Hey folks, Harry here... Capone has just sent in a heaping helping of movies worth a look. These will be hard to catch a glimpse off, but write them down, read about them and keep your eyes open for. They're jewels that could add to the benefit of your cinema going year. here's the big bad man...
Hey, Harry. Capone in Chicago here. Every year, the Gene Siskel Film Center
at the School of the Art Institute does something amazing. They pull
together a film festival made up of the best films coming out of Europe,
many of which will filter into art houses over the next year or so; some may
never be released in North America, and this is your only chance to see them
(at least in Chicago). They call it the European Union Film Festival, and I
often forego new Hollywood releases to catch these wonderful movies in what
may be the first and last chance I have to see them.
ESTHER KAHN (Great Britain)
Nothing quite prepared me for the performance of Summer Phoenix (yes, she’s
one of THOSE Phoenix’s) in ESTHER KAHN. I’d seen her in small roles in THE
FACULTY and the recent DINNER RUSH, but what she does here is entirely
unlike anything I’ve seen before. Sometimes wooden, nearly always sublime,
Phoenix’s Esther is a young, poor Jewish girl growing up in
turn-of-the-century London. Most of her life she’s lived a secluded and
emotionally solitary life. She decides one day to break out of her shell and
become a great stage actress. French director Arnaud Desplechin does not
make Esther another Amelie-like, adorable character. She’s so stoic as to
almost be infuriating. What’s most unusual about the film is the portrayal
of Esther, the actress. In almost every case, we are denied seeing and/or
hearing her act. Everyone tells her (and us) that they’ve never seen
anything like her power as an actress, but from the small bits and pieces we
get of her on stage, it’s clearly not true. I’m not sure if Desplechin
deliberately decided to masque Esther’s acting because Phoenix isn’t that
great an actress, or because there’s no possible way anyone could be as good
as Esther’s supporters say she is. It’s not surprising she’s so good because
Bilbo Baggins himself, Ian Holm, plays the aging, washed-up actor who
befriends Esther and teaches her her craft. At nearly three hours in length,
ESTHER KAHN is an amazing life journey that for many may be exhausting and
troublesome. I haven’t even mentioned Esther’s love affair with a writer, or
her triumphant debut as a leading lady in “Hedda Gabler.” I was transfixed
by this film.
THE ART OF DYING (EL ARTE DE MORIR) (Spain)
It’s official: the Spanish (or at least those who speak Spanish) have taken
over making the finest horror films in the world. THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE and
THE OTHERS (directed by a Spaniard) were two of my favorite films last year,
and both scared the pee-pee out of me. While not quite as compelling as
those two, THE ART OF DYING is damn good and occasionally terrifying. The
set up is so similar to that of I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, that it
struck me as intentional. A young man has gone missing, and it’s clear that
all his friends played a part in his disappearance. For several years,
they’ve managed to keep their secret from the police, but in the process
their friendships have been strained and even broken. But when the police
find the missing man’s I.D. on a junkie, the investigation is reopened and
the group heads to a small cabin where the incident resulting in the
disappearance took place. A fire breaks out while they’re digging what
appears to be a body out of the basement floor. They all escape but not
before one of them sees a dark figure standing amidst the flames. From that
point forward, the friends are picked off one by one. Unlike every other
slasher film in existence, it is clear that the killer of these people is
the ghost of the victim of their crime, who seems to have the ability to
alter reality and cause some seriously gruesome damage. At its best, THE ART
OF DYING is an intelligent thriller that concludes with a very OPEN YOUR
EYES / VANILLA SKY ending (I’m not giving anything away here). I believe
this film has already landed in a handful of theatres nationwide and I hope
this films gets some kind of wide release in this country because it would
be great for audiences to see how this sort of film should be done.
