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Venus if you will, send a girl for me to thrill

Sometimes an actor’s face tells so much about his character that the movie doesn’t have to waste its time describing the character’s past to us. Roger Michell’s “Venus” (2006) doesn’t tell us in details how famous its hero was as an actor, but that’s not a problem because he is played by Peter O’Toole, a living legend who gave us a bunch of memorable larger-than-life characters including Henry II of England, Eli Cross, the 14th Earl of Gurney, Alan Swann, and, above all, Lawrence of Arabia. When we look at him in the movie, we instantly remember how magnificent he was, and that aspect is naturally incorporated into his character.

“Don’t mess Malcolm up”

From its incendiary opening to its somber but exultant conclusion, Spike Lee’s grand and important film “Malcolm X” captures the life of a complex, charismatic and gravely misunderstood man who fought for human rights and justice for Africans and African-Americans. The film, based on The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley, is arguably Mr. Lee’s best and most universal film, and one of the great American film biographies.

For context, “Malcolm X” had extraordinary publicity leading up to its 1991 production. Numerous black activists in New York City and elsewhere had forecasted that Mr. Lee’s film would not accurately depict the essence of Malcolm. “Don’t mess Malcolm up,” was a refrain the director heard over and over again.

The “Shawshank” Greatness

Gerardo Valero

Is Frank Darabont’s “The Shawshank Redemption” the best motion-picture of all time? According to Internet Movie Database users, that is exactly the case. The advent of the internet likely brought together the largest congregation of movie fans in history, ready to express their opinions in the most accessed movie data base ever, and the best rated film there is “The Shawshank Redemption.”

This isn’t something to take lightly, true, but there are peculiarities about the website’s data that needs to be considered. If you’ve followed their rankings in the past you may have noticed that the response by users to recently released films tends to be more extreme than that of older ones, in other words, a recent good movie might initially appear with a higher rating and a bad one with a lower one; films only seem to reach their rightful place with the passage of time and particularly with the accumulation of a larger number of votes. Their opening weekend is not the most accurate of moments to evaluate what audiences really think about them.

A man with inklings of a soul

The 60s were a rough transition for America. Major shifts seemed to be occurring in every fabric of society from civil rights to sexual mores. The worsening course of the Vietnam war fueled distrust in political institutions. Women’s rights highlighted a breaking from oppressive traditions. The old seemed to be fading away more radically than ever before.

Like the era it was made in, “Hud” was a key shift. As film critic Emmanuel Levy correctly puts it, it is “a transitional film between the naive films of the early 60s and the more cynical ones later in the decade.” Though it plays as a compelling drama of small town life and family tribulation, through its lens of father-son conflict, it also captures the angst in the loss of authority, the gap between of two different generations, and an elegy for the good ole’ days.

The Jackal takes aim

Gerardo Valero

Fred Zinnemann’s “The Day of the Jackal” (1973) is a great example of how a film can do a good job of creating tension and involving the viewer by sticking with the most basic cinematic elements. We have the benefit of comparing it with a remake (“Jackal,” 1997) that went on the opposite direction and by wrongly doing everything that its predecessor got right, making he merits of the earlier version all the more evident. Both are distinctive reflections of how studios perceived audience tastes in their respective time periods. They are as different as two movies based on the same source might be and can hardly be classified in the same genre. The later entry is a brainless action flick; the original is a “thriller” in every sense of the word.

Cinema through a cloudy eye

Charlie Schmidlin

Bolstered by Akira Ifukube’s trudging “Gojira” theme and the shorthand it affords, on two separate filmic occasions director Leos Carax chose to pair it with a city-scrolling vista, and in doing so reference his past work for the first time. Homage and visual motifs have always earmarked the enigmatic auteur’s films, namely in the unstable romances of “Boy Meets Girl” and “Les Amants de Pont Neuf,” but within his two most recent efforts — a section of the 2008 triptych “Tokyo!” and his 2012 vexing “Holy Motors” — he centers this rare repetition on one character that is not so much a reprisal as it is an emotional transformation.

