By Noel Murray, Rob Nelson, and Jim Ridley
Bottle Rocket The rare modern screwballer that earns its quirks, Bottle Rocket also benefits from perfect timing: Its mix of buddy movie and heist caper playfully invokes Tarantino, although this genre crisscross is put to gentle rather than to nihilistic ends. The movie follows three aimless, shiftless, Southwestern twentysomethings—Bob, Anthony, and Didgnan (Robert Musgrave, Luke Wilson, and Owen Wilson)—who hope to settle their poor finances through armed robbery. Actually, they’re more like beggars than thieves and less like slackers than goons: For their first big score, they rob one of their parents’ homes—with the help of a key. Next, they knock over a bookstore (a bargain bookstore, natch) before eventually setting their sights on a much bigger bounty.
Despite Bottle Rocket’s roots as a 13-minute black-and-white short from the film department at the University of Texas, the movie doesn’t try too hard to be cool—which, of course, makes it all the cooler. Just as importantly, director Wes Anderson conveys a palpable affection for his heroes: through Anthony’s innocent romance with a motel chambermaid (Lumi Cavazos) and through the unpredictable camaraderie between the three pals. As in the best screwball comedies, Bottle Rocket has the patience to charm slowly, and its unprofessional actors have been well-chosen for their ability to deliver sweet and screwy expressions. (RN)
The Cement Garden Hardly the routine video rental, this cold and clammy melodrama features a quartet of British kids who engage in perverse role playing and incest after their parents kick the bucket. Given the eventual focus on shock tactics over exploration of character, director Andrew Birkin’s slow progression toward the sexual coupling of brother and sister seems a bit exploitative, suggesting that he may be getting off on it too. For the record, big sis is played by Birkin’s real-life niece. Now that’s creepy. (RN)
Lumière and Company From the “neat ideas, reasonably well-executed” department comes this novel French anthology—40 films, each under a minute in length, each by a different director, and each made with the same restored model of the Lumière Brothers’ original motion picture camera. The artists are limited to one continuous shot, three takes, and no synchronous sound. The experiment is worth watching for the little gems it unearths, like John Boorman’s postmodern postcard from the set of Neil Jordan’s Michael Collins, or David Lynch’s nightmare vision of the future, which makes more of an impact in 50 seconds than Lost Highway makes in over two hours. And no one should miss Claude Lelouch’s lovely tribute to the art of cinema—a single kiss, filmed by a revolving dais of cameras. While the shot slowly unspools, you realize with pleasure that some poetry can only be experienced at the movies. (NM)
Trees Lounge Writer-director-actor Steve Buscemi’s vision of Long Island barroom losers never completely feels authentic. Buscemi the auteur is too willing to accept obvious quirks and pathos in place of the Cassavetes-style realism to which he aspires. And Buscemi the actor, despite his swollen bug-eyes and ghostly pigment, can’t believably convey the alcoholism of his character, an unemployed auto-mechanic-turned-ice cream-truck-driver. Yet there are more than enough fringe benefits to make this rather artificial project well worth watching. The very idea of assembling an eccentric indie-film ensemble has become a horrible cliché, but Buscemi casts weirdly and brilliantly anyhow, coaxing indelible turns from Carol Kane, Seymour Cassel, Kevin Corrigan, Debi Mazar, Samuel L. Jackson, and Mimi Rogers, to name just a few. (RN)
Off the Wall
Movies to get when the new releases are all rented out.
Best Boy Ira Wohl’s Oscar-winning 1980 documentary follows his cousin Philly, a retarded man who has lived with his parents for all of his 52 years. As Philly’s mother and father approach the end of their lives, Wohl decides he has to get Philly into a group home and help him learn to live away from his family. Although everyone knows it’s the right thing to do, the painfulness of the separation is still difficult to watch. To Wohl’s credit, he doesn’t flinch from showing the bond between parent and child in all its oppressive dynamics. Best Boy is too melancholy and profound a film to be shown to children, but then, Jack’s not really appropriate for kids either. Or adults, for that matter. (NM)
Charly Phenomenon is a far better film than many critics have said, but given a choice of films about the burden of intelligence, I’ll take this poignant, lyrical adaptation of Daniel Keyes’ bestselling sci-fi story Flowers for Algernon. Even if Cliff Robertson’s lead performance as mentally challenged Charly is gimmicky and dated, the story has a hooky appeal. Science grants boundless intelligence to a simple man, who quickly realizes that knowledge without direction or emotional temperance is more a curse than a gift. A thoughtful presentation and a scary twist ending make this a perfect alternative for the renter unable to catch Travolta’s variation on the shelf.
Laserdisc
Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (Criterion, $49.95) Initially rated X—by an all-white jury—Melvin Van Peebles’ landmark 1971 drama is often tagged as the Rosetta stone of blaxploitation flicks. But as Criterion’s excellent new laserdisc edition shows, Sweet Sweetback used the innovations of the French New Wave—jump cuts, flash-forwards, jittery hand-held camerawork—to create a cinematic vocabulary for black filmmakers that eschewed Hollywood slickness.
Van Peebles, who also wrote, directed, edited, and composed the jazzy score, plays Sweetback, a brothel-raised hustler who bludgeons two racist cops with their own handcuffs. As he busts ass for Mexico, he becomes a sort of composite figure from African-American folklore, part superstud, part Staggerlee, part trickster and escaping slave. The movie’s once incendiary rhetoric may have cooled with time, but in technique and impact, it still burns with raw fury.
Although the film prides itself on its crudeness, Criterion’s disc transfer brings out surprising crispness and color in Robert Maxwell’s cinematography. And Van Peebles’ audio commentary, if occasionally unfocused, is insightful and often amusing. Particularly funny is the moviemaker’s admission that he devised soft-core sex scenes to scare off unions, which wanted no part of porn.
Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song has been criticized for not making Sweetback a more overtly political figure. But Van Peebles intentionally gave Sweetback a sleeping social conscience. In America’s ghettos, as well as in Vietnam, people with dormant political concerns were radicalized by nightsticks or bombs. The movie closes with a famous prophecy/threat: “Watch out! Sweet Sweetback is back to collect some dues.” Twenty-six years later, we’re still watching. (JR)
Also recommended: Bound, Chungking Express, Courage Under Fire, Fly Away Home, Normal Life, Supercop, That Thing You Do!, and Walking and Talking.
Also recommended: Bound, Chungking Express, Courage Under Fire, Fly Away Home, Normal Life, Supercop, That Thing You Do!, and Walking and Talking.
