Rachel Getting Married

A recent article in the trades lamented the number of once popular directors from the 70s and 80s who are no longer a force in feature films. Names like John Landis, Paul Brickman, John Carpenter, and Lawrence Kasdan no longer get the respect they once had. The obvious choice is to reinvent oneself. That’s how everyone described Sidney Lumet after he directed the hyperactive crime drama Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. Lumet’s daughter Jenny wrote a script with an acerbic edge called Rachel Getting Married and Jonathan Demme thought it would be the perfect vehicle to return to form.
Demme has never been one to shy away from self-expression and indeed his passion for cinema finds him galloping from the documentary format (The Agronomist, recent films on Neil Young and Jimmy Carter), to studio remakes (The Truth About Charlie, The Manchurian Candidate. Rachel Getting Married shows Demme traveling the art house circuit. Make no mistake, despite a wacky trailer Rachel is not a comedy. Rachel’s not so much a return to form as its Demme playing with the spine of indie filmmaking.
Rachel is a serious film with stunning performances and proof that Demme’s a filmmaker that refuses, like so many of his contemporaries, to go silently into the night. While Rachel uses the structure of a wedding and an ensemble cast to tell its tale, Anne Hathaway has the biggest role as Kym, fresh out of rehab if only for the duration of the ceremony. Family relations, equally portrayed by Rosemarie Dewitt as Rachel, Bill Irwin (the Dad although divorced) and Debra Winger, feel properly lived through. If you look closely you’ll see brief appearance by the likes of Roger Corman (in the movie about as long as he was in Silence of the Lambs) and Robert Castle as the Judge who performs the wedding. Castle is Demme’s cousin, a priest in real life who was the subject of Cousin Bobby, Demme’s 1992 film between Lambs and Philadelphia.
Rachel feels indie not because it confounds our expectations but due to the way Demme goes off on tangents. He’s subtle when leaving clues as to the basis of the family dysfunction yet after the vows are exchanged concentrates on different people we haven’t met yet as they dance in a sequence that goes on for nearly ten minutes. The film celebrates its diverse racial mix with its mixed wedding and even Irwin has hooked up with Anna Deavere Smith. The docudrama style works a kind of magic weaving music throughout by a couple of bands providing the wedding’s theme but who also appear to be staying in the same house. Rachel presents unsympathetic characters we’re not supposed to like but just identify with.
Kym carries a lot of personal baggage while Rachel, just short of her doctorates in psychology, can’t help deigning to those around her. Dad seems resigned to indecisiveness while Mom (Winger) takes a swing at one of her daughters. The resentment isn't bubbling under so much as dripping off the walls.
That doesn’t mean people aren’t glad to be there. They are and everyone adjusts around any lasting tragedy. Rachel Getting Married has the sense to make it real enough to turn some people off with its abrasive reunion.

The Secret Life of Bees

This is a film that's neither fish nor fowl. It has a great cast but with the exception of British Paul Bettany doing an American accent, and Dakota Fanning turning on the faucet for tears, it's not an actor's showcase. The racism depicted rears its ugly head yet the reality was far less saccharin.
The Secret Life of Bees is the type of movie made for an undemanding audience that looks great from the outside yet leaves you wanting more substance. Fanning runs away from an abusive father (Bettany) with another abused woman, Jennifer Hudson, who works on Bettany's South Carolina peach farm and found herself on the wrong end of the scapegoat stick. The time is 1964 and LBJ has just signed the Civil Rights Bill. The pair end up at the home Boatwright clan, a Caribbean Pink house where everyone's named after a month (May, August, April).
The characters are archetypes rather than flesh and blood personalities. August Boatwright (Queen Latifah) is the Earth Mother, the head of the matriarchal family while sisters June (Alicia Keys) and May (Sophie Okonedo) represent cold beauty and insanity. The sets and photography are immaculate while the direction seems scattershot. Scenes begin and end with no other reason than to propel the plot rather than lend realism to the situations or characters. The Secret Life of Bees certainly goes down like a spoonful of purple honey (honey made by bees that pollinate elderberry bushes), yet you're left wondering why the filmmakers didn't rise to the seriousness this fable demands.

Body of Lies

This is a serious film where the stakes are high, where any of the characters can be killed at any moment from the lead to supporting players, like Russell Crowe channeling the late actor J. T Walsh. Don't worry I'm not giving anything away, if fact if anything I'm putting out disinformation in an attempt to cloud the issue, just like the characters in Body of Lies.
As helmed by Ridley Scott the film firmly observes the gaze of people from above whether it's spy satellites looking down from miles in the air or people looking down on their relatives from the balcony. The plot concerns CIA relations with foreign governments in the current Middle East conflict. Leonardo DiCaprio headlines as CIA operative Roger Ferris whose various missions wind up in such violent conclusions that he endures more injuries and pain than Mel Gibson in all the Lethal Weapons movies. While we're name dropping Warner Brothers film, Crowe's character Ed Hoffman mentions that he watched Poseidon on the flight overseas from Maryland to Amman, Jordan.
Crowe and DiCaprio are so intense and immersed in their characters it's surprising that Mark Strong, as Hani the head of Jordanian intelligence, steals the movie away from them in his supporting turn. Golshifteh Farahani scores points as a Muslim nurse Ferris chats up. She's got a mysterious presence and should be in more American films and it reminds the viewer that Scott similarly used French actress Marion Cotillard (A Good Year) before most audiences heard of her from La Vie en Rose.
Ferris feels betrayed by some of the decisions of his superior Hoffman and forms a bond with Hani but as the title indicates it's a tangled web we weave when first we seek to deceive.

Lions of Punjab Presents

This hybrid language song contest film will leave you feeling fine with its sharp comedy and soulful singing. The twist about Lions of Punjab Presents is that it's also a parody of Bollywood conventions, yet in English, obviously made by Indians but set in New Jersey.
A sleazy pork magnate runs the Devi Idol song competition and before the credits roll (the film runs less than 90-minutes) the hopes and desires, and in some cases the rotten manipulation of same, of seven contest singers materializes before your eyes. Lions of Punjab starts at 100 miles an hour, introducing characters as fast as you breath, but it's apparent they're all involved with Devi Idol.
There's a 17 year-old ingenue whose family wears matching shirts; 2 rappers who're caught between African and Sikh culture but not really a part of either; a self-proclaimed humanitarian who describes herself as "more Buddha than Buddha;" an older gentleman with what would be a common name in India, Saddam Hussein, whose Long Island position with a security company was downsized after 9/11; another older dude whose job was outsourced to India; an aspiring actress who pretends to speak and read Hindi, which leads to predictable embarrassment; and naturally the group's one Anglo, a Jewish dude, who's studied classical singing, knows ragas and dates a babe from Mumbai.
The fix is on though and the singers will have to use their imagination to overcome the rigged jury. Lions of Punjab Presents works like classic Hollywood with its structure: we introduce the characters, we pick out the good guys and the bad guys, there's a rousing speech, the kind that every actor dreams of delivering and in the end good triumphs over evil, because it's nicer. Lions of Punjab Presents is currently unwinding in an exclusive engagement at the Angelika downtown, and it would behoove you to catch this modest sleeper before it leaves.