Weekend Movie Forecast: J.J. Abrams Vs. Jerzy Skolimowski
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<p>Steven Spielberg and J.J. Abrams's <em>Super 8</em> is the story of a group of kids who, while making a Super 8 movie, witness a catastrophic train crash and the arrival of some rather <em>sinister</em> forcesâforces that lead to disappearances and killings in their small Ohio town. And it's up to the local Deputy to uncover the dark truth.<br/><br/>The film is getting some rave reviews, with many reviewers seeing it as a standout of the summer blockbuster genre that succeeds not by being outré or shocking, but warm and even playful. "J.J. Abrams, with Steven Spielberg producing, has made one of those jaw-dropping out-of-body summer entertainments that kids old enough to swear and see PG-13 films will remember on into adulthood," <a href="http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment_movies_blog/2011/06/movie-review-super-8.html">writes Roger Moore in the Orlando Sentinel.</a> Even skeptics see the good in it: "It's an expertly constructed thrill ride with wonderful atmosphere and tremendous good humor; if its heart of gold is artificial, that won't stop you from enjoying the heck out of it," <a href="http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/our_picks/index.html?story=/ent/movies/andrew_ohehir/2011/06/08/super_8">is Andrew O'Hehir's verdict on Salon.com.</a></p>
<p>There's a new kiddie flick out, and it looks to be a doozie. Based on Megan McDonald's children's book series, <em>Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer</em> probably has even non-parents wondering why bus stops and taxi signs have been suddenly emblazoned with brightly-colored kitsch. It follows the titular young girl's attempts to, in the inimitable style of the ad copy, challenge her friends "in a thrill-point race for the most mega-rare NOT bummer summer." This is a struggle against all oddsâ"all odds" in this case meaning someone called "Aunt Awful," the absence of her friends, and her little brother Stink. <br/><br/>Many reviewers are not impressed. "The incessant tumult drowns out any real message for the kidsâor pleasure for their parents," writes<a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/2011-06-08/film/kids-movie-to-the-x-treme-in-judy-moody-and-the-not-bummer-summer/"> the Village Voice's Nick Schager</a>. "It's a film so obnoxiously frantic that its most restrained element is a banjo-strumming elementary school teacher played by none other than '90s tween-mugging icon Jaleel 'Urkel' White." <a href="http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/06/10/movies/judy-moody-and-the-not-bummer-summer.html?ref=movies">Andy Webster of The New York Times</a>, however, has a completely different perspective on all the madness, likening the film to a younger version of last year's <em>Scott Pilgrim vs. the World</em> and giving it a "Critic's Pick": "The whole film is a celebration of messy, colorful, vigorous creativity, echoed in Cynthia Charetteâs gloriously cluttered hodgepodge production design, with barely a product placement in sight."</p>
<p>Accidentally based on director Monte Hellman's<a href="http://www.movieline.com/2011/06/monte-hellman-on-road-to-nowhere-and-how-he-spent-22-years-between-features.php"> "two wonderful friends who lived tragic lives"</a>, <em>Road to Nowhere</em> plays with the oft-indiscernible boundaries between truth and lie, identity and image, secret and revelation. <a href="http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117943481?refcatid=31">F.X. Feeney of Variety says</a>, "<em>Road to Nowhere</em> displays this director's trademark virtuesâan elegant compositional eye, tough-minded thematic sense and sharp sensitivity to what goes unspoken between people, especially in moments of deepest feelingâwith such energy that movie lovers and critics should embrace it on the festival circuit."</p>
<p>The first film to come out of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in over twenty years, Djo Tunda wa Munga's <em>Viva Riva!</em> follows a gasoline smuggler in the capital of Kinshasa, who is wheeling-and-dealing in the midst of a gasoline shortage. It has all the makings of a classic gangster film: sex, violence, nightclubs, and backroom deals gone very awry. <a href=" http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/reviews/review-viva-riva-is-sweaty-sexy-and-dangerous.php">Robert Levin of Film School Rejects</a> remarks, "<em>Viva Riva!</em> is, however, resolutely a genre picture, one that offers a distinctly African slant on the tropes of blaxploitation and the spaghetti western. If youâre in search of earnest social commentary about life in the DRC you wonât find it here. If youâre after sleek, fast-paced entertainment set against a volatile world youâve never seen before, you canât do better." </p>
<em>Queen of the Sun</em> is a documentary for our times about a still-mysterious environmental issue with potentially catastrophic consequences. In a phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder, bees are vanishing from their hives, never to return. Director Taggart Siegel attempts to get to the bottom of this issue in this documentary by interviewing organic farmers; the film's focus on the biodynamic and organic communities, in fact, is unique among bee films (that's a genre!?). Critics are hailing the film as vibrant and educational, with <a href="http://blog.oregonlive.com/madaboutmovies/2010/09/review_queen_of_the_sun_shines.html">the Portland Oregonian's Shawn Levy</a> writing "The message here is vital... and Siegel retains the gift of making you dream of making a difference."
