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What we found
The Boston Film Fest wraps up

Here’s the line-up for the final four days of the 19th annual Boston Film Festival:

THURSDAY 11

BROTHERS . . . ON HOLY GROUND

This short video is how Mike Lennon, a retired New York fireman turned documentarian, responded to September 11 — as he explains, "After two weeks, my wife said, instead of digging, start filming." What Lennon filmed were the valiant stories of his fellow firefighters, those who survived the fall of the twin towers, and the tales of young women whose husbands went off to work that day and never returned. In all, 343 firemen died, 244 women were left widowed, and 606 children lost a parent.

Much of the material is familiar from television and newspapers, but the narratives are still spooky and chilling, especially the first-hand accounts of those who were on the first floors of the Trade Center when the buildings collapsed above them. And Pete Hamill’s voiceover, which sounds like the oratory heard over World War II documentaries, is stirring. But Brothers also recalls the kind of dated American World War II movie in which the whole battalion is Caucasian. Is this really the ethnic make-up of the New York Fire Department? Among the many interviewed, there’s not a black, Hispanic, or Jewish face in sight. (54 minutes) Screens at the Copley Place tonight at 7:15 and 9:15 p.m. and tomorrow at 12:15, 2:30, and 4:45 p.m.

— Gerald Peary

CHARLIE: THE LIFE AND ART OF CHARLIE CHAPLIN

At two-hours-plus and with a Keystone Kops carload of talking-head experts, Richard Schickel’s determinedly unexciting documentary doesn’t add much knowledge or insight to the lore about Hollywood’s greatest auteur and perhaps the most recognizable icon of the 20th century. Nonetheless, the wealth of snippets from his films, from the first glimpse of the Little Tramp in the 1914 short "Kid Auto Races at Venice" to Chaplin’s "death," on screen, as the over-the-hill ham in Limelight (1952), makes this time well spent. From these images, and not so much from the comments by Martin Scorsese, David Thomson, Woody Allen, Richard Attenborough, Robert Downey Jr., and Johnny Depp (to name a few), one discerns the elegant pathos and smarmy sentiment, the surreal inspiration and corny slapstick, and the sheer charisma and infantile need of this problematic genius. The chatter often diminishes the visual eloquence of the clips, and it doesn’t penetrate much into the darker regions of Chaplin’s life, such as his love for much younger women or his long persecution by the federal government for his leftist views. An exception might be the stories of surviving Chaplin children Geraldine, Michael, and Sydney; Sydney’s memory of being kicked out of Paulette Goddard’s bed by dad at age eight is funny and weirdly revealing. (120 minutes) Screens at the Boston Common tonight at 7:15 and 9:45 p.m. and tomorrow at noon and 2:30 and 5 p.m.

— Peter Keough

THE COMPANY

Never a strong believer in traditional storytelling, Robert Altman seems to have abandoned narrative (and character and theme) altogether in this celebration of dance and the Joffrey Ballet Company of Chicago. Speaking of Chicago: dance needs some vindication after that Oscar-winning tribute to the magic of editing, and if for no other reason, this film is worth a look because its (mostly) stunning ballet numbers are shown not chopped-up, MTV style, but with the performances and the bodies intact. And ballet-trained Neve Campbell (credited, with screenwriter Barbara Turner, with the "story") as Ry, an aspiring dancer, sure can razzle-dazzle a lot better than Richard Gere.

But aside from the dance sequences (and there are a lot of them), this is a backstage musical with nothing much happening backstage. Ry replaces an injured dancer and becomes a star (a cliché repeated twice to no effect), she dates a cute chef (James Franco), a kid named Justin gets pissed off. The final production, Blue Snake, is even more flamboyant than Malcolm McDowell’s performance as the Joffrey head — it’s like a mystical version of The Lion King as performed by the costumed guys from the Fruit of the Loom commercial. (113 minutes) Screens at the Boston Common today at noon and 2:30 and 5 p.m.

— Peter Keough

A Phoenix Pick

GROβE MÄDCHEN WEINEN NICHT/BIG GIRLS DON’T CRY

The two girls in this dark coming-of-age drama don’t cry, they get even. It begins ordinarily enough as the two 16-year-olds pine over boys, hit the nightclub scene, and contemplate losing their virginity, but then writer/director Maria von Heland pulls back to reveal a bigger, more dysfunctional world where sensibilities and loyalties are tested. Matters lurch off track when Steffi (Karoline Herfurth) discovers that her father is having an affair. To exact revenge, she befriends the mistress’s daughter, Tessa (Josefine Domes), and arranges a meeting for her with a "record executive" who turns out to be a porn producer. Steffi’s best friend, Kati (Anna Maria Mühe), gets caught in the middle of this ugly mess; what ensues is an implosion of half-truths and duplicitous maneuverings. The performances by Mühe and Herfurth are superb. In German with English subtitles. (87 minutes) Screens at the Copley Place tonight at 7:30 and 9:45 p.m. and Sunday September 14 at 4:30, 7:15, and 9:30 p.m.

