Copyright 2008 The New York Sun Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:43:02 -0400 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Nicolas Rapold :: Stories from The New York Sun http://www.nysun.com/authors/Nicolas+Rapold istoll@nysun.com (Ira Stoll) webmaster@nysun.com en-us NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/a-british-artist-plumbs-the-politics-of-hunger/86653/ Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST 'Full-bodied cinema" is one way of describing "Hunger," the extraordinary debut feature by the British artist Steve McQueen that will screen this weekend at the New York Film Festival. Often grueling but never gratuitous, the film relives the incarceration of members of the Irish Republican Army in the infamous Maze prison near Belfast, specifically the 1981 hunger strike led by Bobby Sands until his death. The immersive film, full of sensual texture and finely isolated detail, is at once... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/the-melting-pot/86367/ Tue, 23 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST This Friday, the curtain will rise on the 46th New York Film Festival with Laurent Cantet's award-winning classroom drama, "The Class." Sixteen days later, it will fall with the bloodsport climax of Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler." Smack in between, Clint Eastwood's period mystery "Changeling" will serve as the festival's centerpiece. In a way, the eye-catching range of these three tent poles signals the festival's perennial tensions between the new and the familiar, convention and... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/vojt-283ch-jasnys-cinema-of-freedom/86169/ Fri, 19 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST In the 1970s, when the Czech filmmaker Vojtěch Jasný was struggling in exile from his Communist-run homeland, he came to the German writer Heinrich Böll for guidance. Böll offered a simple reminder: "He said three words: 'Patience, Vojtěch, patience,'" Mr. Jasný, 79, recalled recently. Patience was a necessity for the director, who lived through World War II, Communist rule, exile, and all the accompanying turmoil before alighting in America in 1984. Beginning Friday, Anthology Film... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/how-the-west-was-lost-appaloosa/86176/ Fri, 19 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST Whenever more than two movies set in the Old West come out, reflexive discussions about the rebirth of the Western sprout up like mining towns and just as quickly fade away. It certainly happened last fall, when "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," "3:10 to Yuma," and "There Will Be Blood" offered three worthwhile entries in the genre. A year later, that Western surge is still too fresh in the collective mind for this year's fall previews to make much fuss over Ed... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/spike-lee-goes-to-war/86172/ Fri, 19 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST According to the standard hubbub that greets each new Spike Lee movie, the director makes controversies for a living instead of films. To be sure, Mr. Lee, one of the most fearless voices in contemporary American cinema, is quotably outspoken. But when he talked recently about "Miracle at St. Anna," his forthcoming film about a group of black soldiers hiding in an Italian village during World War II, the first topic wasn't wars of words but war movies. "I've always wanted to do one, I just... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/burn-after-reading-this-movie-will-self-destruct/85699/ Fri, 12 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST Who can begrudge the Coen brothers a breather after the slowly strangulating suspense of "No Country for Old Men"? A comedy of persistent idiocy like "Burn After Reading" is a logical, and healthy, response both to the frightening world depicted in their Oscar-winner and to the expectant burden of their mainstream accolades. No classic for old Coen fans, their new film, which arrives in theaters Friday, is nonetheless a perfectly enjoyable yarn. It's a little like observing mice in tutus and... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/this-old-house-godfrey-cheshires-family-history/85219/ Fri, 5 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST Soon after Christmas in 2002, the Manhattan-based film critic Godfrey Cheshire, a North Carolina native, learned that his cousins in Raleigh were moving. Not earth-shattering news at first glance, except that his relatives, Charlie and Dena Silver, lived in the family's ancestral home. Midway, a bona fide plantation house, was built on land first acquired in the 18th century and had been home to generations. This would be a move in the most literal sense. The Silvers were planning to pick up... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/ping-pong-playa-balls-of-mild-frustration/85226/ Fri, 5 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST Jessica Yu's "Ping Pong Playa" made its premiere at last year's Toronto International Film Festival, shortly after another table-tennis-based comedy, "Balls of Fury," bounced through mainstream theaters. Both movies attempt to wring humor from the Sino-ping-pong axis: "Balls of Fury" tapped kung-fu clichés and enrobed Christopher Walken in silk brocade; "Ping Pong Playa" pits a trash-talking Chinese-American slouch against his parents' expectations of high achievement. Ms. Yu, who also directed... