Weekend Movie Forecast: <em>The Other Woman</em> Vs. <em>Cold Weather</em>
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<p>2011 seems to be the year for Nat-Port. The frighteningly beautiful 13-year-old from <em>Leon: The Professional</em> has all but grown up, and there's a lot of "Oscar buzz" (how Access Hollywood!) surrounding the starlet's role in <em>The Black Swan</em>. And as if she had already won, our little Natalie is already making horrendous career moves. Following up on her Reitman comedy role in <em>No Strings Attached</em> comes her latest noodle-scratcher <em>The Other Woman</em>. In her defense, it appears the movie was done all the way back in the good ol' year of 2009 but was for unknown reasons (hmmm...) never released till now. Portman plays a Jezebel who marries her already married boss, has a baby, has that baby die (unintentionally), and is now stuck with her Beau's son trying to figure out what went wrong. This movie seems to have appeared out of nowhere like some sex-tape she made in college, but hopefully it won't haunt the poor girl come Academy Awards time.</p><p></p>Reviews have been awful, with Melissa Anderson from <a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/2011-02-02/film/inexplicable-natalie-portmania-continues-in-the-other-woman/">The Village Voice</a> saying: "Director Don Roos (<em>The Opposite of Sex, Happy Endings</em>), who also scripted, wobbles tonally, sometimes disastrously: A memorial walk in Central Park for those who have lost infants at first cruelly invites derision before being validated as healing, only to then spiral into petulant tears and recriminations.<p></p>"Though lazily mocking hyper-vigilant parenting, the film treats the moldiest clichésâ'We all end up marrying our fathers anyway'; 'Itâs the people who love you youâre the hardest on'âas gospel. Portman, neither courageous nor complex enough to fully embody an often unlikable character, succeeds merely in enervating us."
<p>Now this is a concept: Young, hip, 20-something academic in Forensic science returns back home to Portland where he gets a shitty job, lives with his sister and eventually has to use his detective skills to track down an ex-girlfriend. What could just be any other night in Williamsburg is now a movie! What would they call such a film? Hipster Holmes? No. <em>Cold Weather</em>, and it comes out today!</p><p></p>Reviews have been pretty good, with J. Hoberman from <a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/2011-02-02/film/mysteries-abound-in-the-mumble-noir-cold-weather/">The Village Voice</a> saying: "Cheerfully diffident, garrulous yet uninflected, blithely self-absorbed, the mumblecore brand proliferates: Last yearâs star vehicles <em>Greenberg</em> and <em>Cyrus</em> introduced the concept of mega-mumble. The low-budget musical <em>Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench</em> pioneered mumble-chord; <em>Tiny Furniture</em> was part psycho-drumble, part sit-cumble. Premiering with the latter at last springâs South by Southwest Festival, <em>Cold Weather</em>, Aaron Katzâs Portland, Oregonâset junior detective mystery, stakes a claim as the founding work of mumble-noir.<p></p>"Steadily building in intensity from sluggish interest to mild excitement, Cold Weather is a slight movie with a long, circuitous fuseâand thatâs the point. Katz is something of a trickster, closer in spirit to Jacques Rivette than Raymond Chandler; his movie is not a riff on mystery stories so much as it is a riff, pure and simple, on the mystery of stories."<p></p>And if you like scavenger hunts (is there anyone who doesn't?), the producers will having <a href="http://www.corduroymag.com/uncategorized/indie-mystery-film-promotes-opening-with-scavenger-hunt/">a free <em>Cold Weather</em>-themed scavenger hunt tomorrow</a>, culminating with a happy hour at West 3rd Common.
<p>What's the next best thing to a new James Cameron film? A new James Cameron Produced film! Although most people don't realize how misguiding that title can be, they sure do eat it up anyway. If you're the type of person who'll go see a film based on the over-bloated merits of its famous producer, then <em>Sanctum</em> might be the movie for you! The film follows a team of spelunkers who realize that their exit has been closed off and have to find another way out with dwindling rations and growing panic.</p><p></p>Reviews have been very mixed, with a bad review coming from Manohla Dargis at <a href="http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/02/04/movies/04sanctum.html?ref=movies">The Times</a> who says: "'Why?' someone demands after another disaster in the 3-D grotty grotto adventure <em>Sanctum</em>. 'Why caves?' Wait a minute, I think that might have been me, though given one of the executive producers of this souped-up B movie, the question should have been: 'Why, James Cameron, why?'<p></p>"The director Alister Grierson, not grasping that bad dialogue is sometimes best delivered quietly, encourages his actors to shout and thrash about, and so they do, like fish out of water and performers out of their depth."
