Fri Oct 29-Thurs Nov 4 at the Varsity.
When it comes to a band as seminal as the Ramones, the last thing you want to see in a documentary is a bunch of remote "authorities" yakking about their studies of punk rock VH-1 style. What made books like Please Kill Me and We Got the Neutron Bomb, and films like the recent MC5 flick MC5: A True Testimonial, so powerful was that the musicians themselves were given the chance to tell their stories in their own words. End of the Century includes interviews with all the Ramones (including footage with deceased members Joey and Dee Dee before their deaths; Johnny died last month), along with their managers, family members, and friends like Joe Strummer and Debbie Harry. It also uses impressive live footage of the band, as well as snippets of footage from the acts the Ramones were inspired by or writing music in reaction to, from the Stooges to the New York Dolls and Emerson, Lake & Palmer.

By packaging so much archival material with so many detailed interviews, directors Michael Gramaglia and Jim Fields have created an extensive look at both the Ramones as a band and the times they lived through. The movie progresses from the original band members meeting (because of a mutual love for the Stooges), through their various drummers and producers (including the story of Phil Spector holding them at gunpoint), and even into Dee Dee's lesser-known foray into the rap world (painful). While this is hardly a gauche Behind the Music episode, Johnny's brusque temperament is never masked, and the band members discuss not getting along without any sort of nostalgic gloss (the moment when Johnny wonders why he felt sad after Joey's death when the two hadn't been friends for years is especially poignant). But unlike Hey! Is Dee Dee Home?, which focuses on the drug addictions that ripped through that scene--and specifically ended up costing Dee Dee his life--Century dwells on neither the high nor the low points of the band, instead offering what feels like a well-balanced and captivating look at such an multifaceted, influential act. JENNIFER MAERZ

Undertow

dir. David Gordon Green

Opens Fri Oct 29.
Three things distinguish this bizarre, disconcerting film by the director of George Washington and All the Real Girls. The first is that it is by the director of George Washington and All the Real Girls. Both of those films have a hazy, lazy southern energy that does nothing to prepare viewers for the unrelenting bleakness of this new film. The second is the grime that coats everything and everyone on screen--it's quite a thing to evoke a state of genuine dirtiness on film (even when the main characters are barefoot pig farmers), but Green manages it handily, thus lending the picture a queasiness that serves it well, especially in light of the third distinguishing characteristic: its dizzying violence.

The brutality in Undertow is blunt and real, but its logic is the stuff of dreams, specifically nightmares, and more specifically, the nightmares of young boys. Throughout the film people are beaten over the head with blunt instruments, throats are slashed, and rusty nails impale feet--the whole vibe is one of constant peril. The young brothers at the center of the film are pursued by their murderous uncle, but they're also beset by cops, angry fathers, and even nervous disorders. The constant threats lend the story a disturbing psychological primacy that the director insists on violating with confusing abstractions as the story advances. By the time the boys find themselves on the lam in the swampy murk of the deepest south, it becomes difficult to parse the film's design. Is it allegorical? If so, the components are awfully specific. Is it literal? If so, what the hell is going on half the time? And so forth.

Ultimately, Undertow evokes a peculiar inner and outer world, in which subconscious mingles with conscious and storybook escapades collide with grindhouse brutality. These contradictions would almost be reason enough to recommend it, if the film weren't so unrelentingly unpleasant to behold. SEAN NELSON

Ray

dir. Taylor Hackford

Opens Fri Oct 29.
This is not a review.

Due to some arcane, bullshit reasoning that exemplifies the problem with the modern Entertainment Industrial Complex, The Stranger has been enjoined from reviewing the film Ray before it is released in theaters. Never mind the fact that our paper hits the streets only one day before the film hits the screens--to publish a review of Ray will incur the wrath of the faceless movie-executive drones whose job it is to interpose themselves between audiences and movies.

Therefore, I can't tell you that Ray is better than you'd expect for a two-hour-and-20-minute biopic about an innovative American artist with a drug problem. Nor can I tell you that Jamie Foxx, normally an annoying comic actor, is amazing as Ray Charles. Most actors who portray famous figures claim to try to do more than simply impersonate their characters; the genius of Foxx's performance is that it's just an impersonation--and a great one--of Charles' familiar-to-everyone mannerisms. Add to this riveting star-turn a soundtrack of dozens of great Ray Charles songs, and it's hard to go too far wrong, especially if you don't mind a little molasses. But I can't tell you that, so let me turn things over to the film's director, Taylor Hackford, who wept--not quite openly, but unmistakably--as we spoke about the death of his film's main character. Hackford had been trying to make a film about Ray Charles, with Charles' blessing, for over 15 years. To have the singer die before the film was released seems like the ultimate bittersweet valediction for the project.

"Every step of the way," Hackford explained, "the reason this film got made was because people were inspired by Ray Charles. I used to go to Ray every year and apologize, and say, 'I'm sorry, man, I know you gave me the rights, but I haven't been able to get the money.' And he'd say, 'It'll happen. It'll happen when it's right to happen.' And he was right." SEAN NELSON