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/shoot-the-piano-player-sing-us-a-song-of-doubt/85223/ Fri, 5 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST 'All I wanted was the pleasure of mixing things together to see whether or not they were miscible," François Truffaut once said of his 1960 film "Shoot the Piano Player," which followed his enormously successful feature debut and New Wave standard-bearer "The 400 Blows." His second film boldly set cheeky antics alongside downcast regret, darting chases next to chatty strolls, and grim art-house melodrama beside loosey-goosey hand-holding. It's hard to imagine who besides Truffaut could have... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/i-served-the-king-of-england-czechs-and-balances/84865/ Fri, 29 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST In 1966, the Czechoslovakian filmmaker Jiri Menzel played his part in his country's New Wave with "Closely Watched Trains," his Oscar-winning movie about a hopeless railroad worker during the Nazi occupation who volunteers for a suicide mission. Based on a novel by Bohumil Hrabal, it was in fact a comedy, in accordance with a national strain of black humor that would meet a failed suicide attempt with a wry smile. For his new film, "I Served the King of England," the 70-year-old Mr. Menzel has... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/chris-smith-american-director/84858/ Fri, 29 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Ten years ago, "American Movie," the first feature-length documentary by indie stalwart Chris Smith, introduced audiences to another indefatigable filmmaker: Wisconsin's Mark Borchardt, the would-be director of "Northwestern," was a long-haired part-timer, and a young-looking father of three with a love of beer and horror movies. A decade later, "American Movie" remains one of those 1990s art-house word-of-mouth hits that everyone seems to know. At the time, many treated the documentary, which... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/public-library-liberates-trove-of-16-mm-films/84856/ Fri, 29 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Regular scanners of the repertory movie listings have likely encountered it: an ad for a free screening of an Ingmar Bergman drama, say, or a little-known silent movie, hosted by, of all places, the New York Public Library. The events draw upon a lesser-known jewel of the library's holdings: its collection of 16-millimeter films, which is accessible for borrowing by patrons, beloved by its diehard fans, and still going strong. Not that the collection has been entirely immune to the urban churn... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/a-spike-in-the-war-chest/86640/ Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST Spike Lee sometimes makes movies that are too provocative for critics to think straight. It's hard to imagine, say, his complex 2000 satire on race and the press, "Bamboozled," enjoying widespread acclaim upon its release, no matter its quality. But Mr. Lee's new World War II film, "Miracle at St. Anna," which opens Friday, is not an example of the director's volatile filmic chemistry blowing up the laboratory. It's just not very good, never mind compelling enough to sustain a 160-minute sprawl... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/alexander-nevsky-chopping-down-the-grand-teutons/86553/ Thu, 25 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST More than once in Sergei Eisenstein's "Alexander Nevsky," the titular 13th-century hero appears to stare down right into the audience as he delivers his solemn exhortations to the people. That's no accident, because the audience, of course, was "the people" — namely Soviets in 1938 facing a rising Nazi regime. Eisenstein's film was a functionally and folksily rousing piece of socialist realism, in line with the imperatives of the country's most executive of producers: Stalin. It was also, for... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/bams-flaherty-selections-underline-the-cinema/85691/ Fri, 12 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST Mass migration is endemic to the modern world, but its experience is not easily or well represented in cinema. This weekend, BAMcinématek puts some faces to the waves of humanity with its first-ever showcase of films — four in all — from the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar. Culled from the nonfiction conference's 2008 edition, the tightly curated series at BAM, called "The Age of Migration," presents lives ceaselessly mapped and remapped from within and without, on journeys spanning from the Rio... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/hamlet-2-shakespeare-meets-south-park/84383/ Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST The conscientious comedian Steve Coogan has gained what little attention he's found in this country thanks to his reflexive, chatty roles in Michael Winterbottom's "24 Hour Party People" and "Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story," and maybe, to stateside fans of British television, for his full-bodied portrayal of the deliciously repulsive Alan Partridge. But even fans may not fully recognize him in his new role. "Hamlet 2," which opens nationally on Friday, finds the actor shorn of his... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/tropic-thunder-bungle-in-the-jungle/83632/ Tue, 12 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST For a movie out to lampoon Hollywood excess and vanity, the new action-comedy "Tropic Thunder" has benefited from advance buzz of a time-tested titillating sort. Hype was seeded months ago with reports of Robert Downey Jr.'s postmodern blackface as an Oscar-chasing Method actor (quel edge!) and of Tom Cruise's unflattering "comic turn" as a no-holds-barred producer (what healthy self-deprecation from a totally normal and self-aware screen idol!). Fortunately, though, despite its billboard-wide... