Far Flungers

Playing the Blinking Game with The Driver

The Driver is the best at what he does. “You put this kid behind the wheel, there’s nothing he can’t do.” He doesn’t rely on luck and spontaneous driving; he knows what he’s doing. He studies his environment, analyzes human behavior and acts accordingly.

As he drives you can tell that every move was planned ahead of time, every turn calculated with absolute precision. His plan is unpredictable; that’s why watching it unfold in real time is so damn electrifying. He comes out of nowhere surprising his foes and disappears in plain sight just as easily. The driver is always in total control of the situation.

All this is projected in one of the most intense opening scenes in recent memory. The driver is a stuntman who moonlights as a getaway driver. “Drive” begins at night minutes before a getaway. Most chase scenes lack this kind of intensity, for the driver doesn’t rely on sheer speed to grab our attention.

Happiness is a good father

Omer M. Mozaffar

Every semester, I ask my students this one simple question. “Can you honestly say that you are happy?” In a class of 40 students, maybe only six will raise their hands. And that is pretty sad.

Are they plagued by those uncertainties of youth? Are they wondering if they will find a career, love, or meaning? Are they terrified by the threats of terrorist attacks, financial collapse, climate change and, well, the Apocalypse? Or, have they decided that the “American Dream” was not Thomas Jefferson’s vision, but is instead a sappy Hollywood fantasy? Or, maybe they just hate my class? Sure.

In answering this question, Gabriele Muccino’s “The Pursuit of Happyness,” takes many usual directions that Hollywood movies take. At first, he seems to answer the question the way we would expect a Hollywood filmmaker to answer:

Dear M. Night Shyamalan

Omer M. Mozaffar

I hope this letter reaches you with the best of health and spirits. I am reaching out to you not only because I loved your movies, but also because we are of the same generation of Desis. We migrated here with our parents during that first huge wave some forty years ago and now we are both (perhaps in self-perception) regular middle-aged guys from big cities experiencing the next phases of our lives. I am sure that many of your childhood experiences paralleled mine, both in school playgrounds and in our private imaginations. In some ways, we are peers; in some ways I admire your work. The fact that I am writing this letter implies that I am concerned about a progression that seems to be taking place in your films.

Gerardo Valero of Mexico City discusses “The Godfather: Part III”

Gerardo Valero

I was born October 1° 1962 in Mexico City where I currently reside with my wife Monica. I have a degree in Architecture and a MBA from IPADE here in Mexico. My interest in movies started at a very young age as my father used to take me and my brothers to double or even triple features at our neighborhood theater.

I mostly remember seeing Tarzan movies and Disney classics though mostly we watched a lot of forgettable war and cowboy movies which I once feared would make me dislike cinema but on the

Tested to find the ultimate destination

Omer M. Mozaffar

Ang Lee’s allegorical “The Life of Pi” (2012) is a film to appreciate slowly and carefully. It is a friendly post-modern, global fantasy, making the “Wizard of Oz” seem like a clunky product from a nation that now only exists in triumphalist superhero fables as it fights mercilessly for its final gasps of air. This is a smart film, the most intelligent meditation on religion in quite some time. Lee’s masterful direction fills us with dramatic, wonderful visuals, and the type of relentless unpredictability we starve for as we wade through the usual zombie-like assortment of formulaic blockbuster crime movies.

Why does Ofelia crawl into the toad’s grotto?

Olivia Collette

If there’s one thing that’s consistently omitted from most Disney fairy tale adaptations, it’s abject horror. They certainly make up for it by giving us terrific villains (Maleficent still haunts me), but a lot of the foul and gory details are left out.

Fairy tales aren’t meant to be enchanting; they’re supposed to be cautionary, terrifying even. Stories with female protagonists–like Cinderella and especially Snow White–reflect aging housewives’ fears of being usurped by younger, stronger, fertile women.

