Providence Phoenix - Movies http://www.providencephoenix.com/ http://www.providencephoenix.com/images/rss_prov.gif Providence Phoenix http://www.providencephoenix.com/ en-us Copyright 2005 The Providence Phoenix ’Pokes peek /movies/top/documents/05196016.asp Movies
’Pokes peek
Heath Ledger scales Brokeback Mountain

"Controversy" sells tickets, as long as it’s not controversial. Such hot-button films as the recent Syriana and the upcoming Munich purport to take on tough issues but in fact merely tart up generic fare with innocuous pretenses. Brokeback Mountain, the "gay cowboy movie," has built up a saucy reputation, moving the suddenly prim Madonna to declare it "shocking." But by the time viewers realize that it has less sex than the average PG-13 movie about heterosexual love, they’ll be drawn to it as a tearjerker. Credit a consummate performance by Heath Ledger and limpid, unmanipulative direction by Ang Lee for the year’s most affecting romantic movie.

Figuring, no doubt correctly, that more people will identify with loss than with gay lust, Lee gets the icky parts over quickly. Not only is it the love that dare not speak its name, it doesn’t speak at all. The film’s opening five minutes present a wordless mating dance as cocky kid Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) and a worried-looking Enn

]]> BY PETER KEOUGH January 6 - 12, 2005 The quare fellow /movies/other_stories/documents/05195544.asp Movies
The quare fellow
Neil Jordan cooks up a zesty Breakfast on Pluto

Although based on the Patrick McCabe novel (he also co-wrote the screenplay), Breakfast on Pluto serves up ingredients from almost every other Neil Jordan film. Start with the theme of hopeless love common to them all, add elements of the IRA from Angel and The Crying Game, mix in the latter film’s gender bending, fold in the search for the lost mother from The Miracle, garnish with the exploding window from The End of the Affair, and top with generous helpings of ham. The finished product might be overdone and in bad taste, but like the best of Jordan’s work, it does satisfy.

The ham comes courtesy of Cillian Murphy as cross-dressing Candide Patrick " Kitten " Braden. It will take time to get her voice out of your mind — it hovers somewhere between Ben Stiller imitating Marilyn Monroe in Zoolander and the Lucky Charms Leprechaun — as she spins the fairy-tale version of the story of her life. Born at a bad time in a bad place — the town of Tyreeli

]]> BY PETER KEOUGH January 6 - 12, 2006 Politics as usual? /movies/other_stories/documents/05188645.asp Movies
Politics as usual?
Or will Hollywood cover the issues in 2006?

Conspiracy, corruption, catastrophe — politics and world events sure can be exciting. Even the mainstream news is taking an interest. All the same, it’s lagged well behind the movie industry, which last year addressed drug cartels (The Constant Gardener), the arms industry (Lord of War), the First Amendment (Good Night, and Good Luck), the oil corporations (Syriana), and the war on terror (Munich). Admirable but perhaps not prudent. Hollywood’s focus on real-life problems might explain one of the biggest box-office dips in ages. Daunted by this downturn, will filmmakers turn away from relevant subjects and return to tried and true sequels, remakes, and out-and-out fluff? Or will they persist in their brave path, at least until the pre-Oscar limbo is over?

JANUARY

The worst-case scenario — politically speaking — is the Third Reich. Dennis Gansel’s Napola — Elite Für Den Führer | Before the Fall (January 6; all dates,

]]> BY PETER KEOUGH December 30, 2005 - January 5, 2006 Walking the indie line /movies/other_stories/documents/05175737.asp Movies
Walking the indie line
The ten best films of 2005

Star Wars and Batman and Harry Potter and Narnia and King Kong may have made the big bucks in 2005, but for the most part it was indie and low-budget films that made the biggest impression. Here’s my Top 10:

1 LAST DAYS | In Gus Van Sant’s transcendent film, a death watch over a musician much like Kurt Cobain, Michael Pitt’s Blake is a ghost in his own house. Although the place might be inescapable, the time spent there is fluid. Van Sant cuts up the narrative and pastes it together with repetitions, sometimes from different points of view. Like the camera always drawn back to the house of doom, the editing returns to some moment of truth. The shotgun to the head? Don’t be so sure. Near the end, Blake sings: "It’s long, lonely journey from death to birth." Viewers will agree, and some will find it worth the trip.

2 Movies

Giving good offense
What type of girl is Sarah Silverman?

Sometimes Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic isn’t as funny as it is fascinating — and confusing. Who is that girl up there? You could say she’s a slut ingénue, but, "blue" as she is, Silverman doesn’t really play slutty. As she’s the first to tell you. One of her older jokes in Jesus Is Magic goes: "I was licking jelly off of my boyfriend’s penis, and all of a sudden I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God! I’m turning into my mother!’ "

There’s an emblematic slice of the Silverman persona, the casual, in medias res set-up, the matter-of-fact revelation of sexual kinkiness, and then the reversal: the nice Jewish girl out shopping at Lohmann’s with her mother meets Jenna Jameson. All delivered with sweet-faced bewilderment. The mother joke meets the blow-job joke. What could make kink more square, the liberation of naughty behavior more deflating? You’re cutting loose with the jelly and Jimmy’s boner and you realize you’re wearing a mom mask.

