Nobel Son

Nobel Son defines ambivalence in a movie. At first you can't believe this film by director Randall Miller merits serious consideration after a grueling thumb amputation opens the film. But as its plot - kidnapping the son of a Nobel Prize winner - gets on its feet the film becomes quite compelling. At least until you've walked out at the end and any attempt to reflect on the logic of the character's actions are met with arched eyebrows.
While there are no story similarities between Nobel Son and Bottle Shock the films share the same director and three of the cast: Alan Rickman, Bill Pullman and Eliza Dushku. In actuality Nobel Son was shot before Bottle Shock. Miller wants to enhance Nobel Son by giving it a trance rave soundtrack. But this isn't Run Lola Run and the intricacies of planning a crime aren't aided and abetted by mixing Crystal Method with the Chemical Brothers.
You see there is, unbeknownst to the son, a bastard child along with subterfuge on the part of a couple of other characters. There's also a clever mall sequence that involves a stake out and one person assembling a Mini Cooper that's been smuggled into the mall in pieces.





While all the actors keep you guessing where this whole shebang is headed, particularly effective are Mary Steenburgen as a forensic investigator and Dushku as an escaped mental patient who reads poetry at the local coffee shop under the moniker City Hall.
Nobel Son will come and go quickly. You will enjoy it while it lasts but I defy you to remember this film a year from now.

Yella

Yella is a film with a twist. More experienced film viewers may see it coming, but it's subtle enough that it will catch most people by surprise. This film from Germany toplines actress Nina Hoss, and she carries the movie with such moxie you want to see more of her films released here.
Yella has a stalker ex-husband who previously tried to kill both of them by driving off a bridge into the river below. After the incident Yella can't get through a business meeting without being distracted by weird sounds or, say, the sight of water in a glass. Her current boss values her expertise at crunching numbers and a current acquisition requires her to call out a competing firm who's trying to overvalue their assets. But the business at hand comes second to Yella's state of mind.
Director Christian Petzold constantly reminds the audience of Yella's fragile sense of reality, repeatedly framing her riding in a car, or with her head surrounded by light or glass. There's a mystery going on in Yella, but whether it's her stalker or the new corporate subterfuge she's engaged in only becomes clear at the very end. Hoss is so commanding at depicting her confusion that you can't take your eyes off her.

The Films of Budd Boetticher

The Films of Budd Boetticher Box Set may be one of the best current releases for avid film buffs. Those who know Boetticher and his series of mid-to-late-50s westerns with Randolph Scott are familiar with his influence on everything (Eastwood, Costner) that’s come since. These five films – The Tall T, Decision at Sundown, Ride Lonesome, Buchanan Rides Alone, Comanche Station – are known for many things including the ensemble work of the cast: some of the conflicted bad guys are James Coburn, Lee Van Cleef, Richard Boone, Henry Silva and Claude Akins. Boetticher uses the background of Lone Pine in the same way Ford used Monument Valley. You can occasionally recognize Mt. Whitney’s sharp peak in the background. You sense the character’s feeling of being surrounded by this vast country,
Randolph Scott plays a taciturn loner in all the films. While his name is always different the titles (lonesome, alone) suggests that his rugged style, matched by the scenery, is really an archetype of the western era. But it's not just Scott, as the evil doers themselves display moments of rational thinking and occasional goodness. The bad guys are also archetypes of anti-heroes.
Each film has an extra where it's discussed in detail by the likes of Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, and Taylor Hackford who also does a commentary on one of the films. A feature-length docu A Man Can Do That fills in all the blanks you might have about Boetticher's life.

