Weekend Movie Forecast: <em>Public Enemies</em> Vs. <em>Ice Age</em>
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<p>Michael Mann's <em>Public Enemies</em>, which stars Johnny Depp as John Dillinger and Christian Bale as the FBI man on his tail, has critics <a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/10009526-public_enemies/?critic=creamcrop">pretty evenly divided</a>. Jeffrey Wells <a href="http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/07/sidewalk_showdo.php">at Hollywood Elsewhere</a> writes, "I was praising Michael Mann's gangster flick while two formidable criticsâEntertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman and renowned essayist and filmmaker Godfrey Cheshireâwere putting it down, wearing faint grins of dismissal as they said it really didn't deliver.</p><p></p>"'I hear you,' I said. 'You're saying it doesn't do the thing you wanted to see it do. But...you know, it's an art film!' Gleiberman's reply was somewhere between skeptical and incredulous: 'An art film?' 'Well, yeah,' I said, feeling sheepish in the face of withering disdain. But why sheepish when it's true?... And then this morning along came Manohla Dargis, the N.Y. Times critic, <a href="http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/movies/01enemies.html?ref=movies">starting her review</a> with the following sentence:<strong> 'Michael Mann's Public Enemies is a grave and beautiful work of art.'"</strong><p></p><a href="http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/movies/01enemies.html?ref=movies">In her glowing review</a>, Dargis goes on to say, "Mr. Depp looks good as Dillinger â few contemporary actors can wear a fedora as persuasively â but the performance sneaks up on you, inching into your system scene by scene. The same holds true of <em>Public Enemies</em>, which looks and plays like no other American gangster film I can think of and very much like a Michael Mann movie, with its emphasis on men at work, its darkly moody passages, eruptions of violence and pictorial beauty."
<em>Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs</em> is the third in a series of computer-animated movies about scrappy prehistoric animals. This 3D installment features the well-paid voices of Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, and Queen Latifah. <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/ice-age-dawn-of-the-dinosaurs/article1202286/">Liam Lacey at the Globe and Mail</a> says it has "enough prehistoric action to make you wish for extinction...The screenplay is credited to four writers... but there's little evidence of creativity either in the paint-by-numbers time-travelling plot or the sort of ad-libs you associate with gag writers sitting around a boardroom table. <strong>Most of the banter here is less inspired than incessant. Too many of the mildly off-colour jokes seem targeted at some puerile void between parents and children."</strong>
<p>The latest indie rom-com to drop out of Nia Vardalos sticks to roughly (and painfully) the same lines as the others: a woman struggles with romance but learns to love again when the Right Guy comes along. In this particular iteration, the woman's named Genevieve and the title is <em>I Hate Valentine's Day</em>, but that seems to be about all that's different. As <a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-07-01/film/i-hate-valentine-s-day-vardalos-ham-fisted-greek-wedding-rebound-flick/">Ella Taylor at the Village Voice observes</a>, "Vardalos calls her film 'the ultimate indie experiment,' and if that's what is meant by ham-fisted pacing, writing, and acting, this is as ultimate and as indie as it gets."</p>
<em>Local Color</em>, the new film from writer/director George Gallo (<em>Midnight Run</em>), stars Armin Mueller-Stahl as a grouchy, aging artist who must endure the pestering of a young man who wants to be his protege. <a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-06-24/film/local-color-talks-about-art/">The Village Voice's Aaron Hillis</a> wonders, "How is it that a film about the love of art can make art seem so detestable?... Sappy and overworked, the film swells and stays swollen with on-the-nose uplift, such as the eureka moment when John learns that clouds aren't really just white, or when nearby neighbor Carla (Samantha Mathis) gives him his first electrifying kiss. The characters talk stiltedly and broadly about the art of art, and there's nothing more artless than that."
