fi, which features Jai Courtney as a by-the-book cop (before serving overseas) who intends to break his brother out of prison; Dilli in Paris, the latest by Azur & Asmar director Michel Ocelot which follows an amateur detective and her deliveryman sidekick tracking down kidnapped girls in the Belle Epoque; and The Parts You Lose, with Aaron Paul as a fugitive hiding out in North Dakota (and also featuring Mary Elizabeth Winstead).
  
  Chinese National Day releases The Climbers and My Country, My People continue at Boston Common, with crazy Japanese animated adventure Promare also showing some nice legs (Ne Zha finally leaves Boston Common, but shows as matinees at the Lexington Venue on Saturday and Sunday). Dominican comedy El Equipito and Brazilian biopic Nothing to Lose 2 continue at Revere.
• The GlobeDocs Film Festival settles into the Brattle for most of the weekend, with a Friday Night spotlight of The Apollo and movies all day Saturday and Sunday - though they move over to the Coolidge to close with Circus of Books and Six Locked Doors on Sunday evening. The Brattle Theatre continues with docs with a DocYard show of The Hottest August on Monday, with filmmaker Brett Story on-hand for Q&A. Tuesday is listed as TBA, but they've got a 35mm print of Bong Joon-ho's Mother on Wednesday to prep for an IFFBoston preview of Bong's Parasite on Thursday (pass required).
• The Museum of Fine Arts, finishes their run of Aga on Friday, with I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians on Wednesday and Hyman Bloom: The Beauty of All Things on Wednesday and Thursday. Director Angélica Allende Brisk and editor Xandra deGonzalez will be on-hand Wednesday, and Friday's "On the Fringe: Adventures in Cult Cinema" screening of The Cell, which will be shown on 35mm film, is also the start of an "Exquisite Corpse: The Spirit of Hyman Bloom" series. They also start a New Cinema from Portugal series, with Soldado Milhões (Saturday) and Sunburn (Sunday) this week's selections. There are also Manhattan Short Film Festival screenings on Saturday and Sunday, as well as a Roxbury Film Festival-presented show of #Truth on Thursday with actor Elimu Nelson .
• The Harvard Film Archive has this year's McMillan-Stewart Fellow, Dieudo Hamadi on-hand for Kinshasa Makambo on Friday and Mama Colonel on Saturday. The 35mm weekend matinee on Saturday is Goodbye, Lenin!, a bit less kid-friendly than usual but a terrifically entertaining movie. Sunday's 35mm B-Movies include musical Babes on Swing Street (5pm) and a double-feature of The Man They Could Not Hang and The Crime of Dr. Crespi (7pm). They welcome another guest on Monday, as Pedro Costa visits with his new film Vitalina Varela, which takes its name and subject from a figure in his previous film Horse Money.
• The Regent Theatre will be showing a sing-along version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail on Friday night, and also has "guerilla music" documentary Desolation Center on Thursday.
• This week's Bright Lights upstairs at the Paramount are "Taking Back Our Democracy" with director Hedrick Smith and Susan Gray on hand Tuesday and the 20th Animation Show of Shows on Thursday, both free and open to the public (so there's no point in me seeing if that Kickstarter I backed entitles me to a free ticket).
• Cinema Salem breaks their "History of Halloween" short doc out for October, although it looks like they're not showing it or their "True 1692" shows in 3D anymore. They also play host to the well-booked Salem Horror Fest this weekend with Attack the Block and The Blob on Friday; VFW, In Fabric, The Thing, and Under the Skin on Saturday; plus Daniel Isn't Real and 25th Anniversary screenings of Ed Wood and Serial Mom on Sunday. The festival also has live appearances elsewhere and screenings at the Peabody Essex Museum including Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror (Saturday), Nevrland (Sunday), and John Waters live on Wednesday.
• The Luna Theater ALSO shows Monty Python and the Holy Grail, with shows on Friday, Saturday, and Tuesday evenings. Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool plays Saturday afternoon, with peculiar documentary Wrinkles the Clown playing later that afternoon. The Saturday Morning Cartoons, Sunday's "Magic Mystery Movie Club", and Weirdo Wednesday are all on this week, while Carrie plays all day Sunday.
• One show for Boston University's annual Tournées Film Festival in the Photonics Center this week, with Thursday's The Wild Boys featuring five cruel young men marooned on an island that changes them into girls.

Obviously, I'm down for the first available show of First Love, as well as Little Monsters and maybe catching Parasite early. I could also spend some time at Fresh Pond for War, Dilli in Paris, and The Parts You Lose. Maybe I'll fit that comic-book thing in.

Outrage

A few odds and ends of thoughts before getting on to the review:

* The Brattle is playing a double feature of Azur & Asmar and Sita Sings the Blues. Both are impressive animated movies, Sita in particular being fantastic.

