Weekend Movie Forecast: <em>Defiance</em> Vs. <em>Good</em>
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<p>Based on a true story about Jewish outlaws who fought the Nazis in the forests of Poland, Edward Zwick's <em>Defiance </em> stars Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber as the leaders of the renegade chosen people. Despite the stellar casting, Nathan Rabin's <a href="http://www.avclub.com/content/cinema/defiance">review in the Onion</a> seems indicative of a general critical disdain for the film: "<em>Defiance </em>groans under the weight of its deadly earnestness: it's handsomely mounted yet strangely inert. There are lots of movies about Jews suffering, dying, and surviving in Europe during World War II, but precious few about Jews fighting back. So why does everything in <em>Defiance</em> feel so doggedly familiar?"</p>
<p>Also on the WWII Nazi tip is <em>Good</em>, which stars lefty heartthrob Viggo Mortensen as a mild-mannered literature professor who passively plays along with Hitlerâs game and becomes a Nazi. <a href="http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/12/31/movies/31good.html?ref=movies">Stephen Holden at the Times</a> sounds pissed he had to sit through this "anemic" movie, and he says Mortensen is "miscast and ineptly directed by Vicente Amorim...The actors, especially Mr. Mortensen, speak in preposterously cultivated English accents that lend horrific events the tonal weight of a fracas at a tea party...This rickety film collapses completely in its revelatory scene at a concentration camp, where Halder finally faces the reality he has denied. As he wanders dazedly around the premises casting furtive glances, the prisoners and guards, played by healthy-looking actors, are clumsily arranged in stiff tableaus as though they were about to perform in a pageant.<strong> It is the single most unconvincing death-camp scene I have encountered in a film."</strong></p>
<p>As a companion piece to their downtown near-monopoly on <em>The Wrestler</em>, <a href="http://www.landmarktheatres.com/Market/NewYork/NewYork_Frameset.htm">the Sunshine is screening</a> the 1987 voodoo detective flick <em>Angel Heart</em> at midnight tonight and Saturday. Set in spooky New Orleans, the movie stars a younger Rourke as the gumshoe and Robert DeNiro as the mysterious Louis Cyphre. </p>
<p>Alejandro Jodorowsky's 1970 head trip <em><a href="http://www.movietickets.com/movie_detail.asp?movie_id=26089">El Topo</a></em> <a href="http://www.ifccenter.com/event?eventid=999851">is back at IFC</a> for a midnight run this weekend. </p>
<em>Bigger Than Life</em>, based in part on a New Yorker article from 1955, is regarded as one of the best films of the '50s. It stars James Mason as a happily married schoolteacher who's driven to violence because of a new "miracle drug" he takes when diagnosed with a potentially fatal disease. There's a new print <a href="http://www.filmforum.org/films/bigger.html">screening at Film Forum</a> for one week starting tonight, and Richard Brody <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/goingson/2008/12/bigger-than-life.html">at The New Yorker</a> (conflict of interest!) says it's not to be missed: <strong>"The movie is one of the greatest views of the hidden fractures of family life and the demons that, for some, remain happily below the surface</strong>; as the teacher, James Mason disturbingly combines intellect, sensibility, and rage. The muted palette of Rayâs images is slashed by eruptions of luridly bright colors, the strangest of which is the cool purple glow of the little bottle of cortisone pills."