<p>Documentary <em>Nollywood Babylon</em>, <a href="http://moma.org/visit/calendar/films/975">screening at MoMA for a week</a>, looks at the vibrant, no-budget Nigerian movie industry. <a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/film_review.asp?ID=4376">Slant's Lauren Wissot </a>says, "At its core, modern-day Lagos is a home-movie market (originally because the violence in the streets made it safer to stay at home) dominated by homegrown fare. Only the three remaining movie theaters in the metropolis still show foreign films. And this sense of community is nearly palpable in Addelman and Mallal's doc. Set to African pop music, <em>Nollywood Babylon</em> seamlessly interweaves actual clips from the often melodramatic, though surprisingly stylish (for movies usually shot on less than 10 grand), Nollywood flicks and onset footage with scenes from the bustling, chaotic markets of Lagos, while a wide range of talking headsâfrom Nigerian film historians to actors, directors, and even a writer/poetâorganize it all in an important historical context."</p>
<p>Filmmaker Agnes Varda <em>(The Gleaners and I</em>) turns her camera on herself in the new autobiographical documentary <em>The Beaches of Agnes</em>. You might not be surprised to hear that Manohla Dargis at the Times <a href="http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/movies/01beaches.html">loves it</a>, calling it "glorious and generous... Iâm glad that Ms. Varda reserves most of the room in this movie for her own story. Itâs a remarkable history, rich in comedy and occasionally heartbreaking, filled with wise reflections and strange digressions about the wonders of life. Itâs a life she has come close to perfecting, I think, mostly by keeping her mind as blissfully and enduringly open as her round eyes."</p>
<p>In <em>The Girl from Monaco</em>, a neurotic attorney falls for "a beautiful she-devil" (Louise Bourgoin) while in Monaco to defend a famous criminal. The affair turns him into a wreck, and only his bodyguard can same him! <a href="http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/film/76087/the-girl-from-monaco-film-review">Time Out's Joshua Rothkopf says</a>, "You immediately like the quiet Christophe (Zem), a bodyguard in Anne Fontaineâs lighthearted legal thriller, because he seems immune to the bullshit that inevitably comes with a Monaco movie... How wondrous, then, that the threat comes in a cloud of blond hair. This is only Louise Bourgoinâs first film, but as Audrey, a weather reporter and force of nature herself, sheâs landed a role of unusual charm and complexity. Her character is not merely a flirt, but a larky spirit of her age, chained to a video camera, who dreams of hosting a show about celebrity pets. <strong><em>The Girl from Monaco </em>is not <em>To Die For</em>, but for long stretches, itâs just as unpredictable."</strong></p>
<p>Chilean black comedy <em>Tony Manero </em>concerns a 50-something man named Raul living in Santiago under dictator Augusto Pinochet. To keep sane, he tries to turn his obsession with <em>Saturday Night Fever</em> into a lifestyle, performing with a group of dancers at a small bar, recreating the moves from his favorite movie, and reaching for the brass ring: top prize in a Tony Manero dance-and-look-a-like contest. <a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-07-01/film/larrain-s-tony-manero-turns-fantasies-to-nightmares/">J. Hoberman at the Village Voice</a> calls it "alarming... Shot on 16mm, <em>Tony Manero</em> has a purposefully murky look and a frantic feel. The ultra-Dardenne camera follows Raúl as he darts through Santiago's empty alleys and vacant lots, only pausing when he raptly watches <em>Saturday Night Fever </em>or attempts to imitate Tony's stomp-and-point rhythmic flailing. Feasting on this bizarre fascist posturing, [director Pablo] Larrain suggests that, with his sordid charisma, Raúl is a miniature Pinochetâreproducing the brutality of the state in his willingness to steal, exploit, betray, and kill in the service of a fantasy."</p>
<a href="http://www.ifccenter.com/films/a-clockwork-orange/">The IFC Center screens</a> Stanley Kubrick's unforgettable film adaptation of <em>A Clockwork Orange</em> at midnight on Thursday through Sunday.
<p>Christian Bale stars in the 1992 movie <em>Newsies</em>, about orphan newsboys battling their employers Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst from the gritty underbelly of New York City in 1899. <a href="http://www.landmarktheatres.com/Films/films_frameset.asp?id=45189">The Sunshine screens it</a> this weekend at midnight.</p>
<p>Acclaimed French director Arnaud Desplechin (<em>A Christmas Tale, Kings and Queen</em>) received his first US retrospective at BAM in April 2005; <a href="http://bam.org/view.aspx?pid=1227">he's back tonight</a> for a discussion following the screening of one of his favorite films, <em>The Royal Tenenbaums</em>. That will be <a href="http://bam.org/view.aspx?pid=1228">followed by a screening</a> of another one his favorites, François Truffaut's <em>Mississippi Mermaid</em>, with discussion to follow.</p>
<p>BAMcinématek's <a href="http://afropunk.ning.com/">5th annual Afro-Punk Festival</a> kicks off Friday for six days of film, music, and other events. The all-day Spike Lee program on July 5th includes a 20th Anniversary screening of <em>Do the Right Thing</em>, and on July 4th the 2008 documentary <em>Afro-Saxons</em> (pictured), about hair stylists in competition during Londonâs Black Beauty and Hair awards, screens back-to-back with 1974's <em>Attica</em>, a documentary that recreates the 1971 prison revolt at New Yorkâs Attica correctional facility, in which inmates demanding better food and living conditions took 38 guards hostage.</p>
<p>On July 3rd and 4th <a href="http://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/">Anthology Film Archives screens</a> Willie Nelson's 4th of July Celebration, a 1979 documentary covering Nelson's "picnic" jamborees, envisioned as a "Woodstock in Texas." <a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-07-01/film/a-willie-nelson-4th-of-july-at-anthology/">The Village Voice's Nick Pinkerton</a> says, "The film isn't cut to the beat, and attempts at groovy style are blessedly awkward raritiesâI'm thinking of the slo-mo of a naked broad 'spontaneously' stage-rushing an embarrassed Kershaw. (Oddly, there are reports of a SpaceVision 3-D version of the film.) The simplicity is largely a virtue here. This picnic went three days, but 4th of July is structured as a day and night, coherently charting a constellation of musicians as they play, drift off, drink, drift back. (Yeah, that's Wolfman Jack.) </p><p></p>"Nelson is a discreetly withdrawn host, hovering tender and private over his ballads, visibly lit up when harmonizing with Waylon. The near-constant presence is emcee Leon Russell, who, glaring through a cowl of prematurely gray hair, becomes oblivious to everything but the liquor as the night wears on, to the alternate irritation and bemusement of his badgered co-stars. Leon: 'I do drink, bless your heartâsome of us got to . . .' Willie: 'Or else it won't get done.'"