dir. Alexander Payne
Opens Fri Nov 5.
Alexander Payne's new movie, Sideways, is bookended by the same sound: a knock at the door. In the opening, the knock is loud and desperate; by the close, it has become timid and unsure. The first sound is meant to rouse Miles (Paul Giamatti), a junior-high English teacher and failed novelist, from an alcohol-induced slumber. The second is made by Miles himself as he knocks on the door to what he hopes will be his salvation. In between these two sounds there is much wine, some sex, and a lot of driving, but while Sideways is a road movie, it's a lazy one; the distance traveled, both physically and emotionally, is short.
The travelers are Miles and his friend Jack (Thomas Haden Church), an actor nearing the end of his wash cycle. Jack is about to take his first plunge into marriage, while Miles remains heartbroken by his divorce. Both men know very little about women, though only Miles is willing to admit it; instead, he knows wine, a subject he's thrown himself into with a determination that can only come from trying to find a replacement for love. The two intend on spending a week touring the California wine country, and for Miles the trip's all about sipping. For his companion, however, it's all about fucking.
As friends, the two are an odd pair. Miles is a slump of a human, reconciled to a life of failure even as he awaits word from a publisher on the fate of his 750-page opus of a novel. Jack, paradoxically, has already tasted success, and though that success is now behind him, he doesn't see a future marked by failure; if anything, the sure-to-be-staid road ahead of him is just a mildly unpleasant aftermath to the great life he's already enjoyed. When together, the pair are prone to squabbling, but there's no real hint of bitterness between them. They love one another even as they routinely disappoint each other, and their relationship feels entirely true. Miles and Jack are both asses, but their faults are honest and realistic ones--they are completely, and occasionally unbearably, human.
But while this odd, yet natural, relationship between Miles and Jack is the center of Sideways, it is their interactions with women, and two women in particular, that gives the film its heart: Maya (Virginia Madsen), a recently divorced waitress, and Stephanie (Sandra Oh), a pourer at a winery. Jack quickly tumbles into bed with Stephanie, blithely ignoring his looming nuptials. Miles, though, refuses to make a play for Maya, convinced that he'll make no progress with her. Emotionally damaged to the point of inaction, he has long ago relegated himself to the sidelines of life, and he quickly declares Maya something he's not worthy of attempting to nab. And the joke of Sideways, quietly laid plain for us by Payne and his cowriter Jim Taylor, is that he's probably right.
Blessed with pitch-perfect performances, especially by Giamatti and Church (who really is an actor on the downslope of his career), Sideways is a slight film, to be sure, but it's also one of Payne's least snide efforts; known for rolling his eyes at his characters as much as he rolls cameras on them, the director keeps himself mostly in check here. Payne still has little visual flair but his ear for dialogue and patient, intelligent comic pacing remains intact. Sideways is not an uproarious affair, by any means, but its quiet humor delivers something more important: honesty. BRADLEY STEINBACHER
Remember Me, My Love
dir. Gabriele Muccino
Opens Fri Nov 5.
The Marxist Antonio Negri recently explained that when he returned to Italy after a 14-year-long exile in France (he had fled there to escape a prison sentence for participating in radical political activities in the '60s and '70s), many of his friends who were in the movement to overthrow the state and capitalism had become established members of the very society they despised in their youth. In Remember Me, My Love we are introduced to such a man, Carlo (Fabrizio Bentivoglio), who in the '70s was part of the radical left and had the dream of becoming a novelist. Somehow, his brilliant ambitions were replaced by the sleepy rhythms of a practical professional career. At the start of the film, the husband and wife are in a marriage that is desiccated. No desire exists between the two; the wife is loud and always yelling at her big kids (a sexy 17-year-old daughter and a sex-starved 19-year-old son), and the father is quietly unhappy. The family is positioned for a crisis, which appears in the form of an elegant woman, Alessia (Monica Bellucci). She and Carlo meet at a party; they had been lovers in the '70s, and unable to remember why the relationship ended, they soon decide to restore it. The decision sends their families into chaos; however, Carlo's family is saved by a car accident that sends the father to the emergency room.
Up until this point, Remember Me, My Love was convincing. The father's break from the family is powerfully portrayed, with all of the horrible confusion, pain, and contradictions that go with the resolution to dissolve a 20-year partnership. In reality, he would have been out the door and into the arms of the other woman; in this film, the director has him struck down, maimed, and returned to the heart of a family that will suffocate him again. CHARLES MUDEDE
Bright Leaves
dir. Ross McElwee
Fri Nov 5-Thurs Nov 11 at the Varsity.
Bright Leaves is a documentary that explores the complex emotions that surround one filmmaker's familial legacy in the tobacco industry. Ross McElwee's great-grandfather was a pioneer in the deadly game of growing and processing the south's richest crop, but was hoodwinked out of his rightful fortune by another company and died in squalor. This fact leads McElwee down a path of fruitful speculations and meditations on the nature of that vile weed. Standing outside the mansion built by the man who ruined his great grandfather, the director admits to feeling a little bit cheated, because he still feels guilt for his ancestral role in the expansion of global cigarette addiction but, you know, where's the money?