HOW HARRY BECAME A TREE (Ireland)
For those of you who saw Goran Paskaljevic’s CABARET BALKAN (also called THE
POWDER KEG) a couple years back, you know this guy is good. For whatever
reason, the Serbian director has decided to explore Irish culture in this
charmingly dark little film called HOW HARRY BECAME A TREE. More a parable
than anything else, the story is set in 1920’s Ireland. Colm Meaney gives a
howling performance as Harry Maloney, a small-time cabbage farmer who
believes a man is judged by his enemies and decides to hate and start a
private war with one of the more likeable men in his town, George (played by
Adrian Dunbar). Unfortunately for Harry, he needs to George’s services as
the town matchmaker for his son, Gus (Cillian Murphy). George has no
interest in warring with Harry, but ends up sleeping with Gus’s new wife
(Kerry Condon) all the same. HOW HARRY is not a cuddly, cute tale of the
Irish (like WAKING NED DEVINE), nor is it a deadly serious tale of woe (like
ANGELA’S ASHES). It’s a strange mix of the two. The film’s title comes from
Harry’s belief that like a giant tree, he will cast his shadow over his
enemy for generations to come, and he’s driven nearly insane with hatred for
a man who’s really never done him wrong. One by one, Harry alienates himself
from even his strongest supporters, and this makes him even angrier. Despite
some meandering at the end of the film, HOW HARRY kept me interested in
where these events were leading to. Meaney is just plain old great here,
straying a bit from the persona her captured so beautifully in films like
THE SNAPPER and THE VAN. As of right now, I’m pretty sure this film doesn’t
have a distributor in the U.S., so keep an eye out on the festival circuit.
SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR (SANGER FRAN ANDRA VANINGAN) (Sweden)
An intertwining series of stories following some of the most bizarre and
utterly mad Swedish citizens I’ve ever seen. A surreal, dark comedy has a
lot to say with very few words. The thread that holds these pieces together
is a middle-aged lump of a man who burns down his furniture store for the
insurance money. I’m really at a loss to describe the stories featured in
this film, but it has images I’ll never forget. There’s the parade of
business men and women slowly walking through the streets whipping
themselves like a group of monks; a man throwing off different-sized plastic
Jesus’s from the back of his pick up truck into a huge mound of Christ
figures (as he pulls his truck out of the junk yard, he runs over a few
shattering them completely; blasphemy runs deep in SECOND FLOOR); a
neverending traffic jam that paralyzes a town; and the list of poetic and
amusing images goes on. Director Roy Andersson has a visual style as
memorable as Bergman or Tarkovsky with the sense of humor that reminded me
of Tati and Chaplin.
NOBODY KNOWS ANYBODY (NADIE CONOCE A NADIE) (Spain)
Here’s the backstory on this movie. Director Mateo Gil co-wrote a little film
a few years ago with Alejandro Amenabar called OPEN YOUR EYES (which
Amenabar directed and which was remade by Cameron Crowe last year as VANILLA
SKY); the two men joined forces again to write this film, which Gil ended up
directing (Amenabar is credited with the score, however). This might be the
coolest movie I’ve seen so far this year. Set in the spectacular city of
Seville in Spain, NOBODY KNOWS ANYBODY asks the question: How well do you
know the people you love, the people you feel closest to? Eduardo Noriega
(OPEN YOUR EYES, THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE) is a crossword puzzle writer who has
recently abandoned his dreams of becoming a writer and has settled into what
he believes will be an uneventful but okay life. One day he gets a menacing
phone call that tells him he must place a certain word in a certain location
of one of his crossword puzzles on a particular day. He reluctantly follows
orders and believes that placing the word in the puzzle is a password for a
group of terrorists to go ahead with the first of what turns out to be many
attacks on the city during the last Holy Week of the millennium. The more
Noriega’s character tries to uncover the identity of this deadly
organization, the more terrorist attacks occur, some as a direct (albeit
inadvertent) result of his actions. Without giving away too much, the plot
continues to follow the frustrated writer as he uncovers the plans of the
organization. It’s as tense and consistently surprising film as I’ve seen in
a while. The magnitude of which his life is stolen and twisted under his
nose is incredible. I have the distinct impression that Noriega will be
scooped up by some Hollywood casting director or another. The guy does a
phenomenal job here, as does director Gil. I’m sure the remake will be at a
theatre near you very soon.