— Tom Meek

19 MONTHS

Nineteen months, according to unnamed experts in first-time director Randall Cole’s mockumentary, is how long it takes for a romantic relationship to deteriorate into boredom. On the verge of that milestone, charmless couple Rob (Benjamin Ratner), a perpetual student living on his dad’s money, and Melanie (Angela Vint), a painter (her canvases are actually the best thing in the movie), have decided to organize their break-up in advance so there’ll be no hard feelings. To record their achievement for the edification of others, they’ve brought in a camera crew.

Nineteen minutes is about how long it takes this premise to deteriorate into boredom, as Rob becomes an insufferably smug idiot and Melanie an insipid whiner and you wish they’d stay together so the rest of us might be spared any contact with them. Total lack of sympathy for the principal characters aside, 19 Months offers a few moments of sour humor, mostly at Rob’s expense, as his airs of deluded superiority collapse into pathetic fecklessness. (78 minutes) Screens at the Copley Place tonight at 7 and 9:30 p.m. and tomorrow at 12:30, 2:45, and 5 p.m.

— Peter Keough

A Phoenix Pick

LES TRIPLETTES DE BELLEVILLE

Sylvain Chomet’s charming animated film, a hit with audiences at Cannes, stars a clubfooted grandmother and her obese dog whose determination knows no bounds. They set off in pursuit of her grandson, Champion, who disappeared while competing in the Tour de France, kidnapped by mysterious men in black suits. They wind up in the city of Belleville, where they team up with a trio of ancient singing sisters to free Champion, whose apparent inability to do anything other than ride a bike sets the tone for the film. Virtually dialogue free, Les triplettes is full of funny and bizarre images, often in the same frame, like the nefarious henchmen whose enormous square shoulders cause them to merge them into one hulking figure as they walk side by side, or the triplets performing in a nightclub with a refrigerator, a newspaper, and a vacuum cleaner instead of instruments. Like the film, their music, a kind of freestyle jazz, is pretty sweet. In French with English subtitles. (78 minutes) Screens at the Boston Common tonight at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. and tomorrow at 12:15, 2:15, and 4:15 p.m.

— Brooke Holgerson

FRIDAY 12

CASA DE LOS BABYS

After peaking with his brilliant Lone Star, in 1996, John Sayles has been turning out policy reports rather than motion pictures, well-rounded liberal looks at some of the significant issues of the day. The subject of his latest mild-mannered screed is the Third World trade in infants adopted by infertile American women, and as usual, he’s got a character covering every point of view and a first-rate actor in every role. Such as Rita Moreno as Señora Múñoz, who runs the title establishment, a kind of luxury hotel south of the border where rich Yanqui women can hang out by the pool and shop until the lengthy paperwork of adoption is worked out. A metaphor for American imperialism, no doubt, and in case you don’t get it, Múñoz’s alcoholic son will explain it before he passes out, being himself a metaphor for the dissipated revolutionary spirit.

Then we have six representative mothers-to-be: Skipper (a stunning Daryl Hannah), a health freak into aerobics and Reiki and being aloof; Jennifer (Maggie Gyllenhaal), who’s being pushed into adopting by her wealthy patriarchal husband; Eileen (Susan Lynch), a working-class Irish émigrée who wants a kid because it’s an Irish thing to do; Leslie (Lili Taylor, here playing Thelma Ritter), a possible lesbian from New York who wants a kid because it’s a lesbian thing to do; Gayle (Mary Steenburgen), a salt-of-the-earth type with a drinking problem; and Nan (Marcia Gay Harden), the wicked stepmother of the group. On the native side we have various well-intended stereotypes. A couple of performances and quirky twists almost lift Casa above its bland good intentions, but otherwise this is a house of placards. (95 minutes) Screens at the Boston Common tonight at 7 and 9:30 p.m. and tomorrow at 5 p.m.