<p>Proving once again that Baby Boomers are a highly-prized marketing demographic, comes the new documentary <em>Troubadours</em>. Not a portrait of a politically charged singer-songwriter movement in the turbulent '60s but instead a laid-back, good times doc centering on the famed post-hippie venue The Troubadour, and the talented and apolitical singers who performed there (James Taylor, Carole King, Jackson Browne). This is a perfect movie for your parents (if they resemble the parents from <em>Family Ties</em>) because they're probably really apathetic to socio-political concerns in their old age, but still like to nostalgically look back (all while listening to some of their favorite groovy tunes). Tell your dads to pop the viagra at the 20 minute mark so they're ready to go afterward.</p><p></p>Reviews have been pretty positive, with a nice review coming from Stephen Holden at <a href="http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/02/02/movies/02troub.html?ref=movies">The Times</a> who says: "The enjoyable, lightweight <em>Troubadours</em> is a musical scrapbook that throws together a bit of this and a bit of that. At first it seems to be a chronicle of Ms. King and Mr. Taylorâs 2007 reunion at the club to celebrate its 50th anniversary. And it includes homey scenes of these two longtime friends amiably swapping reminiscences of the good old days.<p></p>"<em>Troubadours</em> dredges up the silly skirmishes between East Coast rock critics who reviled a genre they routinely dismissed as self-absorbed navel-gazing and the practitioners of that laid-back style. The Eagles were particular whipping boys. The former Village Voice rock critic Robert Christgau quotes a phrase from the Eaglesâ hit 'Take It Easy' as evidence of a 'worthless sensibility.' But the singer-songwriter J. D. Souther has a point when he speculates that much of that hostility was really jealousy of a scene awash in money and beautiful women. In the end, as another talking head points out, 'the music always wins.' And it did â by a landslide."
<p>As rough as things might be for all you post-grads out there, be happy you're not the character Pavel from the new film <em>How I Ended This Summer</em>. You see, Pavel is working at a small meteorological station on an island in the Arctic Circle and is stationed there with a very strict, by-the-books older guy named Sergei. One day while Sergei is out, Pavel gets terrible news for Sergei from HQ. At first Pavel can't bring himself to tell him, but when the truth is finally revealed, things get crazy. Your internship isn't that bad now is it?</p><p></p>Reviews have been pretty positive, with a little skepticism coming from Joshua Rothkopf at <a href="http://newyork.timeout.com/arts-culture/film/732749/how-i-ended-this-summer">Time Out New York</a> who says: "Director Alexei Popogrebsky sets up the quiet tensions between his two generationally divided characters like a chess match pocked with occasional power grabs, like when Sergei criticizes Pavelâs shoddy data collection. 'People <em>died</em> here,' he emphasizes. Thereâs a strained father-son dynamic that begins to peek out, as well as a subtle portrait of the evolving Russia, split between duty and freedom.<p></p>"Too bad, then, when an urgent telegram from the mainland shifts the film into survivalist mode. Youâll be stupefied as the plot becomes an endless (and largely suspense-free) chase scene, with furious Sergei stalking Pavel across the tundra. (The clash is doubly irritating for having little motivation apart from a minor misunderstanding.) Who took over the screenwriting duties? Tony Scott? Sometimes drama, like borscht, tastes better when slowly simmered, not brought to a boil."
<p>We wish we could tell you more than the one sentence synopsis about a girl becoming obsessed with her roommate. Or any more information than what could be derived from the one sheet and a terrible trailer. Maybe it'd help if we could quote some reviews from critics in order to help you discern whether or not you'd like to see <em>The Roommate</em> but there were no press screenings. It'd be nice to be able to give you any information about this movie being released today, but honestly, we doubt any of you with a High School Diploma will want to see it, and for those that do, you probably already know that it looks terrible. </p>
<p>In what is sure to be the next best thing to a marathon of <em>Project Runway</em>, is the more seriously minded doc <em>Dressed</em> which comes out today. The film follows self-taught clothing designer Nary Manivong who made his way from a poor family in Columbus, Ohio to Fashion Week in NYC where he debuted the launch of his own brand. Fabulous!</p><p></p>Perhaps because of the absence of Tim Gunn, reviews have been poor, with Ernest Hardy from <a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/2011-02-02/film/dressed-a-doc-on-fashionista-nary-manivong-gets-snagged-on-cliches/">The Voice</a> saying: "Thereâs a fantastic movie in the life and struggles of Laotian-American fashion designer Nary Manivong, the subject of <em>Dressed</em>, who taught himself to design and produce clothes by studying fashion magazines. But David John Swajeski, who directed, produced, and edited this documentary on the fledgling fashionista, snags his film on clichés, poor pacing, and an unwillingness or inability to push his subject beyond talk-show pop-psych babble when the topic is interior life and wounds.<p></p>"Still, tension slowly builds in the film, and when a final-stretch incident of bad luck occurs, itâs absolutely wrenchingâuntil Manivong and Swajeski arrive at a 'solution' that seems tailor-made for maximum movie-watching impact."