The masters of disaster, by Gerardo Valero of Mexico

Gerardo Valero

The source for our love of movies is different in each and every one of us. It may date back to our childhood, it may be about a particular film we saw under certain circumstances in our lives. Mine clearly come from one specific genre: the Disaster Film.

I realize they may have never been the most meaningful or profound of all, but they were certainly the one kids my age were discussing in school patios in the early ’70s.

Back then hey had the hype, they had the long lines at theaters, they had the awesome John Williams scores, they had Sensurround, they had that unexplicable Best Picture nomination for “The Towering Inferno”, they had the posters with the great artwork and the main actors boxed in little squares, depicted in various states of pandemonium.

“Earthquake” was even promoted as “an Event,” believe it or not.

A suicide fights for his life

On his last day on the job, John Ottway sits in a bar full of workers. Most are involved in a violent brawl, but he sits alone isolated and unbothered by his surroundings. His sad eyes seem lost in thoughts of hopelessness. As he walks out in the cold mist to a remote spot, we learn of a suicide letter he’s written to the wife who left him. Ottway holds the barrel of a rifle in his mouth and closes his eyes, ready to pull the trigger. The unlikeliest of signs makes him remove the rifle, the howl of a wolf in the dark.

Joe Carnahan’s “The Grey” tells the ironic story of a suicidal man who ends up fighting for his life after a plane crashes into the wolf-infested wilderness of Alaska. I don’t know about you, but the first half of that sentence interests me more than the second half.

Is a reasonable doubt unreasonable?

Gerardo Valero

The dissection of a real life legal case from every possible point of view may be the main subject from Barbet Schroeder’s “Reversal of Fortune” but the heart of the film unquestionably resides in one of the most amazing acting performances in the history of cinema: Jeremy Iron’s portrayal of Claus Von Bulow

The real Von Bulow was indeed convicted to a thirty year term for the murder of his socialite wife Sunny, played by Glenn Close, but the movie, without taking sides, does make it clear that his sentencing was somehow influenced by the court of public opinion in which everybody believed Claus was guilty, he had to be, he certainly seemed like a man guilty of something.

The Devil and Daniel Webster

Like many tales about the good vs. the evil, the evil mostly steals the show from the good in “The Devil and Daniel Webster” (1941), a cautionary moral tale based on Stephen Vincent Benét’s short story which is sort of a New England version of the tale of Faust. Though it was made 70 years ago, the movie remains as a darkly enjoyable movie with the wonderful moments that can both amuse and chill us with the subtle creepiness pervading its rural background. Sure, we are happy to see the soul of an ordinary American luckily saved from the eternal damnation in the end, but, folks, can we deny that we had a fun with Mephistopheles before the obligatory finale?

Allenville: A nice place to visit

Michał Oleszczyk

Judging from the overwhelmingly tepid critical reaction that “To Rome with Love” has been getting since it opened in Poland, European film critics seem to take offense at what they describe as glossy, superficial way of presenting their continent in Woody Allen’s recent movies. I know a Spanish film buff who hated (hated, hated) “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” as well as a Parisian who despised “Midnight in Paris.” Clearly, there’s something about the way Allen shoots European cities that many of their natives object to. They hate how prettified and inane their stomping grounds look on the screen (mere sightseeing folders, they say). And yet they never minded when New York was getting the same kind of Allen treatment back in the day. It seems we’re much more comfortable with mythologizing someone else’s home than we are with other people sprinkling glitter on ours.

Varieties of Leaves of Grass

As far as I know, “a mixed bag” is a negative expression, but I think that is an appropriately positive one in case of “Leaves of Grass” (2009) for its seemingly disjointed combination of crime story and philosophy. The movie throws such discrepant stuff into its plot that it could actually make a good shopping list: Latin, marijuana, Socrates, crossbows, poetry, bongs, Heidegger, family, catfish, Whitman, parallel lines, menorahs, swastikas, murder, and so on.