— Peter Keough

A Phoenix Pick

THE FOG OF WAR

Cambridge documentarian Errol Morris’s latest cinematic essay is a brilliant examination of the career of Robert S. McNamara, who served as Secretary of Defense under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. The intellectual, moral, and political complexity of Morris’s treatment — and the even greater complexity of the film’s central figure — means that there are few smoking guns here, and no knockout blows. As Morris recognizes, this man of deep intelligence, apparent moral sensitivity, and ability to manipulate perceptions (at one point he says, "Never answer the question that’s been asked of you, answer the one that you wish had been asked") is not going to hang himself the way the filmmaker’s previous subject, Fred A. Leuchter Jr., so painfully did in Mr. Death. What’s especially noteworthy — and chilling — about The For of War is that so many of McNamara’s 11 "lessons" as enumerated by Morris from the man’s remarks seem more relevant now than ever toward understanding the dilemmas created by the rise of the US to the position of unique world superpower. (105 minutes) Screens at the Boston Common tonight at 7:30 and 9:45 p.m. and tomorrow at 12:15, 2:45, and 5:15 p.m.

— Peter Brunette

A Phoenix Pick

LOOKING FOR MY BROTHER

John Kenney, who with Rick Knief made this September 11 documentary, moved from Boston to New York after college to work in advertising. The rest of his family, blue-collar Irish, remained in Massachusetts, including his older brother, Tom, who followed in the Kenney tradition of becoming a fireman. September 11 brought these brothers together, since Tom and others from a Boston-based Urban Search & Rescue Team (FEMA) sped to Manhattan to help locate bodies in the rubble. This was Tom Kenney’s first time in New York, and Looking for My Brother is mostly an on-camera interview in which he describes his grueling days at Ground Zero. What happened was a worst-case scenario: his squad uncovered only the dead. "We’d certainly have been happier if we’d found someone alive," he says.

Tom Kenney is a serious, decent man with a vivid eye for details, and his September 11 remembrances are well told. They’re complemented, also on camera, by the memories of Boston Herald reporter Laurel Sweet, who accompanied the FEMA team to New York. What should have been left out: irrelevant quotations from Proust and C.S. Lewis read melodramatically by Alan Rickman in voiceover. (55 minutes) Screens tonight at the Copley Place at 7:15 and 9:15 p.m. and tomorrow at 12:45, 2:45, and 5 p.m. John Kenney will be present at tonight’s 7:15 show.

— Gerald Peary

A Phoenix Pick

PEOPLE SAY I’M CRAZY

Stars win Oscars for acting crazy, but for people like John Cadigan, a talented printmaker who plummeted into schizophrenia as a college student, the reality is a lot less glamorous. This documentary made with his sister Katie should serve as a useful corrective to Hollywood’s sentimentalized image of this harrowing disease and an inspiration to all with faith in the human spirit. Cadigan’s video diary records small triumphs — from moving up on the waiting list for better housing to uttering a few sentences to introduce a show of art by the mentally ill — amid almost continual suffering. No other film captures with such excruciating fidelity the torments of his brand of obsessive compulsive disorder, depression, and paranoia, which he battles through tortured dialogues with himself and with the camera. The turmoil is reflected in his stark woodcut prints; like his essentially gentle and generous soul, their beauty shines through the stark and sometimes terrifying imagery. (84 minutes) Screens tonight at the Copley Place at 7 and 9:45 p.m. and tomorrow at 12:15, 2:30, and 4:15 p.m. John Cadigan will be present at tonight’s 7 p.m. show.

— Peter Keough

A Phoenix Pick

WHAT ALICE FOUND

At last, a film in which actors speak with a genuine Boston accent that doesn’t make you cringe. And that’s not all that’s unpretentious and authentic about this latter-day Alice in Wonderland or Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. The Alice in this case is a teenage runaway (Emily Grace, stolid, note-perfect and touching) from the other side of the tracks of a small New England town who’s fleeing to the perpetual spring break of her rich friend’s Florida digs, where she hopes to fulfill her dream of becoming a marine biologist and working with dolphins. Menacing yahoos on the highway and a suspicious breakdown leave her stranded, but good-old-boy couple Sandra (Judith Ivey, sinister but heartwarming) and Bill (Bill Raymond) rescue her in their RV with the "Jesus Saves" sticker and agree to take her the rest of the way to the Sunshine State — though with a few detours. The Samaritans seem too good to be true, and, perhaps distracted by inserted flashbacks to her own messy past, Alice is unable or unwilling to pick up on her hosts’ agenda. Director A. Dean Bell’s agenda is to disclose what Alice found without judgment and with limpid precision: a country where good and evil can have equally genial faces and where the ultimate commandment is that the bills must be paid. (96 minutes) Screens at the Copley Place tonight at 6:45 and 9:30 p.m. and tomorrow at noon and 2:15 and 4:30 p.m.