<p>Opening today at Cinema Village is the documentary <em>American Grindhouse</em> which follows the evolution of American exploitation films and midnight movies. This is one of those niche docs that will probably only grab the attention of those who know the most about the subject. Like a documentary on your favorite band, you'll either see this as a fan or maybe catch it on Netflix streaming in a couple months.</p><p></p>There really haven't been many reviews except for the short from Mark Halcomb at <a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/2011-02-02/film/american-grindhouse-traces-the-lineage-of-cheapjack-cinematic-slop/">The Voice</a> who says: "Nitpicky enough to please film-history nerds but lively in a way that should tickle the merely curious, Elijah Drennerâs informative history of exploitation movies is likely to end up preaching only to the converted. Pity, because while <em>American Grindhouse</em> relies heavily on static bloviation (John Landis makes for a particularly talky head), it also deftly traces the lineage of cheapjack, self-distributed cinematic slop to the enduring indie boom.<p></p>"Yet for all its thoroughness, <em>American Grindhouse</em> has an unavoidable bandwagon-y feel, as if it were still in production after the junk-movie boosters whose lead it follows (Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, basically) had already moved on."
<p>Also opening today is the documentary <em>Into Eternity</em>. The film documents the people attempting to safely contain hazardous radioactive waste so that no current or future people will be harmed. It is an interesting problem. The waste will remain hazardous for over 100,000 years, so the people need to consider ways in which future generations will think, how they'll speak, where they'll dig, if they'll listen to warnings, etc.... This doc isn't so much a call to arms or preachy environmental warning but more of a serious contemplation on a very complicated problem. Specifically, the film follows a group in Finland who are attempting to dig out elaborate tunnels in order to store the waste while having to grapple with the possibilities of 100,000 years of future humanity. Should be very interesting.</p><p></p>Reviews have been positive, with Scott Tobias from <a href="http://www.avclub.com/articles/into-eternity,51287/">The A.V. Club</a> saying: "Currently, radioactive waste is being placed in interim storage like water baths, which act as a shield against their effects, but anything on the surface is vulnerable to all manner of human and environmental disasters. Since blasting the stuff into space isnât an optionâengineers in the film immediately rule out that possibility, because the launch could ignite the wasteâanother solution is to bury it far underground. To that end, the ambitious Onkalo nuclear-waste repository in Finland, a series of tunnels carved five kilometers deep into solid rock, seeks a more permanent home to hazardous waste. But is there such a thing as permanence?<p></p>"But the overall impression is deeply unsettling and blessedly removed from the full-scale panic of Chicken Little documentaries about how food/water/oil/global warming/Ebola/'The Rapture' is going to kill us. Madsen casts doubt on the notion that this Pandoraâs box will never be opened, either by some cataclysmic event, like another Ice Age, or drilling by future generations who may not be aware of Onkalo, or even able to decipher warnings of its contents. Something terrible seems likely to happenâjust not today."
<em>Intelligence. Nothing has caused the human race so much trouble as intelligence.</em><p></p>Here in America, through various polls and critical studies, we've more or less agreed that <em>Citizen Kane</em> is, arguably, the greatest film ever made. In France however, the film that holds that title is Alfred Hitchcock's absolutely perfect <em>Rear Window</em>, and they might be on to something. Exploring themes of voyeurism, scopophilia, impotence, and the nature of film itself all while remaining at the height of perfect entertainment, the film is a marvel. Entirely taken place on a single block with all diegetic music and sound the movie possibly says more about cinema then any other movie in history. If you haven't seen it, you are missing out on one of the most enjoyable and thought-provoking film experiences available and need to head on down to <a href="http://www.landmarktheatres.com/Market/NewYork/NewYork_frameset.htm">Landmark Theater</a> where Sunshine at Midnight is screening the film this weekend. An absolute masterpiece.