<p>Eric Rohmer's 1986 film, <em>Le Rayon Vert</em>, revels in seasonal wanderlust through protagonist Delphine. Fresh out of a failed relationship and ditched by her best girlfriend, Delphine spends her summer traipsing around France, trying to find her place both socially and geographically, all the while chased by a feeling of restless dissatisfaction. A whimsical yet thoughtful romantic drama, <em>Le Rayon Vert </em>will be playing at BAM Rose Cinemas through June 15th. <a href="http://www.bam.org/view.aspx?pid=3305">Andrew Sarris of the Village Voice</a> wrote in 1986, the year of its release: âNo other film of the year has struck me with the force of Rohmerâs ultimate masterwork. No film that I can recall in years has provided such a profound insight into the human conditionâ¦a singularly ennobling experience in the history of cinema.â</p>
<p>Uruphong Raksasad's <em>Agrarian Utopia</em> dramatizes the struggle of two families to subsist in the farmlands of Northern Thailand while massive social, economic and political changes erupt around them, often with utopian goals. Reviewers say it successfully juggles documentary and dramatic goals and never settles for easy answers. Writes <a href="http://www.metacritic.com/movie/agrarian-utopia">Keith Uhlich in Time Out New York</a>, "This fascinatingly knotty movie never becomes a facile screed against the powers that be. Instead, it plays as a more relaxed and leisurely requiem for a slowly vanishing way of life, with sounds and imagesâa time-lapse contemplation of the cosmos is in the running for scene of the yearâthat are as mesmerizing as they are subtly pointed."</p>
<p>Set in the 1950s, three young Dutch women are emigrating from Holland to New Zealand to meet their future husbands when they have a chance encounter with young farmer Frank, who is also relocating. Frank makes a significant impact on each woman's life, though they aren't aware of the congruences until fifty years after their arrival in New Zealand. The 2008 film, which sees its stateside opening this weekend, harps on all the drama of romance, womanhood, and marriage. In a review that leaves us curious still, <a href="http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/06/10/movies/bride-flight-and-the-last-great-air-race-review.html">Stephen Holden at the New York Times writes</a>, "<em>Bride Flight </em>is a nice, well-behaved period piece that looks pretty and smells fresh and sweet when brought home from the cinematic laundry. On closer inspection, however, it is riddled with spots and stains and even a few holes."</p>
<p>Following on the heels (or <a href="http://elephant.elehost.com/About_Elephants/Anatomy/The_Feet/the_feet.html">pachydermal tiptoes</a>) of the movie adaptation of <em>Water for Elephants</em>, Lisa Leeman's documentary <em>One Lucky Elephant</em> tells quite a different storyâthe saga of circus producer David Balding and his beloved elephant performer Flora, who embark on a nine-year journey to find Flora a good retirement home. The film's most striking quality, apparently, is its thoughtful and ambiguous explorations of the relationships that form between humans and "tame" animals. "Unlike recent activist documentaries about animal cruelty like 'The Cove' Leeman's narrative doesn't feature any real villains," writes <a href="http://www.indiewire.com/article/review_one_lucky_elephant_avoids_nature_movie_cliches/">IndieWIRE's Eric Kohn</a>. "Balding's bond with Flora leaves him in a perpetual state of uncertainty about which possible new home for his elephant would provide the safest habitat."</p>
<p>When your first name is the same as your last name, you've got to have a sense of humor. Ahmed Ahmed has succeeded on that front, appearing on comedic shows such as <em>Executive Decision,</em> MTV's <em>Punk'd</em>, and <em>Swingers</em>, as well as CNN, <em>The View</em>, and National Public Radio, all with the message of social justice and interfaith understanding. Comedy is his vehicle, and <em>Just Like Us</em>, his directorial debut, explores this as he does his stand-up routine for sold-out crowds in Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Dubai. The concept is admirable, but his filmmaking craft perhaps needs work, at least in the opinion of <a href="http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-movie-review-just-like-us,0,7456658.story">The LA Times's Gary Goldstein</a>: "Despite its brief running time, the film feels padded by sightseeing footage and a warm but diversionary visit between Ahmed and his Cairo-area relatives. Still, Just Like Us proves an amusing, uniquely unifying effort." </p>
<p>This month (June 10 - July 3), the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens is doing <a href="http://www.movingimage.us/films/2011/06/10/detail/the-cinema-of-jerzy-skolimowski/">a retrospective on the films of Jerzy Skolimowski</a>, the great but sometimes underappreciated Polish filmmaker. Some of the most essential viewing here, <a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/2011-06-08/film/jerzy-skolimowski-s-output-as-essential-viewing/">particularly in the opinion of the <em>Village Voice</em></a>, is <em>Deep End</em> (1970, showing tomorrow and Sunday), a product of Skolimowski's expatriate body of work (he was offered a way out of Poland after portraying Stalin subversively in one of his films). It's the chronicle of the lust and romance of a virginal teenage boy and a somewhat older woman who work at a pool and bath house in the sleaze of London around that time. His recent work, including <em>Four Nights With Anna</em> (showing July 2nd and 3rd) and <em>Essential Killing</em> (showing tonight and tomorrow), shows that he hasn't lost his luster, although, writes Nick Pinkerton, "As the obvious excellence of 73-year-old Skolimowskiâs body of work becomes increasingly visible, one fears for his peaceful retirement."</p>
<p>This week in throwback cinema, David Lynch's first feature-length film <em>Eraserhead </em> will be shown at<a href="http://www.google.com/movies?hl=en&near=New+York,+NY&dq=eraserhead&tid=3f90f3ac27b07947&sa=X&ei=Sl7yTZ7XBdCSgQeVpLm4Cw&ved=0CCgQwwMoAA"> IFC Midnight</a>. One of Lynch's most bare-bones projects (which, incidentally, took six years to make), and yet also one of his strangest, <em>Eraserhead</em> was originally released in 1977 and put Lynch on the map as one the most avant-garde filmmakers in the States, if not the world. </p>
<p>Ridley Scott's <em>Alien </em> returns to the silver screen at <a href="http://www.landmarktheatres.com/Market/NewYork/NewYork_frameset.htm">Landmark Sunshine Midnight series</a> this weekend, so prepare to be thoroughly grossed out and horrified by the things-from-outer-space, while simultaneously titillated by Sigourney Weaver's iconic performance. </p>