Notable Movies Seen in 2006

Notable Movies Seen in 2006. by Eva. Order is not significant.

· Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus, with Nicole Kidman and Robert Downey Jr. Dir Steven Shainberg was present at the Harvard Film Archive. The film is bookended by Arbus’s visit to a nudist colony in 1958, camera in hand, but the heart of the movie covers the director’s concept of how Diane had emerged from her cocoon as an artist over the previous 3 months. Diane’s father was a furrier. Furs are sensuous, beautiful, and grotesque. Shainberg imagines Diane’s first freak (her word) to be her upstairs neighbor who had an incurable hirsute condition. Ty Burrell as Allan Arbus is perfect. (I’m re-viewing Patricia Bosworth’s biography of D.A.). Jane Alexander plays Mrs. Nemerov.

· A Touch of Spice directed by Tassos Boulmetis. Very good on childhood memories. Opens in 1959 in Constantinople/Istanbul. We meet the Greek community there through young Fanis’s extended family, especially at meals. His grandfather owns a spice shop. In 1961 Greek citizens were expelled from Turkey. Unwritten codicil: If the head of household converted to Islam, maybe not. Fanis becomes a professor of astromomy with a cooking avocation. As an adult Fanis goes back to Istanbul. There’s a bitter sweet poignant meeting with his childhood sweetheart.

· The World’s Fastest Indian Dir. Roger Donaldson, w/ Anthony Hopkins. Loosely based on the true story of New Zealander Burt Munro, a charming retiree who, in 1967, traveled to Bonneville Flats for “Speed Week” in hopes of setting the world’s land-speed record with the title motorcycle. I would only excise one line from the movie, spoken by a woman in a bathrobe after Burt was taken away in an ambulance. I like to see someone really absorbed in his hobby.

· Moolade (2004) director Ousmane Sembene was pushing 80 when he made this drama about a woman who rose up against the practice of female genital mutilation. Despite that central drama the viewer can enjoy the rhythms of ordinary life in that African village. The screening I attended at the Harvard Film archive was preceded by a documentary film, The Making of Moolade. The director of that film, Samba Gadjigo, was present for a Q&A. Gadijo’s biography of Sembene is coming out next year. Moolade is set in Senegal, but the filming location was Burkina Faso, or maybe Cameroon?? 17 countries have communities which practice genital mutilation. Some governments are more proactive than others in curbing the practice. The professional actresses in Moolade are Fatounata Coulibaly, Maimouna Helene Diarra, and Salimata Traore Bambara. In one scene the men make a bonfire of the women’s radios. The women heard on the radio that female genital mutilation is not a tenet of Islam. This movie challenges Patrick’s dictum that “Tradition is a very good reason for doing a thing.” This movie was about the courage it takes to effect social change.

· Sisters-in-Law Directors Kim Loginotto and Florence Ayisi. Documentary about family court in Cameroon. To quote The Phoenix, “Those annoyed by red tape and stirred by Judge Judy will appreciate Vera Ngassa and Beatrice Ntuba, who shoot down patriarchal and other nonsense of those brought before them with common sense and good humor. ”

· Forgiving Dr. Mengele Directors Bob Hercules and Cheri Pugh. Hercules was present at the screening at the Coolidge Corner Cinema. This is a documentary about Eva Kor, who now lives in Terre Haute, Indiana. As children she and her twin sister Miriam were victims of Dr. Mengele’s experiments. Some audience members felt that, while otherwise unselfish (For Pete’s sake, she donated a kidney to her sister, she’s a mother, and she bears witness to the Holocaust tirelessly even in her old age), Eva was selfish in forgiving Dr. Mengele. “It’s all about making her feel better.” Her position is she found relief, after years of mental suffering, in forgiveness, and is sharing (at no small cost to herself) that in hopes that others can find similar relief. She took more flak for inviting Dr. Munch (Mengele staff member not convicted at Nurenberg. He suffers from chronic depression.) to the 40^th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, where of course he was a pariah, but he did publicly sign a document that he had seen Zyklon-B used to gas people.