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

Charlie Schmidlin

A man suited to expression but made to court contrition instead, the Georgian-born director Sergei Parajanov posed within his all-too-scarce filmography — beginning with 1951’s short “Moldavian Fairy Tale” and ending with 1988’s “Ashik Kerib” — a complete dichotomy of artistic vision and personal reality. His interpretations of the natural world’s rhythms are distinctly his own, utilizing punctuations of artifice to decorate exquisite portraits of little-seen cultures set during the 18th-century. But his most critically acclaimed films, such as the tableaux-heavy “Color of Pomegranates,” likewise garnered attention from Soviet authorities, and landed him outlaw status and even prison sentences with increasingly ludicrous accusations. Along with “Pomegranates,” his 1964 drama “Shadow of Forgotten Ancestors” also fell at the center of controversy surrounding Parajanov, but in its blistering Shakespearian romance based on Carpathian folklore, the film offers an illuminating side to the Armenian director’s aesthetic, and a perfect introduction to his stunning body of work.

The fate of the Jerryphile

Scott Jordan Harris

I love Jerry Lewis. I love Jerry Lewis so much that I have a friend who, whenever I mention Lewis online, sends me the simple two word message “Rupert Pupkin”. That, of course, is the name of Robert De Niro’s deranged wannabe in Martin Scorcese’s “The King of Comedy”. Pupkin is so obsessed with Jerry Langford, the comedian played by Jerry Lewis, that he kidnaps him and takes his place on his talk show.

The Comedy that is Not

Omer M. Mozaffar

Now available on demand via iTunes, Vudu, Amazon Instant and various cable systems. Opening Nov. 23 at Facets Cinemathqeue; playing around the country.

It begins with a slow motion party of a bunch of middle aged men in assorted levels of grimy undress, dancing and spitting a few feet short of a drunken stupor. That unhappy first scene makes it clear that Rick Alverson’s 2012 film “The Comedy” is not one. It seeks to be the inverse of everything. In nearly every scene, our characters try to offend everyone, including ourselves, with their comments on life, packaged in the most abrasive rock salt. Not for any other reason, but pure boredom with life.

A family secret

Looking back at when I watched “Life, Above All” (2010) last December, I discern that I’m a more jaded person than I think. At one point in the story, I wondered if its heroine really had to do what she was determined to do. I understood her motive, but I thought it might be better for her and her family to leave the problem alone because there was really nothing she could do for changing the circumstance. However, it was what should have been done, her heart knew that, and I was eventually moved by her determination while recognizing that she was right after all.

V for Vendetta: Guy Fawkes in Egypt

During the revolution Egyptians referenced “V for Vendetta” more frequently than any other work of art. Protestors held up signs that read “Remember, remember the 25 of January.” On the internet, Photoshop was used to alter Pharaoh Tout Ankh Amoun’s face into a Fawkes smile.

Sarah Abdel Rahman, an activist who ended up on TIME magazine’s cover page during the revolution referred to scenes from the film when I discussed the revolution with her. Guy Fawkes’ bumper stickers are stuck on the back windows of dozens of cars driving through Cairo traffic; his mask painted red, white and black resembling the Egyptian flag. The list goes on and on, there’s no doubt about it, in 2011 “V for Vendetta” stirred up as much conversations in Egypt as when it first spread controversy the day it was released here.

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

Streaming on Netflix Instant.

It is quite a long night for them. They have been going around the wide area for hours, but they have not yet found what they are looking for. The sky gets darker, and they become more bored, tired, and frustrated in the deepening darkness. The wind blows ominously, the reeds on the field are shaken by the wind, and they begin to reflect on themselves as the search is being fruitlessly continued in front of their eyes.

Sex, politics and dust-busting

When I watched “The Ides of March” (2011) early in this year, it took me back to my memories with Mike Nichols’ “Primary Colors” (1998), which already told us almost everything the former wanted to tell. When I watched it in 1999, it looked like a sarcastic story inspired by Bill Clinton’s first presidential election campaign in 1992, but now the movie looks more like a timeless political comedy drama which understands a lot about how politicians alternatively dazzle and disappoint us with their better and worse sides.