* I'm constantly surprised when I'm the first to review something on EFC/HBS that has played festivals or been released in other cities, as is the case with Outrage, especially since I generally don't finish until it's a week into its Boston run. We really need to get some more folks who see indie films going there, especially if they're based out of New York or L.A. (or some festival-friendly area).

* Sometimes the results are fun, though. As I right this, my review of Moon from SXSW is the hottest thing going there, even above the two Taking of Pellham 1-2-3 reviews. I'm guessing that it will show up in Cambridge next weekend, at the Harvard Square (based on Landmark's website only talking about it playing Waltham); hopefully Boston Common, too. I do get addicted to checking how my reviews are doing there, then trying to figure out why certain ones hit the leaderboards.

* Writing this review was annoying, not just because the laptop crapped out a couple times (fortunately, without loss of data), but because I get nervous writing about "gay stuff", and not just because many of the folks (both specific and hypothetical) most likely to read the review are gay. I hate the words: I've known too many people who use "gay" as an insult, "homosexual" is too clinical, and, man, I'd like to get "queer" back into general circulation. It just sounds like a word that means "somewhat odd or bizarre", and I'd like to be able to use it that way without it sounding like a double-entendre, especially since it seems to have become one of those words that only members of the group can use. Also, is there a specific preferred order for the acronym "LGBT"? I saw it that way on a site, but I always think of it with the "G" first... Anyway, it means second-guessing every sentence to figure out whether I'm saying something I don't want to say.

Anyway, it's playing at the Kendall and Coolidge right now. Digital projection in both cases, but I saw it at the Kendall because I don't like the way theater #3 in the Coolidge is set up.

Outrage

* * * (out of four)
Seen 8 June 2009 at Landmark Kendall Square #7 (first-run)

There are grounds to critique how Outrage is put together as a movie, and plenty of them, but they are relatively minor. For the most part, the film does what a good piece of documentary journalism should, in that it presents information clearly, in a manner that is entertaining enough to keep an audience's interest without diminishing the subject matter's import. Even if a viewer disagrees with Kirby Dick's message or tactics, he or she must admit that he argues his point reasonably well.

That point is this: Many politicians and members of their staffs are gay and in the closet, which ordinarily would be their own business. Unfortunately, a sizable portion of this group acts in a way that is directly counter to the interests of other LGBT people, and that sort of hypocrisy should not be allowed to stand. The film offers up examples of these politicians, shows the process of investigating, and makes an attempt to explain why so many smart and capable people would choose to live with such a contradiction in their lives.

Writer/director Dick is not terribly subtle in how he does this: He introduces a politician, presents the evidence that despite his public front (the outed politicians are, by and large, male and conservative), he enjoys the company of other men, and then displays a graphic of their dismal voting record on issues like marriage rights, anti-defamation laws, and AIDS relief: A big "NO" pops up (with thumping sound effect) next to each time the issue was raised and is followed by a tiny percentage of gay-friendly votes. That the template is obvious from the second time its used is not a knock against it; it makes its point very clearly.

Dick also takes care to make sure that the outings are substantiated, either by having people speak on the record or making sure that any anonymous sources are confirmed. The journalists who originally broke these stories on their magazines and blogs are very careful to point out that there's no room for doubt in these stories; they must be able to withstand scrutiny. Most seem like they would, although in one or two cases it did seem as though the independent sources weren't necessarily so independent as claimed.

The film also has some structural problems. The opening graphics, for instance, state the film's premise but also say that there's a conspiracy to keep this secret. "Conspiracy" is a loaded word, and the film does not follow up on this accusation in a very substantial way. It also has a tendency to return to points that don't need reiteration. Take the case of Charlie Crist, the governor of Florida. Early scenes do a fair job of establishing that he's gay, claims otherwise, and actively works against gay rights. Returning to him multiple times almost seems to work against the film's aims: He's got a gregarious, charming manner that are a great asset to his political career, and it's almost possible to sympathize with this guy who has to keep answering the same questions despite there not being much new proof; we forget just how damning those original accusations were.

The movie keeps coming back to him, though, because his story fits the topic in so many ways, and he's one of the few subjects that does not have "former" attached to his position when identifying subtitles come up (aside from the reliably entertaining Barney Frank). It also sidesteps the ethics of outing, to a certain extent: Early claims of how it is much better for all involved to be out of the closet, no matter how that happens, dangle until late interviews with former New Jersey governor James McGreevey and former Arizona legislator Jim Kolbe. Many of the interview subjects say that normally, they'd never out someone, but in these circumstances... The line is not well-defined, and offers critics a chance to charge that the filmmakers are as hypocritical as those they criticize.

And maybe they are, in some ways - there's room for debate about the film's ethics and the politics. Its information, on the other hand, seems pretty solid, and the presentation is good. That's what makes for a good documentary, if not a perfect one.