· The Ritchie Boys Dir. Christian Bauer (an Austrian). Documentary about the immigrant Americans who were trained in Army Intelligence at Camp Ritchie in Maryland in WW II. These old guys are going to be dead soon, so it’s great their reminiscences are captured on film. Having just escaped from Europe, many were eager to fight Hitler, but were at first rejected as enemy aliens. Later the Army realized they were an asset, knowing the language and psychology of the enemy. They had great stories. I also enjoyed the epilogue that scrolled by at the end about what each did with the rest of his life. Vintage footage and old still shots are utilized. I loved seeing how they looked when they were young.

· So Much So Fast. Directors Steven Ascher and Jeanne Jordan. The latter was present at the screening at the Somerville Cinema. A documentary about Steven Heywood, who was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) when he was in his late 20’s. Steven’s mother had seen and loved Troublesome Creek, a documentary by this same team. To help her family decide whether to let this documentary be made, she had them all sit down and watch T.C. together. Steven’s brother Jaime has focused his life on finding a cure for ALS fast. His talents are in organizing, managing, publicity, and fund-raising. So I can see why Jaime accepted the film. Marriages, separations and births happen in the film. Steven’s response to the movie? “It’s funny.” So he liked it. The film does have humorous moments, believe it or not.

· The Heart of the Game A documentary about a girls high school basketball coach in Seattle. A rival coach-of-the-year was a secondary figure. Since the filmmakers could not know in advance—6 years before the dramatic finale—what a great story this would become, I’m amazed there was enough footage of those early years available.

· Akeelah and the Bee Written & directed by Doug Atchison, w/ Angela Bassett, Laurence Fishburne, & Keke Palmer. A drama about a spelling bee. What a pleasure to watch people behaving well. I loved Javier. Akeelah & Dylan performed a could-only-happen-in-a-movie counterpoint duet in the finale that was a tonic to watch. I like movies about teachers.

· Hineini: Coming Out in a Jewish High School (2005, 60 min) Dir. Irena Fayngold was present at the MFA. Wonderful documentary about a high school in Newton MA, from the perspective of this one issue. Personable teenager Shulamit Iyen wants to start a Gay-Straight Alliance at her private high school. If students want such a club the law supports their having one in State schools. Of course I’m picturing how Aquinas would have handled this. “New Jew” (as the school is affectionately known) prides itself on being pluralistic. After a lot of uproar in which 4 gay teachers came out, the club was allowed if it passively supported, but did not advocate, gay identity. An audience member asked what “pluralistic” meant in the context of this sectarian school. It means keeping 4 strands of Judaism (I’d previously only been aware of 3) accommodated and respectful of one another . The director acknowledged that there are issues of “Who is a Jew” etc. as well. We learned in the Q & A that Shulamit is at Brown now. She aspires to be a Rabbi.

· An Inconvenient Truth Al Gore makes the case for taking global warming seriously. I give him an A+.

· Little Miss Sunshine I went despite The Phoenix’s mere 2.5 stars, because Toni Collette was in it. I enjoyed it more than some movies The Phoenix rated ****. I liked this quirky family. The 8 year old wants to be in a beauty pageant, the teenage son is on a talking strike, the depressed uncle needs a suicide watch, and the grandfather has been kicked out of his nursing home. I laughed with them when they had to do group pushes of the van and then run to jump in.

· Wondrous Oblivion (U.K). Directed by Paul Morrison. Set in London in 1961. 12 year old David Wiseman is mad about Cricket but a poor player. A Jamaican family also keen on Cricket moves next door. David bonds with them. The movie is about coping with big-time prejudice and the little ups and downs of a marriage. There’s also a thread about a sexual attraction that has nowhere to go and does not go any further than a pass, a situation that often occurs in life but is usually below the radar of movies. This won the audience award, and rightly so, at the 2005 Jewish Film Festival.

