..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..RJ Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Kim Voynar
..Michael Wilmington

A Superhero Summer
plus reviews of American Teen and CSNY Deja Vu
Plus Quick Hits On This Week's DVDs

Let’s ask the obvious psycho-question first: Isthe real reason we’re getting so many superhero big bucks spectaculars this summer -- Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Hancock, Hellboy 2 and now the all-conquering The Dark Knight, (and also, if you want to stretch a point, Indiana Jones and the super-heroine of Wall-E) -- is the real engine behind all this super-ness, the fact that we feel weaker or more vulnerable or put-upon? A tanking economy, a messed up foreign policy, failing old media and a planet in peril -- don’t they all nudge us into wanting to imagine ourselves as super-powered (if sometimes tormented) heroes and heroines?

Of course. Batman and Superman themselves were born out of the Depression and thrived during WW2; all their antecedent-heroes just spin out the fantasy further. If you’re feeling weak, you dream you’re a titan. If you‘re down and maybe out, you dream of spectacular victories. And maybe you get them.

The really unusual coup for The Dark Knight, though, is its critical grand slam. I haven’t read all the reviews, 95% on Rotten Tomatoes last I looked. But this movie seems to be getting all the near-unanimous plaudits that The Rules of the Game, to name one initially neglected classic , didn’t (at first) or that Rio Bravo, Vertigo or Singin‘ in the Rain to name three genre masterpieces, didn’t either. Not that it doesn‘t deserve its good press. Not that Chris Nolan isn’t something of a wizard. Not that The Dark Knight isn’t personal art as well as mass commerce.

But critics used to try to be seekers and arbiters of the great and unusual, as well as affirmers of public taste when it‘s right on -- as with the triumphs of the great popular movie artists like Chaplin, Spielberg and Hitchcock. I don’t have any trouble enjoying The Dark Knight. Or finding it. But I hope we’re all just as alert and celebratory when the next under-appreciated “Rules of the Game“ or well-appreciated Citizen Kane comes along.

 
 
AMERICAN TEEN One and a half stars
U.S.; Nanette Burstein (Paramount Vantage)

Cinema verite travels some strange paths in this fly-on the walk look at teen life today in small-town Indiana. (Shades of James Dean.) Nanette Burstein’s movie, which didn’t memorize Breakfast Club well enough, offers us a jock, a nerd, an arty outsider and a princess. I can see Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Ally Sheedy and Molly Ringwald in there, but where is the Judd Nelson J. D. rebel of the bunch? Aren’t there any left? (Don’t answer that.) And wasn’t Hall a brain as well as unpopular? I’d like to have seen a brain and a rebel in there, especially since one of the anointed “Teen” four is actually stupid enough to take the camera along when she vandalizes a rival‘s house, by writing “faggot” on it.

As a matter of fact, it’s hard to imagine how Burstein (who won the Sundance documentary direction prize for this) was able to glom on to so many different privileged moments in so many places here, like the kiss-off on the cell-phone. What was dispiriting to me is how uninteresting even those privileged moments are. Youth may not be wasted on the young but it’s certainly wasted in this movie.


 
CSNY Deja Vu Three stars
U.S.; Neil Young (as Bernard Shakey) (Roadside Attractions)

I was never a big Crosby Stills, Nash and Young fan in their ’70s heyday; when their lilting melodies, anti-establishment sympathies and creamy harmonies summoned up instant images of Woodstock dreams and chemical bliss. I caught on to Young a little later, but my favorites then were The Beatles, The Stones, Bob Dylan. Yet I’ve got to admit I loved seeing them here, in this documentary of their reunion “Freedom of Speech” tour -- sometimes paunchy and more sparsely haired but still visibly the CSNY that crooned out “Judy Blue Eyes” and “Ohio.“ It put me in the mellow mood of an especially enjoyable high school reunion party. God, It’s good to see those guys again! Break out the guitars. Bring down the house. “By the time I got to Woodstock…“ And these younger kids; their music just doesn’t cut it the way ours did! (Or the way, for that matter, the ways that Frank’s and Ella‘s did a generation before.)

Of course, it helped my mood that their tour is also -- as conceived by director Neil Young -- an anti-war get-together in the style of the olden days. God! That hard twang and Steve Stills’ words “There’s something happening here” heat up your blood in a moment! What’s heartening about the Obama campaign, in fact, is that, sometimes, briefly, but not enough, it recalls those days. When youth was out for more than a good time. Not that good times are bad. So light up a jay for these old guys and don’t bogart their joint. The old music was better. (But then, so were Frank and Ella.)



