Gray Matters
dir. Sue Kramer
I used to think I kind of liked Heather Graham—some leftover affection from Boogie Nights or, no, Arrested Development. I thought she was a harmless, wobbly, mildly amusing bug-face. But that was before I realized that THE WOMAN MAKES ME WANT TO DIE.
Graham is heinous and annoying as Gray—advertising executive, 1940s-movie enthusiast, and blond babe—who lives with her brother/best friend, Sam (Tom Cavanagh). The two dance together, jog together, and are so compatible that people think they’re dating (eeeeeeeeeeew!!!). Well, enough is enough! The sibs make a pact to find each other ideal, nonincestuous mates (“You know what I want? I want a girl who’s not afraid to eat a hot-fudge sundae!” DOES SUCH A THING EXIST?), but when Sam meets a sexy zoologist, Gray has a moment of self-realization. She’s a totally huge, giant, gay LESBIAN. But not, the movie wants you to remember, the ugly kind.
This script obviously took incredible pains over each one of Graham’s squeals and twitches and perfectly quirky pouts, but wasted no time on logic or continuity. When Sam and Gray go to the dog park to meet other singles, Sam frets that they don’t actually have a dog. Gray points to a kid with a dog. Then they walk into the park with a dog. Where did that dog come from? DID YOU STEAL IT FROM THAT KID!??!? When Gray goes for a late-night gab session on the top of a building with Alan Cumming, her Scotty Scotsman cab driver (did the tartan and the shortbread tip you off?), he reaches out of the frame and hands her a glass of wine. Where did you get that wine?
WAS IT IN YOUR TRADITIONAL SCOTTISH KILT POUCH?!!?!?
Furthermore, the title of this movie is gross. It makes me think of Heather Graham’s gooey, annoying brains splattered all across New York City. Not that I’m advocating any such thing, but I’m not strongly against it either, and it’s just not natural to feel so indifferent about another person’s brains. You drove me to this, Heather Graham. LINDY WEST
Mafioso
dir. Alberto Lattuada
Even for folks raised under the shadow of pro wrestling and Jerry Springer, the sheer… overemphaticness of ’60s Italian cinema can come as a bit of a shock. (Everyone’s so loud! And, dear lord, the gesturing!) Thankfully, once you get over the initial violation of your personal bubble, some top-notch movies await. Director Alberto Lattuada’s Mafioso stands as one of the sneakiest entries of the era, a consistently entertaining satire where the huffing and puffing comedic bluster hides a surprisingly bitter sucker punch. All but forgotten in this country after its 1962 release, Lattuada’s film (now receiving a well-deserved theatrical revival) feels fresh as a daisy.
Fellini regular Alberto Sordi stars as Antonio Badalamenti, a tight-assed Fiat assembly-line foreman prized by his supervisors for his attention to detail. Such devotion to order, however, threatens to be his undoing after he gathers up his wife and kids for a dream vacation in his native Sicily. Once there, Antonio’s affection for the old ways attracts the attention of the local crime lord, for whom he did favors as a boy. (Critics have been warned against revealing what happens in the final act, but suffice it to say that it involves an unrefusable offer.)
Throughout, Lattuada’s bubbly style slips effortlessly between Mad magazine–type parody (the Sicilian townsfolk are depicted as gap-toothed, excessively hairy urchins) and a chillier, mod absurdism. Impressive as the work behind the camera is, though, the main reason to see it may be Sordi, a big, strapping slab of beef whose hunkiness hides a keen sense of the ridiculous. (His impromptu burst into song upon arriving on his native soil is alone worth the ticket price.) Sacrilegious as it seems, comparisons to Cary Grant may not be all that far off the mark. Even with all the gesturing. ANDREW WRIGHT
Maxed Out
dir. James Scurlock
When James Scurlock set out to direct his first film, he thought it would be a comical look at the American reliance on credit. But what the Seattle-born filmmaker discovered was material better suited to a horror movie.
There is absolutely nothing funny about Maxed Out, a shocking portrayal of credit-card companies and their collections agencies as snide, venal criminals eroding the middle class, whose goal is not to help people manage cash flow and make some dough on the side but to hook the most vulnerable people on debt for life, and then to stalk them forever. Among the most painful of the interviews with survivors are two grieving mothers whose teenage children committed suicide after they got hooked on credit cards and began to be hunted by collectors, all after credit-card companies had set up seemingly innocuous booths on their college campuses and reeled in empty-pocketed students.
On the other side of the equation are two Minneapolis entrepreneurs who buy out debts for a profit, running a company that will call your neighbors and relatives to humiliate you if you fall down on payments. To get psyched up, they visualize themselves as tough-guy “debt pirates” before they make the calls. These men are named Bob and Chris. They have your Social Security number . They call their company “People First.” Or there is the woman who could not clean up her credit record herself—according to an attorney in the film, 90 percent of credit reports contain errors, but negative marks profit the industry, so they aren’t corrected—because she could not convince the bureaus that she was not dead. This may be the scariest movie of the year, and absolutely everyone should see it. JEN GRAVES
