Weekend Movie Forecast: <em>Katyn, Eleven Minutes, Fired Up</em>
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Katyn, the elegant historical thriller from acclaimed Polish director Andrzej Wajda, is named for a forest where the Soviets secretly murdered 15,000 Polish officers, intellectuals and professionals over a 3-day period in 1940 (during which the 14-year-old Wajda lost his own father). Heavy stuff, but riveting. The Times's A.O. Scott writes, "After the war the falsified Russian version of history was enforced by the usual police-state means. Even as the truth about Katyn continued to haunt Polesâ memories, it became, for much of the rest of the world, a hazy footnote, a symbol of Polandâs enduring historical bad luck."But Poland has at least been fortunate to have, in Mr. Wajda, a tireless, clear-sighted chronicler... He focuses on the grief and confusion of his characters, and on the ferocity with which they hold on to the dignity that history conspires to strip from them. The result is a film with a stately, deliberate quality that insulates it against sentimentality and makes it all the more devastating."
Screening at Film Forum for a limited, two week run.<p>Documentary <em>Eleven Minutes</em> follows charismatic fashion designer and Project Runway winner Jay McCarroll as he frantically runs around to prepare for his first show at Fashion Week. <a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-02-18/film/portrait-cum-procedural-eleven-minutes-profiles-project-runway-s-jay-mccarrol/">Aaron Hillis at the Village Voice says</a>, "What truly elevates it all is how the directors (deliberately appearing on-screen at times) subtly address our perceptions of filmed 'reality,' from their even-handed vérité here to the more grossly manufactured confines of reality TV, a medium McCarroll is quick to call 'vulgar.' <strong>Like Soderbergh's two-part <em>Che</em>âyes, I'm making this comparison</strong>â<em>Eleven Minutes</em> is less about its subject and more about formalist processes (both McCarroll and the filmmakers'), and shouldn't exist as a stand-alone without viewers having experienced its other half, <em>Project Runway</em>."</p>
<p>Teen comedy <em>Fired Up</em> has something to do with two jocks who join the cheerleading team. We could find out more, but that would be a spectacular waste of our extremely brief time on earth, wouldn't it? Besides, <a href="http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090218/REVIEWS/902189993/1023">guys like Roger Ebert</a> get paid a lot more to endure abominations like this: "After the screening of <em>Fired Up!,</em> one of my colleagues grimly observed that <em>Dead Man </em>was a better cheerleader movie... <strong>Oh, is this movie bad.</strong> The characters relentlessly attack each other with the forced jollity of minimum-wage workers pressing you with free cheese samples at the supermarket. Every conversation involves a combination of romantic misunderstandings, double entendres and flirtation that is just sad. No one in the movie has an idea in their bubbly little brains."</p>
<em><a href="http://www.mustreadaftermydeath.com">Must Read After My Death</a></em> is a documentary comprised of eight-millimeter films and reel-to-reel recordings found by director Morgan Dews in 2001, left behind by his maternal grandmother in a box labeled "Must Read After My Death." <a href="http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/movies/20must.html?ref=movies">The Times's Manohla Dargis</a> writes that "Mr. Dews not only followed these instructions, he also made the materials his own, artfully piecing them together to create an alternately fascinating and disquietingly intimate portrait of a 1960s American family falling apart. <strong>The results, at least initially, make for absorbing viewing and listening. </strong><p></p>"The grandmother, Allis, was independent minded and, to judge from her loudly voiced complaints, gravely unhappy... Mr. Dews makes the family come alive, using seamlessly stitched-together home movies and photographs to flesh out the visual part of his portrait... As the divides between the public and the personal erode, we have become habituated to watching other people live their lives in public... While I admire how Mr. Dews has constructed his movie on a formal level, I canât help but wonder how his grandmother would feel if she knew her familyâs trauma has been repackaged for our queasy consumption."
<p>Rakeysh Omprakash Mehraâs <em>Delhi-6</em> "truly represents the India of today and the youth of today," at least that's what one the film's actors told an audience when in screened at MoMa. <a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-02-18/film/delhi-6-represents-the-enigmatic-india-of-today/">Michelle Orange at the Village Voice</a> says the story concerns an American-born Indian who accompanies his ailing grandmother to Delhi and, "duly appalled and enchanted by what he sees, undergoes a cultural conversion and rather brutal baptism. [<em>Delhi-6</em>] attempts to address the generational, economic, and religious problems dividing modern India, it does so in an unapologetically broad, whacked-out way, with each of Bollywoodâs four food groups (corn, cheese, treacle, and nuts) present and accounted for. <strong>Which is to say, of course, that itâs pretty much irresistible and, in that sense, represents the enigmatic India of today as well as anything ever could."</strong></p>
<p>This year marks the 10th birthday of <a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-02-18/film/guy-debord-mini-fest-and-the-rest-of-the-retro-lineup-carry-film-comment-selects/">Film Comment Selects</a>, the avant-garde festival of new and old cinematic envelope-pushers from around the world, programmed by the leading magazine of movie criticism. Pictured above is a still from R.W. Fassbinder's <em>The Third Generation</em> (1979), screening this weekend, which the <a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-02-18/film/guy-debord-mini-fest-and-the-rest-of-the-retro-lineup-carry-film-comment-selects/">Voice's Nick Pinkerton describes</a> as "a cokehead-frantic backstage 'Comedy' of bourgeois left-wing revolutionaries. A clueless terrorist cell, played by the Fassbinder repertory company, imports conspiratorial postures from American noir and copycats its actions from the nightly news... Third Generation's stated thesis is that the Man and the Revolution are a Ouroboros constructâ<strong>'Capitalism invented terrorism to force the state to protect it better.'</strong> " The series continues through March 5th at the Walter Reade theater; <a href="http://www.filmlinc.com/wrt/onsale/fcs09/program.html">peruse the entire program here</a>.</p>
<em>Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom</em>, Steven Spielberg's 1984 sequel to <em>Raiders of the Lost Ark</em>, features human sacrifices, human heart eating, and Kate Capshaw. Shouldn't <a href="http://www.landmarktheatres.com/Films/films_frameset.asp?id=42958">the Sunshine</a> have screened this on Valentine's Day, instead of this weekend at midnight?
<a href="http://www.ifccenter.com/event?eventid=999852">IFC Waverly Midnights</a> continues its "Cronenberg Classics" series this weekend with the 1996 sex-and-car-crash film <em>Crash</em>, adapted from the J. G. Ballard 1973 novel of the same name. It's the perfect thing to wash Paul Haggis's contrived Oscar winner out of your mind forever.
<p>A reminder, and an excuse to publish this photo of one of our favorite people on the planet: This is your last weekend to see the Oscar nominated films before the winners are revealed on Sunday. The Best Picture nominees are <em>The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, The Reader</em> and <em>Slumdog Millionaire</em>; here are <a href="http://www.oscars.org/awards/81academyawards/nominees.html">all the nominees</a>. Our LA blog <a href="http://www.laist.com">LAist</a> will be at the Oscars, so stay tuned for details.</p>