In Bruges
dir. Martin McDonagh
In 1994, a 24-year-old Irishman living in London quit his job at the
Department of Trade and Industry and dedicated his mornings to writing
plays and his afternoons to watching soap operas. Seven months later,
Martin McDonagh had written nine nasty, brutish comedies, mostly about
hicks, retards, and lunatics in rural Ireland. Three years later,
McDonagh was a theater star, with four plays running simultaneously in
London.
His plays are described as a hybrid of J. M. Synge and Quentin
Tarantino: In The Lonesome West, a son kills his father for
insulting his hair. In The Beauty Queen of Leenane, a spinster
beats her mother to death with a poker. In The Lieutenant of
Inishmore—about an enforcer for the Irish National
Liberation Army and the assassination of his cat—the theater used
six gallons of stage blood every night.
McDonagh’s violence is grotesque, but not gratuitous; he has more of
Flannery O’Connor than Tarantino about him. His writing is artfully
visceral—people at a London performance of Leenane actually shouted “don’t do it!” while the spinster burned her mother
with boiling oil. Yet, somehow, his scenes are never far from
comedy.
Knowing McDonagh’s love of gore, one might expect his first feature
film to be a bloodbath. Two Irish hit men (Colin Farrell and Brendan
Gleeson, both excellent) are ordered to hide out in Bruges, Belgium,
after Farrell’s character assassinates a priest. Things are not what
they seem, loyalties are tested, blah blah blah, and soon Irish
gangsters are running around trying to kill each other. But In
Bruges is less violent than McDonagh’s plays. It’s also less dark
and less funny—less of everything, really, perhaps because the
pacing of movies doesn’t suit McDonagh’s gifts. The horrible, gothic
comedy he can build over a 20-minute scene is thinned out in the quick
jumps of film. But the comparisons to Tarantino are finally
apt—In
Bruges has cocaine, a dwarf, and exciting
chase scenes and, despite its shortcomings, it is still smarter and
richer than any gangster film you’re likely to see. BRENDAN KILEY
4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
dir. Cristian Mungiu
Pretty, dark-haired Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) is pregnant, but in the
waning years of Ceausescu’s Communist Romania, she lacks the
determination to control her fate. So she doesn’t get to be the
protagonist. Instead, we get Otilia (the incredible Anamaria Marinca),
a pragmatic blonde who’s expert at locating orange Tic Tacs and Kent
cigarettes on the black market. For a college student, she’s certainly
savvy, but procuring an illegal abortion for Gabita requires something
more.
4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days is about
loyalty, cowardice, coercion, annoying social obligations, tragic
personal sacrifices, and—above all—almost unbearable
tension. Dread is stretched taut over this plot like skin over a
pregnant belly. The most elegant piece of cinema I’ve seen in months
shows Otilia sitting still, facing an immobile camera. She’s attending
a birthday party for her boyfriend’s mother, and his bourgeois family
is crowded around the table, pressuring her to eat, only pretending to
overlook her inadequate table manners, and all but scoffing outright at
her class background. Her boyfriend can’t wait to get her upstairs to
his tiny room, but Otilia is obsessed with the phone. She’d given
Gabita the number in case anything went wrong. Now it’s ringing. Can
she leave the table without being excused?
4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days almost
qualifies as a horror film, where the monster is at once diffuse (the
repressive government, mandatory ID checks) and sickeningly specific
(the freelance abortionist). But the most terrifying moments are
completely mundane. Will Otilia risk offending her hosts in order to
check on her friend? And if not, does she deserve our sympathy or our
scorn? Ultimately, this film isn’t about abortion, any more than
Juno was. It’s about ethics; and it is riveting. ANNIE
WAGNER
The Rape of Europa
dir. Richard Berge, Bonni Cohen,
Nicole Newnham
Some people ask why the Warsaw Royal Castle was rebuilt after being
demolished by the Nazis. “The same reason it was destroyed,” answers a
current docent. “The Poles could not live without the castle.” The
crushing of souls is nothing compared to mass murder. But some
crimes—unlike murder—can be reversed. The Rape of
Europa, a towering new documentary based on the book by Lynn H.
