Faraway, So Close - the Greenway 3 closes 12/31

How about an award of achievement to the Greenway 3 Theater, which will close its doors December 31. Not to the Landmark, its parent company (it was also run by AMC in the 80s), and not to the quality of the theater's projection, which had two houses that are like shoe boxes with projection that usually sucked. An award that says thanks for staying in the game for a decade after you should have died a respectful death in the 90s when everything went stadium. The Greenway provided quality art house fare in Space City for over 30 years. When I moved here in 1977 they were playing a series of Ingmar Bergman films, Hunter Todd had the best incarnation of his Worldfest film festival at that location in the early 80s, the employees ran trailers backwards to mess with your head and wore cool hats. How big an accomplishment is it that the Greenway continued to operate with its unique three-plex style while the world around it expanded to raked stadium design and as many as 30 screens in one location? Consider that the Cineplex Odeon owned Spectrum and River Oaks Plaza, both of which venues offered 70mm, opened and closed within a period of roughly 10 years (from the late 80s to the turn of the century).

Top Films of 2007

We're making a list and we're checking it twice. While my cosmology allows for more than a mere Ten Best List, that is what the Houston Society of Film Critics require (www.houstonfilmcritics.com). Free Press Houston publisher Omar Afra lets me roll my own, if you know what I mean, and I never have to put up with the kind of editorial persuasion as some of my colleagues. For instance one local critic who’s syndicated on radio stations in New England was told to delete references to Alfred Hitchcock in a review because “People don’t know whom Hitchcock is.” Yeah, maybe on the moons of Saturn. Another writer with a Katy weekly newspaper was reprimanded for revealing that the spider dies in Charlotte’s Web. Obviously denizens in the hinterlands never read a book.

1. Zodiac
2. I'm Not There
3. Into the Wild
4. Hot Fuzz
5. No Country For Old Men
6. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
7. Sweeney Todd
8. No End in Sight
9. Superbad
10. Deathproof

But wait there’s much more, this last year rocked cinematically. Consider these titles as also worthy of your attention: There Will Be Blood; Gone Baby Gone; Lake of Fire; Lars and the Real Girl; The Diving Bell and the Butterfly; Michael Clayton; Once; The Bourne Ultimatum; Atonement; Juno; Darjeeling Limited; Charlie Wilson's War and Lust, Caution.
There's still a number of films that I felt were not in the league with the films above - Eastern Promises, Rescue Dawn, Beowulf, Redacted, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Control, Black Snake Moan, Breach, The Last Mimzy, American Gangster, Reign Over Me, In the Valley of Elah, The Mist, The Hunting Party, Knocked Up, Mr. Brooks, Eagle and Shark, La Vie en Rose, In the Shadow of the Moon, 3:10 to Yuma, Daywatch, The Golden Door, Broken English - that are still worth seeing. All in all, nobody has any reason to complain with the variety of great films released in Houston in 2007, and that doesn’t even take in the superb retrospective of Antonioni that unreeled at the MFA in September. And yes, I occasionally see films that I hate, but that’s another story.

Kite Runner's Khalid Abdallah

The Kite Runner tells the story of Afghanistan refugees who find a new home in America after fleeing the 1980s Russian invasion. Although the drama switches from San Francisco to Kabul the latter’s locations, other than establishing shots, were lensed in China. The proximity of mountainous terrain hovering over cityscapes gives Kite Runner a sense of spacious freedom. It’s a kind of feeling most of the characters never achieve.
“We shot in China, in the land of the Mongols and Genghis Khan,” Khalid Abdallah, star of Kite Runner tells Free Press Houston in a phone interview. Abdallah, some may remember, played one of the hijackers in United 93. With an Egyptian heritage but born in Scotland, Abdallah attended Cambridge, then studied acting and found himself “in Kabul with about six days notice.
“There are something like 46 languages spoken in Afghanistan,” reminded Abdallah who learned to speak in the Farsi dialect of Dari for Kite Runner. His character Amir is the adult of the character we see as a child in the first part of the film.
The Kite Runner explores differences in culture, first as seen by citizens of Afghanistan divided by political and religious dictates. Then the tables are turned and we watch the grown-up Amir try to assimilate into American society even while maintaining a grasp to his once upper class past. The title refers to a contest of flying kites where one directs the kite to dive into the path of another kite thus severing its string. It’s a two-person team; one guides the kite while the runner retrieves the kite when the string gets nipped.
The young Amir watches while a grave injustice befalls his schoolmate yet class barriers prevent his actually trying to help. Years later the adult Amir faces his demons, swallows his guilt and returns surreptitiously to Afghanistan to smuggle the son of his childhood friend out of the country. Here the film, directed by Marc Forster (Finding Neverland, the upcoming Bond film) takes a detour into action territory complete with a mano a mano between Amir and the Taliban.
“Amir finally decides he has to face the consequences of his previous action,” Abdullah said about his character’s motivation. “For Amir it’s about the moment where you stand up for an ideal.”

Margot at the Wedding

Margot at the Wedding is a film at odds with itself. You can't have it both ways, you can't have narcissistic siblings and their families working out their various dysfunctions and still have a warm comedy. But that's the mood on display in the latest film from Noah Baumbach (Squid and the Whale).
Single mom Nicole Kidman finds ways to sabotage her sister's (Jennifer Jason Leigh, in real life married to the director) marriage to Jack Black, himself a repressed enigma of a person. Toss in some weird neighbors, and Leigh's daughter and Kidman's son who trade family secrets like other kids trade cards. "I left a piece of skin in a movie theater once so it could watch movies for the rest of its life." So goes the whimsical conversation of the cousins. As for the adults the words they trade back and forth are a bit more hash and meant to hurt.
Margot at the Wedding is always interesting but the characters are badly in need of some kind of therapy. In a movie season dominated by cruel lead performers - Sweeney Todd, Anton Chigurh, Daniel Plainview - the characters in Margot aren't really mean spirited so much as lost in their own misguided trips.