Like all films by McElwee (Sherman's March, Time Indefinite), Bright Leaves offers a specific challenge to viewers; you either sign off on the director himself--his sleepy narration, his personal digressions, his overall drawl--or you don't. I do, with some reservations, and as a result, found Bright Leaves to be full of things worth recommending. It's easy to imagine others, however, being put off by their tour guide's rambling mien, and stomping out of the theater in a contemptuous rage. One thing McElwee is not is economical. A good example comes early on, when he meets his second cousin, a film historian/collector nerd whose North Carolina home is a meticulous shrine to cinematic arcana. The point of the visit, ostensibly, is the cousin's recent discovery in his collection of a forgotten Hollywood movie that was based on their family's sad story--the old film becomes a recurring motif in the documentary. But before we get to Bright Leaf (starring Gary Cooper and Lauren Bacall, "an 'A' picture"), McElwee investigates his cousin's anal compulsions, luxuriating over still photo files, old posters, and thousands of 16mm and 35mm film prints. Digressions like this give you the sense that almost every chapter of Bright Leaves could yield a whole other movie, and depending on how you feel about McElwee, such a prospect is either exciting or dreadful. SEAN NELSON
Alfie
dir. Charles Shyer
Opens Fri Nov 5.
Let me be the first to say that Jude Law is not beautiful. Pretty, yes. Devastatingly handsome, even. But the kind of beauty that lives through the ages, and transcends all rational thought? Jude Law can't claim it as his own, because there is no menace in his appearance, no shadow, no mystery. He's just a good looking British guy with a receding hairline and beach muscles, and I, for one, would love to kick his scrawny ass. (For the record: Yes, I would happily trade his looks for my own, but I'd just as happily make the same trade with Booger from Revenge of the Nerds.)
So, yeah, about Alfie, the remake of the classic Michael Caine vehicle in which a laddish cad meets his match in the early dawn of feminism. The Jude Law version is really terrible, for all the reasons remakes are always terrible, and because it plays to Law's in-built narcissism. But even in a picture that doesn't require him to do an accent (do people just not notice how terrible he is at doing accents?) pretty boy Jude remains unconvincing, even while playing a quintessential narcissist. Recasting the central character as a little boy lost, rather than a predator, director Charles Shyer squanders all the attraction and complications of the original role--you don't hate Law's Alfie; you're supposed to pity him because he's afraid of commitment, which is bullshit, because fear of commitment is never compelling --while trying to cash in on the same long dark night of the soul mojo that Michael Caine (who is beautiful, by the way) made so wrenching. Also, the remake is full of modern women who don't fall for Alfie's rap. It's a nice gesture, but it leaves one wondering what the point of the movie is--it sure as hell isn't sexy (except when Susan Sarandon makes her cameo)--other than to let the camera gaze longingly at Law's lithe corpus as he slowly blows it. There are worse things for a film to do, I suppose, but I can't think of any. SEAN NELSON
The Incredibles
dir. Brad Bird
Opens Fri Nov 5.
The Incredibles is a Pixar movie, so it goes without saying that the animation is fucking amazing. They made Finding Nemo, Monsters, Inc. , and Toy Story, after all. But for The Incredibles, since it revolves around people instead of goofy-looking fish or monsters, the studio was forced to take a giant step in their animation skills. For this story, they had to create human characters that didn't look absolutely frightening (the humans in Toy Story were just freaky).
The story goes like this: Because the world got tired of superheroes prancing around with all their super powers, they were forced into early retirement. All "supers," including Bob Parr, AKA Mr. Incredible, had to hang up their hero suits and settle into a lackluster life of anonymous mediocrity. But Bob, even though he loves his wife (Elastigirl) and three kids (Dash, Violet, and Jack Jack), misses his life as Mr. Incredible and can't fight the urge to do good with his powers. Despite his family's pleas to remain anonymous (blowing your cover means relocation), he decides to take a secret superhero side job. Unbeknownst to him, though, he's walking right into the trap of a man with a grudge (who's brilliantly voiced by Jason Lee). Luckily Mr. Incredible has a posse; once his family finds out that Dad's in trouble, they sling on super suits of their own and head out to kick some bad-guy ass.
All of this is done in true and beautiful Pixar style, but the action sequences are far more exhilarating than anything seen in Finding Nemo or Toy Story. Plus, the humans aren't annoyingly unattractive, and it's pretty damn funny to boot. MEGAN SELING
The Thin Man Series
Fri Nov 5-Thurs Nov 25 at the Grand Illusion.
Drinking is fun. This is why the Thin Man series is great. It has a pair of happy drunks (William Powell and Myrna Loy) who are madly in love, have lots of dough, and spend their freedom investigating murders that the police can't crack. This is the marriage of my dreams. The two have three conditions: becoming drunk, being drunk, and recovering from being drunk. However, this state of affairs (which our sober age would never condone) does not hinder the assistance they extend to friends and relatives who are in the middle of a crisis (a missing father, the mysterious murder of a lover, etc.). Those who enter their booze-saturated world also begin drinking heavily. Cops, lawyers, news reporters are, when visiting the couple, immediately offered something strong. It is impossible to say no. Soon the guests are singing old songs and accepting yet another shot glass from a silver tray. Watching the Thin Man movies makes you thirsty.
Based on a novel by pulp genius Dashiell Hammett, the first in the series, The Thin Man, was made in 1934 with very little money and in no time at all (under three weeks). The studio had limited expectations for the project, and so it was a big surprise to all that it became popular, generated huge profits, and got nominated for several Academy Awards. The second in the series, After the Thin Man, which was made in 1936, is considered to be the best in the series. The next two (Another Thin Man, Shadow of the Thin Man), like the first two, were directed by W. S. Van Dyke. But in 1943, the man responsible for these cosmopolitan comedies committed suicide. The last two films (The Thin Man Goes Home, The Song of the Thin Man) were helmed by two different directors, which is why they are the weakest in the series. Nevertheless, all six of the Thin Man pictures must be watched because none departs from the essential pleasures: drinking and solving crime. CHARLES MUDEDE
