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 BEAUTIFUL THING. A wonderfully touching story of first
love, this British film is sweet without being sentimental. In
a cramped city tenement, two teenage outsiders, Ste (Scott Neal)
and Jamie (Glen Berry), are unhappy and misunderstood until they
muddle through their adolescent emotions and figure it out--they're
in love! Together the two discover how to run the obstacle course
of parents, friends and onlookers, who all have some pretty powerful
reservations about teen boys in love. Written by playwright Jonathan
Harvey when he was 24, Beautiful Thing has a direct, unpretentious
style that's almost overwhelmingly endearing.
GIRLS TOWN. A film that tries just a little too hard to
be gritty, Girls Town is the story of a group of teenage
girls coping with loss, high school, and the predatory male. When
Nikki (Aunjanue Ellis), a smart, pretty senior bound for Princeton
unexpectedly kills herself, her friends bond together to fight
their own sense of powerlessness and sexual exploitation with
a mix of vandalism and violence. The dialogue for this movie was
worked out by the actors in rehearsal, rather than scripted; the
result is probably exactly the opposite of what director Jim McKay
wanted--stilted, false and out-of-date. Part of the problem seems
to be that the cast, led by Lili Taylor, is much too old to play
high school-aged children; another problem is the mean-spirited
set of events that deteriorate into plotlessness.
LOOKING FOR RICHARD. Al Pacino's directorial debut is a
surprisingly fresh, witty introduction to the complexities of
one of Shakespeare's more knotty plays--Richard III. Pacino,
along with a cast of famous actors, obscure academics and the
stray passerby, comments on the background and meaning of Richard,
the tale of a ruthless, hunchbacked and totally fascinating evil
guy. The actors perform scenes from the play both in costume and
in informal attire; Pacino cuts them together for a truly original
version of Shakespeare that could only be realized on film. Robert
Leacock--one of the pioneers of the cinema vérité
documentary style--is the director of photography, and at times
Looking For Richard has the feel of a concert film from
the 1960s. There's a sense that anything can happen. What's more,
Pacino is terrific as Richard.
ROMEO AND JULIET. In his second film, director Baz Luhrman
gives the Bard's only teen-movie script an MTV/Miami-Cubano style,
producing the noisiest rendition any Elizabethan play has ever
received. Still, he remains largely faithful to the original,
not only in the language, but also in the youth and aching immediacy
of the protagonists. Claire Danes is especially good as Juliet,
uttering Shakespeare's difficult English without affect, and John
Leguizamo defines the role of the petulant Tybalt, playing the
part with an insightful butch-camp swagger. Kenneth Branagh could
learn a thing or two about bringing the Bard to the big screen
from this effort--it's not only exciting, stylish and witty in
its small details, it's also accessible without being condescending.
The action conveys so much sense that the teen audiences even
laughed at Shakespeare's puns. If you need to see bodkins and
ruffled collars to enjoy your Veronese tragedies, stay home; but
if a boy's choir singing "When Doves Cry" seems the
perfect accompaniment to the wedding of two star-cross'd lovers,
you'll surely enjoy the two hours' traffic of this staging.
SECRETS & LIES. With Secrets and Lies, acclaimed
British director Mike Leigh turns in gentler, more human effort
than his previous film, Naked. An extended family muddles
through issues of love and parenthood, spurred by Hortense (Marianne
Jean-Baptiste), a grown, adopted child searching for her birthmother
Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn). To Hortense's surprise, her mother turns
out to be white, but the friendship that springs up between these
two women quickly cuts through any racial boundaries. Leigh's
view of humanity is characteristically surly, nonetheless, and
the relationship between Cynthia and her daughter Roxanne (Claire
Rushbrook), a street sweeper, is hilariously bleak. Somehow, Leigh
has a talent for making human failings seem viciously funny and
absurd, and the most miserable characters in this film often turn
out to be the most entertaining. Still, there's a spirit of connection
and society reminiscent of Jean Renoir in this film (Timothy Spall
as the rotund Maurice bears a striking resemblance to Renoir as
Octave in Rules of the Game), and everyone emerges a little
wiser for their troubles.
SWINGERS. Picture Woody Allen in Los Angeles in the 1990s
pretending to be a hipster from the 1940s who's just been dumped
by his girlfriend from college and you have Swingers, a
funny, imaginative independent film with serious era confusion.
The story concerns a neurotic guy named Mike who's too heartbroken
after leaving his old girlfriend to get out and enjoy the nightlife
of L.A. with his buddies. His buddies, who share an unquenchable
yearning for the golf-putting, swing-dancing, highball-swilling
days of Sammy and Sinatra, want nothing more than to see Mike
on his feet again and spend endless amounts of energy to this
end. The guys call each other Daddy, refer to women as "babies,"
sleep until one in the afternoon, then cruise the bars in sharkskin
suits. This movie is pretty lightweight, but it pokes fun at L.A.
and the slacker aesthetic with ruthless accuracy.
Special Screenings
TOUR DE BICYCLE THIEF. Perhaps one of the most beautiful
bummers of all time, The Bicycle Thief, the classic Italian
neo-realist film by Vittorio de Sica, plays this weekend at the
Screening Room. Using non-actors and authentic settings, de Sica
tells the moving story of an impoverished laborer searching for
the stolen bicycle he desperately needs in order to work. Set
in post-war Rome, the sense of desperation and poverty is palpable.
Don't forget your Kryptonite lock.
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