Silverman has been everywhere in the

]]> BY JON GARELICK December 23 - 29, 2005 Avner’s list /movies/other_stories/documents/05160231.asp Movies
Avner’s list
Spielberg takes on terror and revenge in Munich

What is it with Steven Spielberg and flashbacks? In Saving Private Ryan, an ancient soldier recalls Omaha Beach in grisly detail; the problem is, he wasn’t there. In Munich, the kidnapping and massacre of 11 Israeli athletes by Black September during the 1972 Olympics unfolds with harrowing precision in the recurring nightmares of someone who saw it only on TV. A remarkable accomplishment, since none of the victims survived and the actual events took time and painstaking analysis to unravel. Whatever their value as a cinematic device, such flashbacks don’t inspire much confidence in historical accuracy or psychological insight.

Of course, their purpose is not to illuminate but to manipulate, to reduce the irresolvable issues surrounding a horrible truth into a comforting platitude. A buzz word like " home, " which is repeated in Munich with the relentlessness of a mantra or an interrogation. Home is where Avner (Eric Bana), a marginal Mossad agent, sees the broadcast

]]> BY PETER KEOUGH December 23 - 30, 2005 Gorilla filmmaking /movies/other_stories/documents/05160213.asp Movies
Gorilla filmmaking
Jackson’s King Kong needs to cut down

Peter Jackson’s King Kong sports a pot belly, and it’s not a good look. His film carries extra baggage, too, nearly an hour and half’s worth. Some of the padding pays off: the giant bugs (similar to a scene cut from the original because it was too intense); the skating in the park. But the subplots involving little Jimmy of the steamer crew reading Heart of Darkness (even Coppola couldn’t pull that off) and the ambitions of Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody) to become another Clifford Odets only slow things down. Audiences today, just like those in 1933, pay to see a spectacle, and that’s where King Kong most disappoints.

Surely the state of special-effects art now can blow off the screen anything made just five years into the Sound Era? Yes and no. The two triumphant genres of the ’30s were musicals and horror films, and as with the stained glass of Chartres, the secret to making them is lost. Or maybe rejected. Compare Chicago with Top Hat, or King Kong with K

]]> BY PETER KEOUGH December 16 - 22, 2005 GLORY ROAD /movies/trailers/documents/05199703.asp Trailers ]]> BY TOM MEEK January 13 - 19, 2006 GRANDMA’S BOY /movies/trailers/documents/05199699.asp Trailers ]]> BY CHRIS WANGLER January 13 - 19, 2006 HOODWINKED /movies/trailers/documents/05199701.asp Trailers ]]> BY BROOKE HOLGERSON January 13 - 19, 2006 LAST HOLIDAY /movies/trailers/documents/05199700.asp Trailers ]]> BY TOM MEEK January 13 - 19, 2006 TRISTAN & ISOLDE /movies/trailers/documents/05199702.asp Trailers ]]> BY JEFFREY GANTZ January 13 - 19, 2006 THE CONSTANT GARDENER /movies/video_clips/documents/05203067.asp Video Clips ]]> January 13 - 19, 2006 RED EYE /movies/video_clips/documents/05203061.asp Video Clips
RED EYE
DreamWorks
]]> January 13 - 19, 2006 SARABAND /movies/video_clips/documents/05203055.asp Video Clips
SARABAND
Sony
]]> January 13 - 19, 2006 TRANSPORTER 2 /movies/video_clips/documents/05203049.asp Video Clips ]]> January 13 - 19, 2006 Our town /movies/tripping/documents/05198858.asp Worth the Trip
Our town
‘Architects on Film’ at the MFA

After living through decades of Big Dig construction and disruption, the average Bostonian has developed a keener design knowledge and sensitivity. Today, with the Central Artery moving toward the finish line and a number of prominent architectural projects recently completed, in progress, or in the works, we’ve become more informed citizens of the architectural conversation, and in some cases the debate. The Museum of Fine Arts is expanding, the Institute of Contemporary Art is moving to new quarters, and a Museum of the City of Boston has been proposed. Institutional projects at universities and hospitals have added to this building boom.

Will these projects be appropriate or disharmonious? Will they be physically contentious or heroic or just visually insignificant? Will there be design delight or edifice envy? With new forms being added to old and new architecture, is Boston in danger of losing its physical essence? This essence can be described as a sense of history, a sense of human scale, and

]]> BY MARK FAVERMANN January 13 - 19, 2006