— Peter Keough

SATURDAY 13

ANYTHING BUT LOVE

Billie Golden (Isabel Rose) sings her heart out in a seedy dive in Queens, dreaming Technicolor dreams and dressing like Rita Hayworth. She wishes it was still the ’50s, which is the last time this plot (Rose wrote with director Robert Cary) was original. Billie thinks she loves Greg (Cameron Bancroft), but he wants her to change, whereas her down-and-out piano teacher Elliot (Andrew McCarthy), under his gruff exterior, loves her for who she is. Who will she choose? Would I be spoiling anything if I told you?

Anything But Love rolls out every romantic-comedy love-triangle cliché there is. Set in the present, the film works best when it allows its visuals to drift off into a Freed Unit–inspired dream world. Billie’s fantasy dance numbers are swoon-worthy, and so are the gorgeous costumes. But like this year’s more ambitious Down with Love, the retro pastiche fails to charm. And you can’t help thinking that Arthur Freed would never have set one of his musicals in Queens. (99 minutes) Screens at the Copley Place tonight at 7:15 and 9:45 p.m. and tomorrow at 12:15, 2:30, and 4:45 p.m.

— Brooke Holgerson

A Phoenix Pick

BROKEN WINGS

A widowed mother with a temperamental car struggles in a terrible economy to raise four kids. A teenage girl dreams of singing in a rock band, getting out of Haifa, and moving to Tel Aviv. And a sullen teenage boy skips school and resists the well-meaning but clueless intervention of a counselor. In Nir Bergman’s Israel, a broken family struggles not with terrorism, politics, and war but with the ordinary, universal problems of grief, anger, and loneliness.

Writer/director Bergman picks up the story after the sudden death of the husband and father, and he shows a family still in shock, and unraveling. Eldest daughter Maya (Maya Maron) reluctantly shoulders responsibility for her younger siblings, and she wrestles with her pain and guilt in an awkward teenage way. Bergman gets searing performances from everyone, particularly Maron and Orly Silbersatz Banai as the barely-holding-it-together mother. His visual style has immediacy and visceral power; his even-handed storytelling, which includes the metaphor of the family’s stalled car, has the touch of a poet. In Hebrew with English subtitles. (86 minutes) Screens at the Boston Common tonight at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. and tomorrow at 12:15, 2:30, and 4:45 p.m.

— Loren King

I AM DAVID

This latest in what seems an endless parade of "European" films set during World War II in which everyone, regardless of origin, speaks accented English is adapted from a Danish novel by director Paul Feig (Freaks and Geeks). It opens with David (Ben Tibber) escaping from the harsh Bulgarian work camp where he’s spent most of his life and heading for Denmark, where he’s told he has family still living. En route, finding creative ways to travel and eat (not to mention understanding several foreign languages while maintaining a spiffing English accent), he recalls the advice of his friend Johannes (an understated James Caviezel) to trust no one, and so he spurns the help of a wealthy Italian family. He finally meets an eccentric painter (Joan Plowright) who lives in Switzerland, and somehow she provides the key to his return home. Although implausible and predictable at times, this film boasts fine performances and sumptuous photography: shots of David running through frosty fields at dawn are stunning. (95 minutes) Screens at the Boston Common tonight at 7 p.m. and tomorrow at 4 p.m. Paul Feig will be present at tonight’s show.

— Peg Aloi

THE KISS

Despite the late arrival of Terence Stamp in the cast, my nominee for the Ruben and Ed Award for the worst film of the festival goes to this insipid crock of shit. Cara (a simpering Françoise Surel), an editor with a publishing company, swoons when she reads an unfinished 20-year-old manuscript from the slush pile. Since she’s been hurt in a relationship before ("I let Mr. Right get away") and spends her spare time eating ice cream and cooing about boys with her roommate ("I want my toes to tingle"), I guess it’s conceivable that she could fall for prose like "a kiss which reached through time itself to the boundless realm of eternity." But everyone else should be tipped off that this Kiss poses the most unctuous clichés as genuine emotion. Those who stick around will get to see Billy Zane in a black-and-white Paris enacting scenes from the novel in his worst performance ever as the heartbroken hero while Cara hunts down the missing author in search of "the end." Would that it had never started. (90 minutes) Screens at the Copley Place tonight at 7 and 9:30 p.m. and tomorrow at 12:30, 2:45, and 5 p.m.