Nicholas, is the Nuremberg trials for what might be considered the
misdemeanors of the Nazi regime: the theft and destruction of art and
monuments across Europe. These may only be objects, but for many
people, there is life in these objects, too.
Like the saga of the Holocaust, the plunder of Europe is made even
more chilling by the organization with which it was carried out. Before
invading, Hitler would write lists of the artworks he wanted, from
Leonardo’s Lady with an Ermine in Warsaw to Rembrandts,
Raphaels, and Vermeers in France, Russia, and Italy. At the end of the
war, 49 train-car loads of stolen art and artifacts were carried out of
Hitler’s hiding place at the Neuschwanstein Castle.
On the other side was an equally determined army, made up of people
determined to keep art out of criminal hands. This included museum
staffers (some of whom died in the freezing cellar of the Hermitage);
the little-known American “Monuments Men,” who worked for the military
but were often at odds with its attack plans; and mousy little Rose
Valland, a French spy. Some of the footage is eye-popping—more
than 6,000 paintings held hostage inside a mine, the Winged Victory
of Samothrace rolling treacherously down stairs as the Louvre is
evacuated. Since new Nazi restitution claims are constantly coming to
light, the film is timely; still, the idea that art might matter to
invaders already seems quaint. JEN GRAVES
Vince Vaughn’s Wild West
Comedy Show
dir. Ari Sandel
In 2005, actor Vince Vaughn decided to spend a month on the road
with four up-and-coming comedians and a small collection of famous
friends, determined to bring a smashing night of comedy and improv to
sections of the U.S. typically deprived of such luxuries. Hitting 30
towns in 30 days, Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show presented the actor’s handpicked comedians—Ahmed Ahmed, John
Caparulo, Bret Ernst, and Sebastian Maniscalco—along with
“improv” bits from the movie star himself.
Now there’s Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show, the
documentary of the tour, which brings Vaughn’s hike through the
heartland to the silver screen. When focused on standup, the film is
exactly as successful as the comedian onstage (each of the comics has
his moments, but freaky little Caparulo leaves the others in the dust).
But when the film ventures behind the scenes, things get dicey. For
every revelation—the group’s visit to a post-Katrina refugee
camp, Ahmed’s return to the Nevada jail where he was detained after
9/11—there are a half-dozen happenings that go nowhere. Unlike
Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedian, Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy
Show lacks a critical perspective—the cameraman is just
another chum along for the ride, and in place of unguarded insights, we
get self-satisfied comics making soulful pronouncements like, “I’m a
comedian, man. It’s what I do.”
Most confusing is the film’s fixation on Vince Vaughn, American
Superstar™. From trotting out old costars to read favorite scenes
from Dodgeball and Wedding Crashers to extensively
and emotionally praising Notre Dame as “the place where it all started
for me, with Rudy,” Vaughn surfs through the proceedings on a
wave of self-regard that’s baffling. When did midcareer movie stars
become entitled to victory-lap documentaries like those of
ex-presidents? DAVID SCHMADER
Fool’s Gold
dir. Andy Tennant
Grating and desperate, Fool’s Gold is as thin as you’d
expect a vehicle designed to keep Matthew McConaughey separated from
his shirt to be. He plays Ben “Finn” Finnegan, an oh-so-relaxed
treasure hunter who, along with his wife, Tess (Kate Hudson), has spent
years combing the Caribbean for a mythical stash of Spanish loot known
as the “Queen’s Dowry.” Newly divorced, the couple is on the verge of
parting ways forever when a new discovery reunites them for one last
try for the gold—if a villainous hiphop mogul (no, really) named
Bigg Bunny (again: no, really) doesn’t kill Finn first.
Further befouling this wheezy setup is the expected gaggle of
quip-heavy supporting characters, all of whom—from the gay chefs
to the bumbling henchmen to the ditzy heiress—are given their
special moment to shine. Worse still is Andy Tennant’s direction, which
leans blandly on Caribbean locations in the hopes of distracting from
the idiotic script. McConaughey and Hudson have some spark between them
(and they both look good in bathing suits), but no amount of chemistry
(or cheesecake) can make up for what is essentially Romancing the
Stone minus wit, intelligence, and, well, romance.
BRADLEY
STEINBACHER
