stuff white people like: denver premieres for 1/2/09

They're all smiles now, but if she ends up spilling that drink, he will totally beat her when they get home. Totally.

Revolutionary Road- Based on Richard Yates' 1961 novel of anomie, infidelity, and murder (!) in the land of the split-level, two-car garage, "where everyone drinks and smokes too much - even pregnant women," Sam Mendes' (American Beauty, Jarhead) latest grim offering was, to read the NY Times tell it, largely the product of star (and Mendes' wife) Kate Winslet's lobbying on behalf of Justin Haythe's script. While it's also the first time since Titanic Winslet has co-starred with Leo DiCaprio, Revolutionary Road's subject matter - watching a pair of young married's hopes stagnate and die - is hardly the stuff of Celine Deion songs (though who knows - a lot of years have passed and we're all a little older now...). Mendes has made a reputation as a guy who takes on smart, literate projects about people having to deal with difficult choices; but unlike, say, Todd Field's stuff, where the consequences of his characters' privilege or their actions are thick and tangible, Mendes' films never seem to be very deeply felt, almost as though they're taking place in a vacuum.

I’ve Loved You So Long – All the praise that this film garners, seems to be going to Kristin Scott Thomas for her performance. She plays a character named Juliette who, at the beginning of the film, moves in to her younger sister’s house. The younger sister, Lea, lives with her husband Luc and from the first moments of Juliette’s arrival, all three characters exhibit signs of tension with each other. From what I have read, I’ve Loved you So Long is a film that doles out key pieces of information about Juliette’s past over the course of its running time, giving the viewer a widening scope of the dynamics at play between the characters. The film is directed by the novelist and first time director, Philippe Claudel and co-stars Elsa Zylberstein and Serge Hazanavicius.

Happy-Go-Lucky- Mike Leigh (Secrets and Lies, Naked, Career Girls), a director who has in the past been mistaken for a "miserable-ist", decides to turn that frown upside down with his latest offering, Happy-Go-Lucky. In it Sally Hawkins plays a character named Poppy (of course!) who travels through the world with an unyielding sense of optimism. Instead of following the model of Voltaire’s Candide in which the main character’s nature is ridiculed, Mike Leigh decides to run the character through her paces in situations that earnestly beg the question, “What is it that makes a person sincerely happy?” Because of the attention that Sally Hawkins' performance is receiving in the year end polls and for the fact that she will be a shoe-in for an Oscar nomination in the category of "Best Actress in a Leading Role", Starz FilmCenter is bringing back Happy-Go-Lucky for one week (January 2 – 8) for those of us who missed it in its theatrical run a couple of months ago.

Shoot the Piano Player- Francois Truffaut’s second film Shoot the Piano Player is considered the least of his first three masterpieces, but that is only because the other two films are the venerable classics The 400 Blows and Jules and Jim. Loosely based on the David Goodis book, Down There, Shoot the Piano Player is Truffaut’s tip-of-the-hat to the American crime films of the 40s and 50s. It centers on a down-on-his-luck classical pianist named Charlie Koller (Charles Aznavour) who pays his bills by playing piano at a corner dive bar. One night Charlie’s brother Chico, being chased by gangsters, comes into the bar and asks for help. Charlie helps Chico escape from the gangsters, but by doing so puts himself and two characters close to him in harms way. Shoot the Piano Player runs throughout the week (January 2-8) at the Starz FilmCenter and is showing in a brand new 35mm print provided by the good people at Janus Films.

nazis, get off my lawn! : denver premieres for xmas weekend

"Jeez - this Protocols of the Elders of Zion thing you gave me to read is totally whack! Can we have sex again now?"

Our man Pike Bishop isn't too happy with what Santa left under the tree this year:

Gran Torino- Clint Eastwood has been trying to apologize for the mythologized violence in film since his half-articulate oater Unforgiven in 1992. Note to Clint- No one asked for your apology. John Ford, John Sturges, Don Siegel, Robert Aldrich, Anthony Mann, Sam Peckinpah and even Sergio Leone did not ask for a third-rate actor turned middling director to throw out one cinematic mea-culpa after another in their name. So get over your “remorseful old codger” shtick and do something with a little thought behind it. There is a reason why there is still vitality in John Ford’s The Searchers or Anthony Mann’s The Naked Spur. There is also a reason why your films are as dry and decrepit as the characters that inhabit them. Figure out the difference and get back to us with something that shows that you earn the title of “Greatest Living American Director” bestowed upon you by your sycophantic admirers.

Valkyrie- Once again Tom Cruise must single-handedly save the world. After curing the 911 responders with high doses of niacin through his “New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project” and freeing the world from the dreaded, Nazi science of psychiatry, Tom Cruise has decided to travel back in time to fantasy-cast himself into the role of Claus von Stauffenberg, the man who tried to kill Hitler. If, unlike von Stauffenberg, Cruise succeeds in killing Hitler, it will be a ternary of great deeds that will leave no doubt to us mere mortals that he is our better and we must immediately give him the title of “King of the World.” With Tom Cruise’s star-turn in Valkyrie coming out on the heels of Will Smith’s Seven Pounds, the race for the coveted Time magazine honor of “Most Self-Serving Martyr of the Year” award has tightened.