— Peter Keough

STUEY

Michael Imperioli, on break from playing murderous Chris on The Sopranos, stars in this slow-moving bummer of a movie about the life of three-time World Series of Poker champion Stuey Ungar. Ungar isn’t much of a stretch for Imperioli, who here is supposed to be Jewish instead of Italian but is nonetheless surrounded by a Sopranos-like ensemble of lounge lizards and criminal lowlifes.

Written, directed, and edited by A.W. Vidmer, the movie is told in flashback, beginning with Stuey’s wrong-minded childhood. He squanders his bar mitzvah money at the track and gets slapped for it by his club-owner dad. As an adult, Ungar is great about figuring out people’s character at the poker table but a paranoid failure as a human being, so his wife (Renee Faia) and daughter split on him. Jumped past his poker successes, we find Stuey strung out on the mean streets of Las Vegas. Can he find it inside him to win one more championship? Does anyone care? In a small role, veteran Pat Morita scores as a Vegas shark. (110 minutes) Screens at the Copley Place tonight at 6:30 and 9:15 p.m. and tomorrow at noon and 2:15 p.m. A.W. Vidmer will be present at tonight’s 6:30 show.

— Gerald Peary

SUNDAY 14

ÔNIBUS 174/BUS 174

"This ain’t no Hollywood movie," says the doped-up punk holding a bus hostage in this rough but riveting documentary by Brazilian filmmakers Felipe Lacerda and José Padilha. That’s for sure, but if it were, it would be more akin to Dog Day Afternoon than to Speed, with the culprit more sympathetic and scarcely more flawed than the system that’s seeking to apprehend him. On June 12, 2000, Sandro do Nascimento, who’d been living on the streets since he witnessed his mother’s brutal murder when he was five, found himself in a standoff with the police after a botched robbery of the title bus. News crews descended, and it was reality TV at its most intense as cameras followed the drama live throughout the day, Nascimento and his victims plainly visible, as if on stage, through the bus windows.

Ponderously intercut with the archival footage are interviews with some of the participants — police, journalists, survivors, and family and acquaintances of Nascimento — as well as "experts" like the blowhard sociologist with a pet theory about social marginality and "invisibility." The story fascinates on many levels: as a study of urban corruption, as a look at the link between media and events, as a bizarre psychodrama between perpetrators and victim. But the filmmakers offer no point of view, and so Ônibus 174 comes off as an especially grim episode of Cops. In Portuguese with English subtitles. (133 minutes) Screens at the Boston Common tonight at 7 and 10:15 p.m. José Padilha will be present at the 7 p.m. show.

— Peter Keough

A Phoenix Pick

SHATTERED GLASS

We’ve come a long way in the 27 years between All the President’s Men and Shattered Glass. Back then, journalists were crusading heroes uncovering the lies of the powerful; now, journalists are bullied wimps hard pressed to uncover the lies of each other. They’re still heroes of sorts, though, in first-time director Billy Ray’s initially infuriating but ultimately subtle, provocative, and ambiguous rendition of the sordid career of notorious fabricator Stephen Glass.

Hayden Christensen shows a rare gift for sniveling as Glass, who in the 1990s, in his early 20s, had managed to become a star contributor to the New Republic, inexplicably charming not just the vulnerable females on the staff (Chloé Sevigny in a problematic, fictitious role) but also charismatic editor Michael Kelly (Hank Azaria) — who became a casualty of the recent Iraq War, and to whom the film is dedicated — with his knack for coming up with stories that were trendy, quirky, and funny. Poor colleague Chuck Lane (Peter Sarsgaard) has to glower in the corner with his dreary assignments about Haiti and Gabriel García Márquez until an editorial coup d’état lands him in Kelly’s position and an investigation by another publication starts to unravel Glass’s astounding web of lies (some 27 of his 41 stories were made up). Sarsgaard’s subtle performance and Ray’s masterful manipulation of audience sympathy vindicate Lane and the ideals of traditional journalism. But Ray also slyly acknowledges the subjective nature of truth: the film opens as Glass’s flashback, and that makes it a kind of Rashomon from a single point of view. (90 minutes) Screens at the Boston Common tonight at 7:15 and 10 p.m. Director Billy Ray will be present at the 7:15 p.m. show.

— Peter Keough


Issue Date: September 12 - 18, 2003
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