Tools
dir. Robert Rodriguez
Opens Fri July 25 at a buttload
Stranger Personals
of theaters.
In 1985, still feeling the critical and commercial push of his multi-platinum triumph Thriller, Michael Jackson began what was to become his greatest unheralded triumph--a brief feature film called Captain EO. Under the wing of financial advisor David Geffen, Jackson entered into talks with Disney studio head Jeffrey Katzenberg regarding the production of a mini space epic about a space captain's capture and subsequent escape (with the power of rock) from a century of torture on a remote desert planet. Costing a million dollars a minute, the Francis Ford Coppola-directed EO spent 10 comfortable years at Disneyland's Magic Eye Theater before retiring (amidst Jackson's little-boy troubles) in 1997. Oh, and did I mention it was in 3-D?
Yeah. Captain EO was in 3-D. Which is one of many reasons to fault the so-called Spy Kids 3-D. Why? Because the third installment of Robert Rodriguez's kiddie franchise rests firmly in two dimensions for the bulk of its duration. Set in the framework of a video game, SK3-D features the squandered genius of Alan Cumming, Steve Buscemi, Mike Judge, Ricardo Montalban, and George Clooney, some embarrassing work by Salma Hayek and villain Sly Stallone, and the uncomfortable attempts of a sexy, sexy 11-year-old Courtney Jines (I mean, what the fuck?) to project her desperate interpretation of allure. With shots that stand to age as well as Jaws 3-D, the real tragedy here is that the children of America live in a world where this sort of tripe stands as a pale approximation of the majesty that was Captain EO. ZAC PENNINGTON
Bonhoeffer
dir. Martin Doblmeier
Fri-Sun July 25-27 at
the Little Theatre.
For all of the broadminded theologians who were my instructors at Messiah College in rural Pennsylvania in the early '90s, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was something close to the second Christ--God's son on earth. All the wrong that the church as an institution had done in the past, all of the evil alliances it had made--one of which was with the Nazi Party in the 1930s--were corrected by the Protestant theologian Bonhoeffer, who invented, during the darkest moments of Nazi Germany, a new immanent (world-based) ethics for the followers of Jesus Christ.
In the compelling documentary Bonhoeffer by Martin Doblmeier, we learn that this handsome theologian--who was born to an accomplished German family, collected black American spirituals, and claimed the heart of a very beautiful aristocratic woman--openly (or as openly as possible) opposed Hitler. He was by theory a pacifist, but by action a conspirator, who assisted in several failed attempts to assassinate the Fuhrer. The attempts ultimately cost him his life.
During my year at Messiah College, my instructors (the theologians) were very interested in Bonhoeffer because Bush number one had instigated Iraq War number one, and Bonhoeffer offered a way for them to think about how the church or, more precisely, the individual Christian should respond to the war (pay attention to the Sermon on the Mount, Bonhoeffer's lifework would strongly recommend). With the recent Iraq War number two, instigated by Bush number two, Bonhoeffer is once again relevant not only to theologians but to Americans in general. CHARLES MUDEDE
The Son
dir. Jean-Pierre Dardenne and
Luc Dardenne
Fri-Thurs July 25-31 (no shows Monday)
at the Grand Illusion.
Directed by the Dardenne brothers (La Promesse, Rosetta), The Son concerns a competent carpenter (Olivier Gourmet) who works at an improvement institution for bad boys. One of the bad boys is an Arab named Omar, but the film is not about him--it's about another bad boy (blond, thin, pimply) named Francis (Morgan Marinne), who has just joined the institute to learn a skill that will improve his chances in the job market.
Externally, the teacher is blunt, dedicated, and ordinary-looking. Internally, he has a bad back, a dead marriage, and a murdered son. The new bad boy Francis, as we soon learn, murdered his son. Francis has just paid that debt to society and is eager to leave his grim past precisely where it is, in the past, and move on. The accidental meeting between him and the father of the boy he murdered brings the whole past into the present, and makes up this 103-minute film.
The best thing about The Son is not its story, but how it is made. Like the box that was made with extraordinary care by the film's carpenter, who knows everything about wood (soft and hard), this film too was shaped with extraordinary care. Here, the Dardenne brothers have carved something clear and marvelous out of the raw stuff of cinema. CHARLES MUDEDE
The Love God?
dir. Nat Hiken
Fri-Sat July 25-26 at
the Grand Illusion.
In this 1969 comedy, Don Knotts plays Abner Peacock, the publisher of a failing bird-watching magazine. In a scene that sets the tone for the entire film, Knotts performs a series of birdcalls backed by a church chorus that is as funny as any physical comedy routine by Jim Carrey. Unfortunately, the performance is not enough to raise the money needed to save the magazine. Enter Osborn Tremaine (Edmond O'Brien), the publisher of a nudie magazine recently shut down by the feds. His plan is to buy Abner's magazine and turn it into high-class pornography (à la Playboy), while leaving Abner as the publisher and legal scapegoat. Abner doesn't learn about this plan until he returns from a bird-watching expedition and is arrested for publishing obscene material. Instead of clearing his name, he is convinced by a couple of civil rights attorneys that it is more important to defend the freedom-of-speech issues ("If you love your country, you will publish a filthy magazine!").
The movie is not as dated as you might think, as it extols the virtues of sexual freedom and honest talk about sex. Another nice touch is having the editor of the magazine be a woman (the sexy Anne Francis). It's her idea to make Abner the magazine's mascot by manipulating the press and making him into a Hefneresque playboy. By the end, everything reverts back to our country's Puritanical roots, but it's fun while it lasts. ANDY SPLETZER
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