IN JULY (IM JULI) (Germany)
I’m convinced that the Hollywood version of the breezy romantic road movie is
dead. When once we had IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT, now we get shit like FORCES OF
NATURE. But over in a little place called Germany I’ve discovered what is
now one of my favorite romantic comedy road films ever, IN JULY. RUN LOLA
RUN’s male lead Moritz Bleibtrau stars as a Hamburg science teacher who has
no luck with women. He meets a Turkish woman at an open market and ends up
spending the entire day with her. She tells him that she is leaving for
Istanbul the next day, and our love-struck teacher is left in the dust. On a
whim, he decides to borrow a friends car and drive after the woman. As he’s
getting on the highway, he picks up a street vendor (Christiane Paul) who is
indirectly responsible for him meeting the Turkish girl in the first place,
and the two travel through Europe together. What separates their journey
from those, say, of Sandra Bullock’s is that some of the obstacles the two
faces on their way to Istanbul are quite dangerous. They get separated for
days at times, but always manage to find each other, as if it were destined.
Although we feel confident that they’ll end up together, it’s a believable
struggle to make that happen. Bleibtrau is great as the comic lead, and
Christiane Paul is absolutely fascinating to look at and listen to. The two
have a chemistry that you can taste, and IN JULY is a funny, believable love
story.
THE SKY IS FALLING (IL CIELO CADE) (Italy)
With so many films of late about World War II and the Nazi or Japanese roles
in that war, we forget sometimes there was another nation that formed part
of the the enemy axis, Italy. THE SKY IS FALLING is a fairly interesting
story about an well-off Jewish family living in Italy. Unexpectedly orphaned
by a car accident, two girls are sent to live with their aunt (Isabella
Rossellini) and uncle (Jeroen Krabbe) in Tuscany in 1944. For much of the
film, the only dangers or problems the family faces are interpersonal, but
as the film (and war) continues, the threat against Jews living in Italy
becomes more real. Filmed in digital video, THE SKY IS FALLING is a sweet,
simple story that becomes decidedly less so as the film progresses.
Isolation from the horrors of war can only last for so long for the family,
and by the time the Nazis roll in to live in the family’s mansion, it’s not
difficult to believe things may not turn out well. Rossellini and Krabbe are
outstanding here, although the film takes its own sweet time getting past
the seemingly pointless trials of the orphans and onto the real trials of
wartime occupation.
THE PIANO TEACHER (LA PIANISTE) (France/Austria)
Not that I’m complaining, but I’ve seen more real sex on screen in the past year than ever before. Films like INTIMACY, BAISE MOI, THE PORNOGRAPHER, and FAT GIRL just to name a few. One of the top prize winners at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, THE PIANO TEACHER explores shocking moral dilemmas and explicit practices (both sexual and otherwise) in ways unique to the screen. Controversial director Michael Haneke has tackled these themes before but never with this amount of detail or clarity. The goddess Isabelle Huppert is the title character, Erika, a prominent and brilliant teacher at the Vienna Conservatory and a cold and rigid woman who appears to have given up on relationships with men in favor of bizarre sexual rituals. She goes into peep show booths and sniffs the used tissues in the garbage. In one scene, we see her mutilate her vagina with a razor. We’re left with the impression that she’s doing these things just to feel something, even if it is pain or humiliation. She lives with her unbearably constraining mother, who questions and keeps track of her every move; the two even share a bed. At the conservatory, Erika meets a handsome and gifted student played by Benoit Magimel. He is utterly in love with her and makes no secrete of this. Erika has no idea how to handle such attention, but eventually she does begin an affair with him. The movie becomes even more twisted as Magimel begins to realize the extent of Erika’s fetishes and behavior addictions. Never during this film do you know where the filmmakers will take you, and I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a film so effectively peel away a character’s layers to show a soul stripped bare. THE PIANO TEACHER is a meaty, gripping tale of deviance and the dangers of passion. I believe it starts opening wide in the U.S. this spring.
Capone
If you want to buy my BUTT-NUMB-A-THON 4 ticket, click here and inquire!!!
