2/8
Amreeka (USA/Canada;
2009; d. Cherien Dabis)
Amreeka is
an award-winning drama by first-time director, Cherien Dabis. The film follows
a Palestinian woman and her teenage son who win a green card lottery and move
to the US. After settling in a Chicago suburb, she struggles to find a job and
eventually must go to work at a White Castle fast food restaurant. There she
struggles to adjust to life in “Amreeka,” to cope with anti-Arab
prejudice, and to take pride in the work that she performs. Stephen Holden of
The New York Times argues that Amreeka is “one of the
most accomplished recent films about a non-European immigrant coming to the
United States,” and Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times applauds
Dabis for creating “a heartwarming film, not a political dirge.”
(PG-13; 96 min.)
2/15
Soul
Power (USA; 2008; d. Jeffrey Levy-Hinte)
Jeffrey
Levy-Hinte directs this documentary about the music festival that preceded the
legendary “Rumble in the Jungle” boxing match between Muhammad Ali
and George Foreman in Zaire in 1974. Levy-Hinte worked as a producer on When
We Were Kings, the award-winning documentary film that chronicled that
bout, and has distilled this film—part musical chronicle, part historical
narrative—from over
120 hours of contemporary footage of the festival, including performances by
James Brown, Celia Cruz, the Spinners, Miriam Makeba, and B. B. King, among
many others. Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post calls the film “an
unusually resonant time capsule, one that weaves together theatrics, musicianship,
cosmopolitanism and sharp political critique in a vibrant look back that's at
once celebratory and wistful.” In The New York Times,
A.O. Scott agrees: "Soul Power, as aptly and succinctly titled
a movie as I have ever seen, takes you to a place where the discipline that
produces great popular art is indistinguishable from the ecstasy that art creates.”
(PG-13; 93 min.)
2/22
Treeless Mountain (USA/South
Korea; 2008; d. So Yong Kim)
Korea’s
growing reputation for innovation in cinema is vindicated by this beautiful
film of the way the world appears to two young sisters who are shunted off to
family members as their mother searches for their father. Treeless Mountain
abandons the neat structure of narrative in order to bring childhood emotions
of love, fear, and yearning to the surface for viewers to feel and remember
for themselves. Bruce Eder (TV Guide) calls this film “a lyrical
and seductive look at childhood resiliency . . . thoroughly engrossing from
the opening frame to the end credits.”
(NR; 89 min.)
3/1
Broken Embraces/Los abrazos rotos
(Spain; 2009; d. Pedro Almodovar)
Renowned Spanish auteur Pedro Almódovar (All About My Mother,
Talk to Her) and Penélope Cruz join forces for a fourth time
in this clever film that intertwines elements of intrigue, difficult love, and
the movie business in a manner reminiscent of Francois Truffaut’s 1973
masterpiece, Day for Night. The plot centers on the memories of Mateo
Blanco (Lluís Homar), a filmmaker who has not directed a film since being
blinded in a car accident sixteen years earlier. He recalls his relationship
with Lena (Cruz), the star of his last film, but also his producer’s wife,
and the wide-ranging repercussions this affair had on his life and his art.
David Edelstein of New York Magazine calls the film “a lush,
deeply romantic noir . . . utterly irrestible.”
(R; 127 min.)
3/15
Bright Star (UK//Australia/France;
2009; d. Jane Campion)
Jane
Campion’s latest film is a retelling of the love affair between poet John
Keats and his next door neighbor Fanny Brawne. The affair began with Brawne’s
request that Keats teach her poetry. Soon the lessons to turn to love and love
turns to that sort of obsessive tumult so central to Romanticism. Critics celebrate
the film as Campion’s best work since The Piano. Roger Ebert,
of The Chicago Sun-Times, observes that “what Campion does is
seek visual beauty to match Keats’ verbal beauty. Peter Travers of Rolling
Stone calls it “a literate, lyrical love story in the age of Hollywood
crass. I must be dreaming.”
(PG;
119 min.)