Weekend Treats

This weekend promises some cinema treats in addition to the usual wide releases:

• The Aurora Picture Show presents Girl Rock!, a documentary about a camp for young girls to, you guessed it, form a band and rock out. Directors Arne Johnson and Shane King will be in attendance. Times are December 5 (6 pm.) and December 6 (3 pm.). Free beer will be swilled and on Sunday (1 pm.) Johnson and King will host a video salon.
• The Rice Media Center will premiere the film Everything or Nothing, directed by Gary Chason. The screening is free, Friday night at 7 pm.
• The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston will screen Labyrinth (Friday and Saturday at 7 pm.) as part of a tribute to the films of Jim Henson. The film will be introduced on Saturday by actress and puppeteer Karen Prell. On Sunday the MFAH presents Before the Rains at 7:30 pm., introduced by executive producer Ashok Rao. Set in 1930s India against the backdrop of a growing nationalist movement, Before the Rains is the English language debut of acclaimed Indian director Santosh Sivan.
  

Milk

The irony of the film Milk being perfectly tuned to the attitude of our time and yet Proposition 8 being approved at the same time in California is not lost on me. Milk tells the story of Harvey Milk, an openly gay business man in San Francisco who was elected city supervisor in 1977. The following year Milk and the mayor were assassinated by another city official, Dan White. These events along with the controversy over the then Briggs Amendment, a Proposition banning gay teachers that California voters overturned, are recounted in Milk.
As directed by Gus Van Sant Milk has a zig-zaggy energy that catapults you to the late-70s. The film looks appropriately grainy and news footage from the era is effortlessly inserted improving the already casual flow. This isn't the Van Sant that plays with his elliptical time frame narrative (as in Elephant, Last Days, Gerry). But it's also not wallflower studio Van Sant as exemplified by Finding Forrester or Good Will Hunting. Perfect period recreations with clothes and cars and who knows what touches of CGI provide a documentary ambience that compliments the biopic details.
Sean Penn shows chameleon ability as he morphs into Milk, playing him as a thriving entrepreneur with social activist leanings. Emile Hirsh and James Franco also blend in well while Diego Luna plays a character that takes the film into a melodramatic alcove. Josh Brolin plays White as repressed, but has anybody ever really believed that "twinky defense" rap?
Milk unreels the story straight through, showing Milk moving to California, opening his camera store in the Castro District of San Fran, and his subsequent campaigns and eventual victory. Brolin and Penn face off enough times politically that White's shooting spree makes character sense. Other traditional values are turned on their head with Anita Bryant orange juice commercials and general hysteria clouding real issues. All the while Van Sant reminds us that Milk likes to listen to opera, and in the end (when the fat lady sings) his myth becomes larger than his life.

JCVD

An art film bar none that poses as an post modern action mocumentary JCVD breaks the fourth wall early and often with superb results. Jean-Claude Van Damme walks into a hostage situation on a trip to Brussels and from the onset the police treat the matter like JCVD is the ringleader. Turns out the "muscles from brussels" has legal bills, might lose custody of his daughter in a heated court battle and he's lost his latest role to Steven Segal. "He cut his ponytail for the role," JCVD moans.
If you were a fan and just went in expecting to see a routine actioner you'll be blessed with a more subliminal kind of action. Director Mabrouk El Mechri plays with our expectations in a good way. With a kind of elliptical time frame we experience a non linear account of how the post office siege goes down. For instance the audience first sees Jean-Claude assisting in the botched robbery, but then as the events unfold we return from an interior view and see that Jean-Claude is being forced at gunpoint to acquiesce to the badguys, one of whom incidentally with his long stringy hair and ugly demeanor is a classic cinema baddie.
Perhaps the thing that makes JCVD such a fulfilling experience was the mea culpa by Van Damme that at once takes the audience out of the film while at the same time heightening the claustrophobic sense of hostage imprisonment. All of a sudden during the middle of a scene inside the post office Van Damme and the camera rise in the air until they are even (there's no ceiling) with the overhead lights. JCVD proceeds to bring on the emotions in a full face close-up tearful lament of his career and current situation. Minutes pass as Jean-Claude's soliloquy reveals the depth of his being. As silently as the diatribe began JCVD and the camera slowly lower to the floor and the scene resumes. You go into the film thinking they are going to goof you with a thriller inside a docu but then the real twist reveals startling truths about our own conceptions.