MW on DVD
Picks of the Week

CLASSIC RELEASES

Vampyr (Four stars)
Germany; Carl-Theodor Dreyer, 1932 (Criterion)

A masterpiece of poetic gloom and mystical dread, this 1932 German classic by Danish director Carl Dreyer, takes the stuff of supernatural literary horror (Sheridan Le Fanu‘s Carmilla ) and turns it into a symphony of blood and anxiety, a vampire film that ranks with Murnau‘s Nosferatu, Coppola’s Bram Stoker‘s Dracula and very few others. The movie is shot in a wash of blacks, whites and grays that immerse you in a nightmare world; the many unforgettable moments -- including the corpse eye burial, and the terrifying last vampire mill scene -- can truly mesmerize you. One of the essential film classics. One version in the package is in German, with English subtitles; the other one has an English text.

Extras: Audio commentary by Tony Rayns; Jorgen Roos 1966 documentary “Carl Th. Dreyer“; radio broadcast by Dreyer; visual essay on “Vampyr“; booklet with essays by critics Mark Le Fanu and Kim Newman and 1964 interview with producer-star Nicolas de Gunzburg; and accompanying book containing Dreyer’s screenplay and Sheridan Le Fanu‘s original novel “Carmilla.”


Bird (A) (Four stars)
U.S.; Clint Eastwood, 1988 (Warner)

Clint Eastwood’s love of jazz is responsible for this dark, cool, heartbreaking film -- and for the dramatic change in Eastwood’s directorial image that it wrought. Though American critics were mixed on Bird, it’s an obviously ambitious, very impressive achievement: a song in blood, junk and tears of alto sax genius Charlie “Yardbird” Parker (Forest Whitaker), his music, his heroin, his wife Chan (Diane Venora) and his sad, soaring life. Winner of two prizes at Cannes (for Whitaker and the sound), it’s a classic portrait of the artist as doomed hipster. It’s also one of Clint‘s best. With Sam Wright (as Dizzy Gillespie), Michael Zelniker (as Red Rodney), Keith David -- and, on alto sax solos, Bird (who lives).

BOX SET

Satantango (4 discs) (A) (Four stars)
Hungary; Bela Tarr, 1994 (Facets)

Bela Tarr’s extraordinary seven hour film about the squatters on an abandoned Hungarian collective farm -- done in long takes and black-and-white images of shivery force and beauty, is easily the box-set pick of the week. My screener hasn’t arrived yet though, and, since I haven’t seen it for several years, I’ll hold off reviewing it fully until next week. If you love pure cinema art, you shouldn’t wait. It’s a little-seen masterpiece.

Extras: Fully restored edition, plus Tarr’s 1982 Shakespearean adaptation “Macbeth”; Mihaly Vig’s 1995 “Journey on the Plain,“ a documentary on “Satantango”; and Tarr’s 2004 “Prologue,” his segment of the omnibus film “Visions of Europe.”

OTHER CURRENT & RECENT RELEASES

Round Midnight Three and a half stars
France; Bertrand Tavernier, 1982 (Warner)

Tavernier‘s ode to jazz, costarring Francois Cluzet as an obsessed Parisian jazz fan and Dexter Gordon as the object of his obsession, a dying alcoholic genius saxophonist. With jazz music composed and directed by Herbie Hancock, leading a brilliant ensemble that includes Gordon and Wayne Shorter.


Dirty Money (Le Flic) (Three stars)
France; Jean-Pierre Melville, (Lionsgate)

Melville‘s last noir: a fine moody heist thriller, costarring Catherine Deneuve (la belle), Richard Crenna (le crook) and Alain Delon (le flic).

- Michael Wilmington
July 25, 2008

July 17: The Dark Knight, Space Chimps, Mamma Mia!, Encounters At The End Of The World
July 10: Hellboy II: The Goilden Army ,Journey to the Center of the Earth, Kit Kittredge, Wanted, The Wackness, The Heartbeat Indicator, Monsieur Verdoux
July 3: Hancock, The Mother of Tears
June 26: Wall-E
June 19: Get Smart, The Love Guru, The Duchess of Langeais, Glass: A Portrait of Phillip in Twelve Parts, Up The Yangtze, The Passion of The Mao
June 12 : The Incredible Hulk,War Inc., Shotgun Stories, It Always Rains on Sundays
June 5 : Kung Fu Panda, You Don't Mess With The Zohan, Mongol, 'Tis Autumn, At The Death House Door
May 29: Sex & The City, The Strangers, Irina Palm, The Fall
May 22: Indiana Jones 4, Postal, Contempt
May 15: Prince Caspian, How The Garcia Girls Spent Their Vacation, DVD: Indiana Jones Collection
May 8: Speed Racer , Redbelt, What Happens In Vegas
May 1: Iron Man, Son Of Rambow, Flight of The Red Balloon
April 24: Tuya's Marriage, Chapter 27
April 17: My Blueberry Nights
April 10: Shine A Light, Plus Young @ Heart, Smart People, and The Forbidden Kingdom

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