3/22
The Cove (USA; 2009; d. Louie
Psihoyos)
The Cove is
a multi-award winning documentary about the annual killing of dolphins in a
Japanese national park. The film was directed by former National Geographic
photographer and founder of the Oceanic Preservation Society, Louie Psihoyos,
who has noted that despite the film’s subject matter, it is not a graphic
film and in fact features only a few scenes of violence. Kenneth Turan of The
Los Angeles Times calls The Cove “a powerful and effective
piece of advocacy filmmaking.” Variety’s Justin Chang describes
it as “simultaneously a love letter to a beloved species, an eye-opening
primer on worldwide dolphin captivity, a playful paranoid thriller and a work
of deep-seated moral outrage.”
(PG;
92 min.)
3/29
Coco Before Chanel/Coco avant
Chanel (France; 2009; d. Anne Fontaine)
Audrey Tautou of Amélie fame takes on a decidedly different
role in this biographical film about the early life of famed designer Gabrielle
“Coco” Chanel. Orphaned and working both as a seamstress and in
a dingy cabaret as a singer, Gabrielle (Tautou) finds herself excluded from
most paths for social advancement. To escape this life, she becomes the mistress
of a wealthy patron who gives her material comfort, but little in the way of
fulfillment, the possibilities of which she begins to explore through unconventional
opportunities to express the creative impulses that eventually led her to the
top of the fashion world. Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal
writes that “it's a special pleasure to watch this vibrant Coco taking
in the world around her and turning it to her use, in her fashion.”
(PG-13; 105 min.)
4/12
The Bad Lieutenant: Port of
Call--New Orleans (USA;
2009; d. Werner Herzog)
Two
unconventional icons of contemporary film – director Werner Herzog (Fitzcarraldo)
and actor Nicolas Cage (Raising Arizona)--pair up for the first time
in this surrealistic and grimly funny remake of Abel Ferrara’s 1992 film
about Terrence McDonagh, a homicide cop working homicide cases on one of the
country’s roughest beats. McDonagh becomes addicted to painkillers after
an injury and gradually descends into both physical and moral corruption as
he becomes more desperate to feed his habit. Mike Scott of The New Orleans
Times-Picayune calls it a “deliriously watchable and darkly comic
portrait of a high-velocity death spiral” and Marjorie Baumgarten of The
Austin Chronicle raves that she “had more fun watching it than I
did at any other movie this year.”
(R; 122 min.)
4/19
The Maid/La Nana (Chile/Mexica;
2009; d. Sebastián Silva)
The Maid is a 2009 multi-award winning Spanish dramedy. Actress
Catalina Saavedra is remarkable in her role as Raquel, a middle-aged maid who
has worked for the same family for more than twenty years. When Raquel begins
to suffer dizzy spells due to exhaustion, the family tries to help by hiring
additional maids to assist her. Instead of appreciating the gesture, Raquel
feels threatened and goes to bizarre lengths to drive away what she sees as
her competition. Mick LaSalle of The San Francisco Chronicle writes:
“The Maid would have been worthwhile just as a showcase both
for good acting and for the director's virtuosity. But the movie's ultimate
virtue is its humanity.”
(NR; 95 min.)
4/26
Sita Sings the Blues (USA;
2008; d. Nina Paley)
What is left to say about the pain and madness of love coming to an end?
Plenty, if Sita Sings the Blues is any indication. But you need to
have eye-catching animation, a soundtrack of classic jazz sung by the great
Annette Hanshaw, and a sensitive exploration of Sita’s heartbreak in her
relationship with the god Rama that sheds light on the plain old human tale
of estrangement in the form of director Nina Paley’s separation from her
husband. All the reviews for this film are raves. A.O. Scott of The New
York Times calls it “affecting, surprising and a lot of fun,”
while the Chicago Reader’s J.R. Jones calls it “mesmerizing,
captivating, [and] spellingbinding…”
(NR; 82 min.)
Cinema 10 is a non-profit, volunteer group which presents alternative film programming. We work to bring the best in American independent and foreign films to North Country audiences. If you have a suggestion or would like to get involved, please e-mail Holly Chambers. The Cinema 10 Board members are Fran Bailey, Ramachandran Bharath, Holly Chambers, Ed Clark, Milner Grimsled, Viki Levitt, J. Dolores Martin, Derek Maus, Hilary Oak, Celine Philibert, Chris Robinson, Erik Schulz, Donna Smith-Raymond, David Sommerstein, and Jean Thompson.
Cinema 10 is made possible with public funds from
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