Film
ARCTIC TALE A smarmy score, some orgiastic farting from a herd of walruses, and a modicum of cutesy anthropomorphism from narrator Queen Latifah prove a small price to pay for this stunningly photographed narrative documentary about a year in the endangered life of an Arctic ice floe. With 15 years’ experience in the area, directors Adam Ravetch and Sarah Robertson shoot around, inside and underneath the compromised habitat of Nanu, a polar bear cub, and Seela, an enchanting walrus calf weighing several hundred pounds, as they try to survive in hunting grounds that may lose all ice by the year 2040—if we don’t mend our anti-green ways. The movie’s bracing account of animal domestic life, altruistic and predatory in equal measure, and the sheer diversity of family forms (bear cubs are raised by single mothers, walruses by mothers and self-sacrificing “aunts”) may be enough to place it on the evangelical right’s shitlist. The most heartbreaking moment comes when, two years ahead of developmental schedule, Nanu’s hitherto protective mother has to scare her under-prepared daughter into self-sufficiency because she can’t feed them both. As agitprop alone, Arctic Tale must be doing something right. Coming out of the theater, my child threatened me with, “Shorter showers, Mom, okay?” —Ella Taylor (Opens Friday)
EL CANTANTE The feature-length enactment of a Wikipedia stub—that’s El Cantante, a brain-fogging biopic of salsa legend Hector Lavoe that flatlines as drama even as it unpacks every suffering-of-showbiz-greats cliché since John Barrymore got the shakes. An early hitmaker in the late 1960s and ’70s on the pioneering Fania label, the Puerto Rican vocalist became an addict, ruined his professional reputation, suffered family tragedy and attempted suicide before succumbing to AIDS-related illness in 1993—which of course makes this a natural starring vehicle for husband-and-wife glamourpusses Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez, who commandeer Lavoe’s misery like a limo to the Oscars. As framed by “interview” footage with Lavoe’s wife Puchi (Lopez) that may be the cheesiest cinema verité ever faked, the movie recounts Lavoe’s rise from street singer to salsa superstar without offering the slightest insight into his growth or strength as an artist. Instead, director Leon Ichaso (Crossover Dreams) basically plays and replays the same three scenes for two hours—lovers’ fight, concert time, gimme drugs!—turning the subject’s life into Nuyorican Yacht Rock. (After an early dues-paying montage of superimposed club-gig flyers, the director shows the hero’s development by...superimposing bigger flyers!) Anthony conveys little of Lavoe’s reputed humor and charm; Lopez’s pitched-to-the-rafters diva trip capsizes the nominal star, adding to the stout reek of vanity project. The only bright spot: Lavoe standards performed with flair by a battalion of Fania All-Stars and the singer’s former sidemen. —Jim Ridley (Opens Friday)
DEATH AT A FUNERAL After unwisely hitching up with those costly Stepford Wives, director Frank Oz gets drawing-room small with a proper English farce set solely within the confines of a country house, where frumpy, grumpy Daniel (Matthew Macfadyen), his best-selling bro Robert (Rupert Graves) and their family and friends have come to bury their father. Like Oz’s best films (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, What About Bob? and Bowfinger), Death at a Funeral obscures its sincerity behind a veil of misanthropy: before we can get to the touching eulogy, we first must encounter an accidentally acid-doused attorney (Alan Tudyk) and his exasperated fiancée (Daisy Donovan), a cranky wheelchair-bound uncle in dire need of a crapper (Peter Vaughan), a short American possessing dark secrets about dear ol’ dead dad (Peter Dinklage), and assorted other relatives with little tea left in their bags. Yet for all its spot-on performances (Macfadyen’s particularly good), clever dialogue and wacky gags—Tudyk winds up extremely naked on a rooftop just before Dinklage winds up riding shotgun in a coffin—Death at a Funeral never even approaches the best of Oz’s oeuvre. It’s his first movie that begs for a laugh track; they’ll love it on BBC America. —Robert Wilonsky (Opens Friday at Green Hills)
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