· Quinceañera Dir Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, w/ Emily Rios and Jesse Garcia as teenage cousins who take refuge at their kindly uncle’s (Chalo Gonzalez). Set in the ethnically Mexican community of Echo Park, an area of L.A. undergoing gentrification. Generally speaking, with a few lapses, people behaved well in the face of large problems. It was refreshing that Magdalena spoke frankly and knew the score. Dialog was a strength throughout the movie.

· World Trade Center Dir. Oliver Stone, with Nicholas Cage and Michael Peña. G. K. selected this film during his annual visit, around the 9/11 anniversary. Only 20 people were dug out. This movie concentrates on two of them, while at the same time not ignoring the big picture. I had not known a 3^rd bldg collapsed. The families worrying about loved ones who did not come home that day are part of the movie. 2 thumbs up.

· United 93 Writer-director Paul Greenglass. This re-creation of 9/11, with a focus on the flight that crashed in a PA field, did not imagine much that I had not imagined already. But it’s good there’s a movie re-creation of how that day was seen by contemporaries of the event. A record of dissenting perceptions will be in the reviews of this movie, or in personal emails for future historians to dig up. I found the hand-held camera, which critics raved about, confusing. Of course those passengers probably saw things in a confusing jarring manner. Tidbits that were news to me: The co-pilot of flight 93 was black; 4200 planes were grounded on 9/11; One passenger was a single-engine pilot, another was a retired air-traffic controller. So when they stormed the hijackers these passengers had a hope in hell that they could land the plane; United 93 crashed at 10:03. At 10:18 the president gave permission to the military to shoot down rogue airplanes. This order was never conveyed to military pilots because of fear of misapplication.

· Brokeback Mountain Directed by Ang Lee, w/ Jake Gyllenhaal as Jack Twist and Heath Ledger as Ennis. Based on a short story by Annie Proulx first published in the NYer. An interlocutor said, “What’s wrong with two people loving each other?” Nothing, except in this case they were both parents of young children married to other people. Now they might never have gotten into that bind if society had accepted their love in the first place, but then again they might’ve. Plenty of heterosexuals do. The decline of both their marriages was very well done. It’s hard to see how Jack’s dream of living w/ Ennis in a little cabin could have come true if the little cabin was going to be on that poor ranch of his dour parents. Ennis would not give up a weekend with his girls for Jack, who’d driven 48 hours round trip, even though (or because) he’d given up the previous month’s shared-custody weekend for his job. Feelings & conflicts well dramatized.

· Transamerica Writer-director Duncan Tucker, with a terrific performance by Felicity Huffman as Bree, the transsexual parent of a 17 year old delinquent young man. Bree’s careful, educated proper speech and demeanor in combination with her low end jobs and “situation” are worth beholding, but a viewer can get the full flavor of that from the trailers alone.

· The Hand of God (2006, 96 min.) Directed by Joe Cultrera., who was present at the MFA screening. This is the best treatment I’ve seen of the priestly abuse scandal, and it’s going to be screened on PBS in January or February 2007. Bishop John McCormick, now of Manchester NH, but formerly in charge of personnel in the Archdiocese of Boston first denied he knowingly moved his repeatedly-accused-of-pedophilia classmate (St. John’s Seminary, ’60) Fr. John Birmingham from parish to parish, and later amended it to, “We didn’t know then how damaging that was to children.”

· Following Sean (2005, 90 min.) tells as much about the filmmaker’s life as about the lives of Sean and his parents. In 1969 Ralph Arlyck made a short film about his upstairs hippie neighbors in the Haight, a couple and their 4 year old son. Thirty yrs later Arlyck looked up these people and made this follow-up film, which incorporates the original short.

· 49 Up, Directed by Michael Apted. They’re Baaaack. And as interesting as ever. The previous films in the series are nicely re-capitulated. It’s fascinating to watch this cross-section of British 7 year olds grow well into adulthood.

· Evil Dir. Mikael Hafstrom. In Swedish with subtitles. Andreas Wilson as 16 yr old Erik Ponti. Revenge of the nerds at a boarding school in Sweden in the 1950’s. Drawn from a best-selling autobiography by Jan Guillou.