He coulda been a contender

Elia Kazan’s “On the Waterfront” has been discussed endlessly by film fans, critics and film historians. It’s easy to see why, for “On the Waterfront” can be studied from various perspectives. On the one hand the film reflects a time in history when some Americans named names before the House of Un-American Activities Committee much like Terry Malloy does in court. It has also been argued to be Kazan’s answer to Arthur Miller’s play “The Crucible” or his redemption and justification for falling victim of Joseph McCarthy’s witch-hunt of the 1950’s.

A man living at the edge

Gerardo Valero

Hi, this is Gerardo Valero and today I’d like to talk to you about “Changing Lanes” in which Ben Affleck plays the typical bright but self-absorbed, school-smart Yuppie who gets to marry the boss’ daughter but his knowledge of the ways of the world are rather limited, specially since he’s mastered the art of lying to himself all his life. His best friend and ex-lover played by the always excellent Toni Colette is much more self-aware than him but she doesn’t have his ambitions, or simply put, she knows the ways of the world too well to want anything to do with what it would require from her, to take the next step in life. It is only because of her love for Banek that she tries to help him by providing ill-advised solutions to his problems, which despite her good intentions only make things worse. 

Beautiful people staring at each other

Omer M. Mozaffar

Sometimes, I just want to stare at beautiful people, even if they spend most of the movie just staring at each other. I think it’s in the eyes, especially when the eyes are smiling. Sometimes, I just want to sigh, watching them longing for each other. Ashutosh Gowariker’s 2008 film, “Jodhaa Akbar” let me do so, for three hours.

This Indian film is an unabashed epic that targets that greatest of all Indian epics, K. Asif’s 1960 film, “Mughal-e-Azam” (“The Greatest of Mughals”). It is a prequel of sorts: “Jodhaa Akbar” tells us the story of the Mughal Emperor Akbar and his wife Jodhaa; “Mughal-e-Azam” is about their son, Jehangir. Like any other man of withering virility and receded hairline, I like beautiful things and beautiful people, and “Jodhaa Akbar” is loaded with carved reddish palaces, golden decorations, and silk scarves of every color. And beautiful people.

The Arikan Agenda: Best films of 2010

Ali Arikan

An old friend and I reunited for the first time in 13 years in Washington, DC last month, and the talk eventually turned to Facebook, the primary way we’ve managed to keep in touch, at least recently. I have a particular trait, usually reserved for after a night out on the town, by which friends can easily identify the level of my joviality, when I post videos of classic rock songs. Despite my assertion that a certain amount of fastidiousness should be necessary when it comes to sharing links on Facebook, I tend to disregard my own advice and post widely popular songs by legendary bands, for which I apologized to my friend.

Lars von Trier and the Antichrist

Pablo Villaça

So, Cannes 2011: Malick was booed, Lars von Trier was banned and “Pirates of the Caribbean 4” was presented as hors-concours. If those are any indication, I predict “Deuce Bigalow, Male Gigolo 3” will win the Palm d’Or in 2012.

But in all seriousness, Cannes: banning von Trier? Really? Persona non grata for making some jokes (yes, in very poor taste, but jokes still) in the same year you had Mel Gibson over? The same Mel Gibson who made anti-semitic remarks, defended his father for denying the Holocaust and was recorded in a racist rant over the telephone?

Kathryn Bigelow’s uncanny “Strange Days,” by Michael Mirasol of the Philippines

2009 was a great year for Kathryn Bigelow. After a 7-year hiatus from filming K-19: The Widowmaker, she returned to direct The Hurt Locker, a suspense and war film set in Iraq that has deservedly been recognized by critics and award bodies alike, and is expected to be one of the primary contenders for the Academy Awards. Bigelow is known for her superb work in the action genre, which is rarity among female directors. Her skill in filming tension and violence is as good as any of today’s directors.

A South Korean “Zodiac”

When David Fincher’s “Zodiac” (2007) was released in South Korean theaters, it was immediately compared to a famous South Korean film. That movie was also based on the infamous serial killing case still remaining unsolved to this day, and it is also about the desperation, frustration, and obsession of the people who wanted to find the man behind the horrific killings. 