The Reader- Why is it that people are so fascinated by Holocaust fiction with psycho-sexual elements? First there was the book "The House of Dolls," a purportedly true account of a Jewish girl’s experience in a Nazi labor camp’s 'Joy Division.' After that came the underground Israeli pornographic novels called 'Stalags' of the late fifties and early sixties, that went on to spawn the Nazi fetish look of films like Ilsa: She Wolf of the S.S. and Salon Kitty. The psycho-sexual Nazi element is also used as titillation in so-called 'Art Films' like The Night Porter, Schindler’s List, and Aimee & Jaguar. Now we have The Reader, a film based on Bernhard Schlink’s best-selling novel about a man named Michael, who must confront the fact that the older woman that ushered in his sexual development as a teen (and subsequent sexual desires), was a Nazi SS guard during the war. Ralph Feinnes plays the Grown-up Michael and Kate Winslet plays Hannah Schmitz, the ex-SS guard/cougar that gives young Michael lessons in love. The film is directed by Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot, The Hours) from a script written by the playwright, David Hare (The Hours and the forthcoming The Corrections). My only question with films like this is whether it is possible for the substance of a moral or ethical point to shine through the tarnish of a sexualized, fetishized Nazi mythos? Go see it and decide for yourself.

Bedtime Stories- Adam Sandler and the “House of the Mouse” team up to bring your kiddies a middle-brow beating. Sandler plays a hotel handyman who realizes that the bedtime stories he is telling to his niece and nephew are coming true in the real world. Add two parts sophomoric humor, one part meaningless love interest and one part pandering morality and you have the Sandler formula in kid-friendly form, ready to teach them a lesson in low expectations. I don’t think Mary Poppins would approve.

Marley and Me- Adapted from the best-selling autobiographical book by John Grogan, Marley & Me is about Grogan’s family and their dog Marley, a Golden Retriever who is a bad dog with a heart of gold. Twentieth Century Fox is sending out a little Christmas cheer aimed at the book’s legion of fans, but for the rest of us it will probably have all of the entertainment value of a years worth of Marmaduke panels shot at 24 frames per second. The film stars Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston and is directed by David Frankel (The Devil Wears Prada).

Lola Montes- This late period Max Ophuls film has been immaculately restored for theatrical presentation. It is about the life of a liberated adventuress as told in flashbacks from her current life as a circus performer. Shot in Cinemascope in lush, vibrant colors, Lola Montes just begs to be seen on the large screen. If you like films that are along the lines of Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes or Tales of Hoffman, then please go see this in the cinema. It will come out on Criterion DVD in the near future, but really this was meant to be seen in a format that is larger than life. Lola Montes is only playing for a week (December 25th through January 1st) at the Starz FilmCenter so please try to see it before it’s gone.

The Spirit - While Frank Miller's late period graphic work ("300," "Sin City") stripped the medium down to its most lascivious elements - the violence, the feminine form, and the pulp story lines - those books also had a kind of avant garde elegance, like a particularly brutal Asian calligraphy. His leap to film has not suffered these indulgences: his 2005 collaboration with Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez on Sin City was an absolute mess of gore and bad dialogue that Mickey Rourke's possessed performance or Brittany Murphy's come-hither look could not save. The Spirit, Miller's adaptation of comic great Will Eisner's wink-wink-noir-noir masked crime fighter, looks to be similarly deranged. It's one thing to play with or exploit the conventions of noir, neo-noir, and classic thrillers, but it's another thing entirely to wallow in their most superficial aspects - you get no extra points for Scarlett Johansson in a scoop-necked blouse. And what's with the green screen? Aren't there any cities where you can shoot a movie any place any more? (Dex)

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - It would be easy to take the low-road and blog all cynical and worldly-wise with David Fincher's new film: the adaptation of a minor F. Scott Fitzgerald story about a man who ages backwards looks to have all the trappings of the kind of Hollywood bloat that finds its way into theatres this time of year, what with uber-star Brad Pitt, the running time, and the mix of fictional melodrama against a backdrop of real-world events; it's even scripted by the guy who wrote Forrest-fucking-Gump. But Zodiac (2007), Fincher's last picture (a re-telling of a San Francisco newspaper cartoonist's obsession with the so-called Zodiac Killer) came as a complete surprise, and was chock-a-block with meaty scenes of tension and drama which showed some real chops on Fincher's part. It's always nice to find something under the tree you didn't expect to ever get, so perhaps this is indeed the case with Benjamin Button (at the very least, it makes a great porn title). (Dex)