It almost seems unfair, at this point, to post a review of Dan Pritzker’s silent film Louis. It’s not that I haven’t seen the the film, I have, but I’m not positive that I’ve actually heard it. Featuring a flowing musical score penned by Jazz’s presiding dean, Wynton Marsalis, the film will be on tour through the last week of August with live accompaniment by Marsalis, pianist Cecile Licad and a ten-piece ensemble. If the phrase “concert film” has been claimed by documentarians, then the only other term I could think of for Louis is “event film”. Recounting a reverie of the early life of trumpet great Louis Armstrong, the film’s five live showings will be nothing short of a grand event.

Pritzker and writers Derick Martini, Steve Martini and David Rothschild came up with a gimmick film, a riff on a bygone era of cinema and music; the birth, as it were, of both. We are brought into early 20^th century New Orleans, a town with a hopping brothel, and evil magistrate, and streets teeming with competing horn blowers. The tale follows our young protagonist, Louis (Anthony Coleman), as he gets mixed up in the affairs of Grace (Shanti Lowry), a woman of the night looking to protect her newborn from the horrors of the world she has endured. Judge Perry (Jackie Earle Haley) rules the town by force, and once he learns he is the father of Grace’s baby, he sicks his goon Pat McMurphy (Michael Rooker) on her in hopes of shutting her up. That is, not if Louis has anything to say about it. Read on…

The legacy of Piranha lies in a tradition of good effects work, fun horror tricks as well as poor plot/storylines. And while the mixture of fun Joe Dante-cult series and smart Alexandre Aja horror sensibilities are a combination for smart intentions, this fare hits the “camp” quality too much on the mark.

There is so much delivery of sexualized pseudo-3D effects that the implicit analysis of male-scopophilia is not balanced enough to warrant a congrats for effective Hitchcock-ian application of technology and genre. While these elements were not strong enough to combat 3D exploitable elements, they are strong enough to summon a mention, as the message of the film should not go without notice. Read on…

Bruce Beresford’s Mao’s Last Dancer is a film that cannot decide what it wants to be. The story of a Chinese dancer who comes to Reagan’s America finding not only a passion for ballet but himself, it is one part anti-communist manifesto with doses of Asian fetishism, one part immigration caper, one part love story, one part alien comes to the suburbs adventure (think Mac and Me) and one part dance film. The trouble is that only one of these facets, the dance film, actually rises above the patina of Hollywood fit and finish that will make you want to walk out of this film. It’s not that Mr. Beresford made a terrible film, he simply made one that discounts the last twenty years worth of intellectual growth we have achieved both as filmgoers and international citizens. Read on…

If a mashup of Gossip Girl, Crash and Traffic doesn’t sound appealing to you, then you should probably skip Joel Schumacher’s disastrous Twelve. If that does sound right up your alley, then you’re beyond help so do whatever you want. In what appears to have been thrown together over a few weekends (it was actually shot in 23 days), the film follows White Mike (Chace Crawford) a straight-edge drug dealer who tailors to the Upper East Side’s teenage addicted denizens, over a fateful three day period in which everything changes for everyone, or some such nonsense. It’s a mess. Read on…

It is with grace, care and patience that Danish director Nicolo Donato brings Brotherhood (Broderskab) to life. A love story about homosexual neo-nazis, the plot is a fuse that others may not see the point in lighting. It may sound too high concept to work, but Donato has brought a surprisingly affecting story to life by developing rich emotional palettes for the film’s main players, avoiding moral proselytization.

Like many tales of unrequited love, this one gets off to a clunky start. At the outset we meet Lars (Thure Lindhardt), a son of privilege on course for a successful military career, is left unemployed after his underlings accuse him of making advances at them. In an only moderately believable turn of events, he happens upon a local chapter of white supremacists while drinking his worries away at a friend’s house. Initially disgusted by their beliefs, he is drawn to them, or rather pulled in for his eloquence and obvious curiosity. Kicked out of his house after beating a Muslim, Lars is forced to move into the summer home of the movement’s leader. There, he and Jimmy (David Dencik), a senior member of the organization, must fix the place up in its owners absence between party meetings, mosh pits and beachside burnings. They drink organic beer and red wine, work at a snail’s pace and go for dips in the lake when the mood strikes them. It is seemingly the plush life for these bigots. Read on…

Halfway through the summer our cinematic bloodlust has been sated: heroes worshiped, vampires sucked dry, minds thoroughly fucked. Now, at long last, the time has come to be tickled, and director Jay Roach delivers big with Dinner for Schmucks, undoubtedly the biggest laugh-fest of the season. The plot is weak and the resolution full of tired cornballery, but just as with his other franchises, Austin Powers and Meet the Parents, Roach shows off his uncany ability to craft taut comic setpieces, each more involved and convoluted than the next.

Paul Rudd plays Tim Conrad, a “stock broker, or something” looking to rise to the heighst of the seventh floor by reeling in $100 million Swedish client. The only thing between Tim and a juicy promotion is an idiot for a monthly dinner held by his boss, in which a cabal of douchebags gathers to make fun of the dumbest guest. To appease his kindhearted girlfriend (Stephanie Szostak), Tim turns the dinner down until he (literally) runs into Barry Speck, a lovable doofus played by Steve Carell. An amateur taxidermist who fits deceased rodents into his “mouseterpieces”, Barry turns out to be the perfect person to get Tim’s foot in the door. As he has done consistently ever since his smash success with 40-Year Old Virgin, Carell shines. Though Barry shares a number of ticks and mannerisms with The Office’s Michael Scott, there is no question that he is a wholly original take on the empathetic schlemiel. Read on…

Shortly after I saw Aaron Schneider’s 1930s period piece Get Low at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, I coyly tweeted the following summation of the film: Boo Radley speaks. That character was the first role Robert Duvall ever had in Robert Mulligan’s adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird. In the years since, he has enjoyed an illustrious career at the crest of nearly every creative wave that has swept over tinsel town. In Mr. Schneider’s film he plays Felix Bush, a Tennesse recluse as enigmatic as Harper Lee’s Radley looking to reintegrate with the town surrounding him before his last days. The trouble is, the more I play the film over in my head, the more I understand why Boo Radley is allowed only a single line of dialogue instead of his own book: the allure behind society’s outliers is in the mystery surrounding their status, rarely in the unfurling of that tale. Read on…

“What’s the experiment?” is a simple question I find myself asking constantly when I see experimental cinema. The moniker “experimental” has become tainted, misused, destroyed as of late. Most festivals around the world now feature a section for experimental films, usually shorts, but their definition is cloudy at best, and when it comes down to it, they are generally populated with films that simply won’t fit anywhere else. Which is why we have a responsibility to constantly, vigorously demand an answer to the simple question: “What’s the experiment?” With the films of Stan Brakhage, you never have to ask, but that doesn’t mean the answer is any clearer.

After a modicum of success with the comprehensive, albeit disjointed, two disc set of Brakhage’s works in 2003, Criterion is back with a second helping of the avant-garde pioneer’s films with By Brakhage: An Anthology, Volume 2. The set is not only a brilliantly curated look at the career of a prolific filmmaker, but it is also a major milestone for the Criterion Collection itself. It is almost inherent in the nature of experimental cinema that it not be released on home video. More often than not, the experiment is finite, contained within a movie house or screening room, a public space or gallery. That is why the first volume of the series was so jarring to viewers: it was a pile of films where the new set is carefully prepared, divided into 90 minute sessions. One of the major barriers to home viewing has been obliterated by the team behind this disc, which includes Brakhage’s wife, Marilyn, as well as film historian Fred Camper. Read on…