Life as a poker game

“Maverick” starts with the protagonist in the middle of nowhere. He helplessly sits on a horse; his neck is at the end of a noose tied to a tree branch. The men who put him in this vulnerable situation surround him. They drop a bag containing a snake and ride away. If the horse bolts, Bret Maverick dies. It is one of the most attention-grabbing opening scenes in film.

Wunza movies are good wunz in a while

Gerardo Valero

Can any subject matter end up making a great movie?. That’s the question that Siskel & Ebert’s old review of “North” left me with many years ago. While Roger blasted the film’s overall, twisted theme (if you don’t like your parents, dump them and go get new ones), Gene dismissed this as the main problem by saying: “any subject can be done well”. 

The film that will never exist

Charlie Schmidlin

Had the unflagging perseverance of Tom Tykwer and the Wachowski siblings not shown them through their trying development prior to “Cloud Atlas,” its existing pitch materials and visionary test footage likely would have elevated the project into cinema’s tragic archive of could’ve beens. Like Samuel Fuller’s haphazard, ash-covered collection of unproduced scripts, the absence of product, sitting idly by the raw materials required to construct one, can coat an enigmatic gloss over the entire endeavor.

A Guidebook to People Power

Omer M. Mozaffar

Streaming on Netflix Instant.

Do we teach our young people to dream in the way we used to dream? I feel a sadness as I look at the long faces of so many undergrads. In their expressions, there is a resignation towards, rather, a skepticism of, rather, a fear of the murky future. Have we lost the motivation, passion and, yes, romance of our counterparts from the 1960s, believing that with enough determination we could change the world into a better place?

Watching Mark Kitchell’s “Berkeley in the Sixties,” (1990) I’m thinking the contrary, that maybe things have not changed. We might look at the activism of the 1960s with nostalgia, thinking that the activists knew exactly what they were doing, but we see that the participants were discovering the process as it unfolded before them. In any case, this is one of the great documentaries of American dissent.

Santa Barbara 2: Of hippos and red carpets

Anath White

A foggy morning on the last day of the festival. One more week of movie-going, as Egypt totters and my native Midwest suffers another snowstorm, has caused both guilt and gratitude.

But before I describe what I’ve been experiencing in balmy Santa Barbara, an upfront mea culpa, as earlier I mangled the name of a delightful film and want to correct it here. “Good for Nothing” comes from New Zealand, a spaghetti western with a bit of “Unforgiven” tossed in. Well acted and very scenic, the story centers on an Eastwood-like lone cowboy, who says little, thinks guns are meant for killing and women for — When he kidnaps a young English traveler, rather than dominating her as he evidently intends, she gains control, ultimately humanizing the guy and helping him unfold his hidden heart. A man at the festival suggested that, “as a woman,” I wouldn’t like this film at all – but he was wrong.

A taxi driver goes South

Looking back at the Hollywood blockbuster action films of 2011 when the year was about to end, I found none of them could top the raw realism of the ambitious South Korean thriller “The Yellow Sea” (2010). When I endured “Transformers 3” last summer, I had no excitement at all with its pointless loud action scenes decorated with weightless CGI. In the case of “The Yellow Sea,” real people and real vehicles are put into the action on the screen, and they are far more visceral than those big, humongous CGI robots fighting on the streets of Chicago.

The cinema of scarred hearts

Omer M. Mozaffar

I have a friend who walked out of THERE WILL BE BLOOD during that baptism scene, when Daniel Day-Lewis exclaimed, “I’ve abandoned my child!” My friend was just divorced, lost custody of his children, and was tormented with the remorse that follows these things. As Daniel Day-Lewis shouted, my friend almost needed to cover his ears. He returned to his seat shortly afterwards, but needed that moment to collect himself.

I have another friend who was molested by a family friend. She refuses therapy, but she attributes multiple aspects of her personality, that she herself identifies as disorders – social ineptitude, sexual dysfunction and confusion, chronic despair – to that period of molestation. When she watched MYSTIC RIVER, a movie speaking of the physical and psychological abuse of children and the long term consequences on their hearts and minds, she found herself painfully revisiting those experiences, but not where we might expect.