Also at HBS.

This Week In Tickets: 16 February 2009 to 22 February 2009

Tired from the Oscars. Shocked how disappointed I found myself feeling, considering how evenly matched I felt most of the categories were.



First 11 hours of SF/34
Final 13 hours of SF/34

Seriously, best adapted screenplay for Slumdog Millionaire? I loved quite a bit about that movie, but decide on one framing device and stick to it!

And Penelope Cruz? I love her, but the award is for Best Acting, not Most acting!

9th Annual Chlotrudis Short Film Festival

N/A (out of four)
Seen 17 February 2009 at the Boston Public Library (special engagement)

A fun event; if you're reading this within a couple of days and would like to see this year's program, it's playing 24 February 2009 at Screening Room #2 at the Massachusetts College of Art. In brief:

"Lucky Numbers" - The first of the festival is probably the weakest, a cute enough idea but it's basically a single joke, with the setup extended well past the length of time that the punchline can justify.

"Parallel Adele" - Nice little documentary piece about "hapas", mixed-race people, generally used by those of asian descent. Not a huge amount of information here, but glimpses at what it's like to be neither one thing nor the other.

"Mind the Gap" - Nice locally-produced story of how there is more than one victim when someone commits suicide on the train tracks. I particularly love the angry way the conductor's daughter describes the person who committed suicide.

"Victoria" - One of the movies I voted as award-worthy, this is a nifty little documentary piece about a piano located in a homeless shelter that shows us how such a thing restores dignity to both those who play it and those who listen to it.

"Gaining Ground" - A nice story of Ukranian illegals living in Germany. Well-told for the most part, although some of the moments ring a bit false.

"Well-Founded Concerns" - My favorite of the program, a delightfully pitch-black comedy about germaphobes who find love and vindication.

"Entropy and Me" - Looking around my living room, I fear I am closer to the subject of this unnerving piece about a student with a frighteningly messy room than I would like to be.

"Space" - The third one I voted for. Quite honestly, this vote maybe should have gone to "Mind the Gap", but this colorful, bouncy take on "The Gift of the Magi" set on earth and an orbiting space station could be made just for me.

It Happened One Night

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 20 February 2009 at the Brattle Theater (Special Engagement)

It actually happens over three nights, but who's counting? Effortlessly charming, one of the few movies that can convince us that two people can fall in love in such a short time, especially when they start off so much at odds. A thorough delight.

Fanboys

* * * (out of four)
Seen 21 February 2009 at Landmark Kendall Square #9 (first-run)

That this film had such a fight to get released in its intended form seems crazy: It's neither a great film nor a poor one; I honestly don't see how any changes the Weinstein Company could have made would have changed it from an also-ran to a hit.

It's a funny movie, funnier still if you get the jokes, but they're not exactly obscure ones; for all that Star Wars fans may argue over minutia, Star Wars is pretty darn universal. Granted, some of the best jokes are kind of inside - they lean on THX 1138 a lot more than one might expect, and the Kevin Smith bit, which was maybe the funniest in the movie, nearly caught me by surprise because I didn't recognize the other guy.

Sorcerer

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 21 February 2009 at the Harvard Film Archive (the Uncanny Cinema of William Friedkin)

Definitely a movie you watch, as it contains very little dialogue but plenty of "holy crap, did you just see that?" It's not often that traveling 218 miles at 15 mph can be this tense.

Mr. Friedkin was there, and had a number of amusing stories. I was kind of surprised to hear just how much he liked digital distribution; I kind of expect to hear people of his generation talk about how much they love film, but Friedkin not only loves digital, but he had the archive project The French Connection off Blu-ray rather than 35mm.

Azur & Asmar

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 22 February 2009 at the Museum of Fine Arts (Film for the Family)

There's a bit in the credits of Azur & Asmar that says the film was made in Paris by people of many different cultures who all got along well. It's the obvious moral of the story, but Michel Ocelot tells it with such sincerity that it's hard to feel patronized. It's just a sweet, sweet movie.

It's also beautiful; Ocelot had designed an absolutely beautiful world for his characters to inhabit, with beautiful Arabic designs, palm trees, and colorful, intricate backgrounds. Just a delight to look at.

The Brink's Job

* * * (out of four)
Seen 22 February 2009 at the Harvard Film Archive (the Uncanny Cinema of William Friedkin)

A nifty little movie about a 1950 robbery called the crime of the century. It's a charming and funny little film, kind of not what one might expect from the man who wrote The Wild Bunch and Sorcerer and Friedkin. My only real complaint is that Peter Falk, while turning in an amusing performance, sometimes seems to be in a completely different movie from the rest of the cast; he plays it much broader, almost clownishly, and I don't know that it exactly works.