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/movies-in-brief-last-stop-for-paul/83415/ Fri, 8 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST The cable TV producer Neil Mandt ("Speed Dating," "Destination Truth") put together this grating, no-budget travelogue about two office buddies trotting the globe with a thermos full of a footloose friend's ashes. Mr. Mandt and his cameraman,Marc Carter, play Charlie and Cliff, just your average ugly Americans boozing and ogling their way through Jamaica, Chile, Greece, and finally Thailand. England, Egypt, and Russia round out the list via retold stories. Adventures and impromptu supporting... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/this-is-your-action-movie-on-drugs/83158/ Tue, 5 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST A stoner movie from the Judd Apatow syndicate was not a promising prospect to anyone who found "Knocked Up" and "Superbad" entertaining but tediously and even sloppily made. But in a typically canny move, the brand-name producer handed "Pineapple Express" to director David Gordon Green, whose reputation as an independent poet of the South and 1970s idyll is just as precisely defined and worshipped. It's largely thanks to Mr. Green's chops, as well as blissful work by James Franco, that... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/looking-back-with-patti-smith/83160/ Tue, 5 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST The ambitious two-week run of "Patti Smith: Dream of Life," beginning today at Film Forum, banks on the unconventional documentary's appeal to different audiences. For fans, it's a righteous, heartfelt trip through the mind of an icon and inspirational force. For the many bystanders who appreciate Ms. Smith's important place in music history, it's a ruminative reminder from the woman herself of a larger literary context beyond being a "rock poet." But for less invested viewers, the film hangs... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/in-search-of-a-midnight-kiss-looking-for-love/83004/ Fri, 1 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Alex Holdridge, the director of "In Search of a Midnight Kiss," which opens in New York on Friday, borrows a few things from fellow Texan Richard Linklater's "Before Sunrise" (1995) — but not what counts. Much as in Mr. Linklater's time-bound romantic idyll on the streets of Vienna, Mr. Holdridge's lovelorn couple forms its bond against the faded backdrop of downtown Los Angeles, thrown together by New Year's Eve loneliness (and Craigslist). But behind the serendipity, the film's dull... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/profit-motive-and-the-whispering-wind-finding/82769/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST The trees and burial sites that populate "Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind" may seem serene on the surface, but a provocative history lies beneath. John Gianvito's experimental documentary, which begins a weeklong run at Anthology Film Archives on Friday, plots an alternative chronicle of America through a pastoral catalog of progressive heroes that includes such renowned players as Thomas Paine and Sojourner Truth, as well as forgotten figures. "I wanted my emphasis to be predominantly on... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/for-step-brothers-guy-friendship-is-awesome/82588/ Fri, 25 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Of course, Will Ferrell's character in "Step Brothers" is a man who acts like an overgrown child — but this time, that's literally the plot. In Adam McKay's latest parade of absurdist buffoonery, Mr. Ferrell and acolyte John C. Reilly play newly made siblings with a common history of arrested development. But amid the milk-horking guffaws is the nervous giggle that the premise might be getting a little too close to the truth. Not that an ounce of hesitation is detectable in Messrs. Ferrell and... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/the-x-files-i-want-to-believe-back-in/82604/ Fri, 25 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Six years have passed since the death of "The X-Files," the long-lived mutant offspring of "Twin Peaks" and "Unsolved Mysteries." Now, older if not wiser, Scully and Mulder return for "The X-Files: I Want to Believe," which on its own merits is little better than a cable thriller with ponderous interludes. It's technically true that the new film is accessible to the uninitiated, but the mediocre material may only interest those with prior emotional or paranormal investment. An earlier spin-off... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/up-there-i-have-no-fear-philippe-petit-on-man/82261/ Mon, 21 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST On August 7, 1974, Philippe Petit went where no man had gone before, and where no one can ever go again. Early that overcast morning, a quarter mile above the streets of New York, the French tightrope artiste crossed a high wire linking the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. When he crossed back over the wire, he lay down in the middle, then practically danced a jig as police waited at either end and crowds below gawked. Long part of city lore, the feat is the subject of the new... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/love-in-a-tsunamis-aftermath-assarats-wonderful/82145/ Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST 'Wonderful Town," directed by Thai filmmaker Aditya Assarat, takes place in a seaside town in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami. Though tourism has tanked, some rebuilding is in progress, and yet a certain malaise seems to have settled after the storm. This potent setting and mood is the backdrop for a fragile love story, but the stillness and vaguely drawn characters doom the movie to off-putting inertia. Mr. Assarat's film, which begins a weeklong run Friday at Anthology Film Archives, won a... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/deceptive-civility-in-before-i-forget/82132/ Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST It's rare for a film about getting old to be as intimate as "Before I Forget" while still keeping a level head and retaining emotional nuance. Written and directed by Jacques Nolot, this partly autobiographical drama follows a middle-aged former gigolo through the paces of his daily life. In the film, which opens Friday at IFC Center, pleasure for the older man has become a practical matter, a worry like so much else, bringing full circle his days as a hustler years earlier. Pierre, played by... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/the-exiles-ifc-exhumes-a-distinctly-american/81658/ Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST The 1950s saw a few American variations on Italian neorealism, prototypes for independent filmmaking that mingled the looks, tools, and feel of fiction and documentary. Kent Mackenzie's film "The Exiles," which begins its first official theatrical run on Friday — 47 years after its completion — joins the spectrum plotted by Lionel Rogosin's "On the Bowery" (1957), Morris Engel's "Little Fugitive" (1953), and John Cassavetes's "Shadows" (1959). But instead of focusing on different strata of New... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/movies-in-brief-meet-dave/81662/ Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST The scorecard for "Meet Dave" is promising for Eddie Murphy: He plays only two roles, the fat-suit poundage is zero, and there's only one wearying stereotype. After the aggressive obnoxiousness of "Norbit," Mr. Murphy scales back and tones down with a mild family confection brightened by his adroit physical comedy and an ambitious if underdeveloped premise. "Dave" is a man-shaped ship (Mr. Murphy) from outer space; a Lilliputian crew, led by its upstanding captain (Mr. Murphy again), pilots... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/full-battle-rattle-knowing-is-half-the-battle/81390/ Tue, 8 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST With the release of "Full Battle Rattle," the Iraq war documentary has entered its postmodern phase. Directors Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss clearly feel they've found a can't-lose subject: an Army compound of simulated Iraqi villages, complete with orchestrated insurrections, located at Fort Irwin in the Mojave Desert. Yet the resulting film, too hands-off in some respects and too constricted by its style, is oddly unsatisfying. Granted access by the military, Messrs. Gerber and Moss recorded a... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/gonzo-light-sketches-of-a-heavy-personality/81088/ Wed, 2 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST It seems somehow wrong that Alex Gibney's "Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson" will probably do better business than the director's previous film, "Taxi to the Dark Side," the Academy Award-winning documentary about torture and war. Unlike the cogent, illuminating synthesis accomplished in that film, "Gonzo" presents, with little insight, a passable greatest-hits parade about the legendary drug-enhanced journalist who probed the considerable dark side of his era. "Gonzo"... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/wall-e-pixars-spirit-in-the-sky/80788/ Fri, 27 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST Pixar's new movie, "Wall-E," is the feel-good dystopian romance of the summer. Disney may have built its empire on a mouse, but it was Pixar that last year made an adorable, credible character out of a rat, and the animation studio's follow-up is a lovelorn trash-compacting robot. The setting is certainly not Paris, but rather somewhere on an Earth, circa 2700, that's covered in junk, abandoned by mankind, and bathed in sunrays this side of jaundiced. Of course, the difference between Wall-E... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/nakadai-a-stalwart-of-japanese-cinema-arrives/80362/ Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST From samurai showdowns to yearning melodramas, Akira Kurosawa to Masaki Kobayashi, the Japanese actor Tatsuya Nakadai has been, at his best, a chameleon of genre, mood, and directorial style. Film Forum's long-planned multi-week series devoted to this versatile, handsome star, which begins Friday, harvests his 50-year career to yield a healthy portion of the most satisfying output from a reliable boom time in Japanese cinema. The 75-year-old Mr. Nakadai, who lives in Japan but will appear in... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/chaplins-killing-joke/79921/ Fri, 13 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST In the 1940s, it was hard to imagine how Charlie Chaplin could top a foundational career that had already extended to a parody of Adolf Hitler in 1940's "The Great Dictator." Then came "Monsieur Verdoux," the superstar's clear-eyed 1947 twist on the Bluebeard tale, which climaxes with a blistering, speechifying indictment of audiences that proved a bitter pill for an America that had been victorious in World War II. Two talkies into his career, and some critics acted as though they wished... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/if-at-first-you-dont-mutate-into-a-giant-green/79935/ Fri, 13 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST This weekend, instead of raiding the comic-book menagerie for a new franchise or spin-off, Marvel Comics and Universal Studios are marching out a big, green do-over. "The Incredible Hulk" pumps up the muscle and loses the brains and heart of Ang Lee's 2003 take on the mercurial hero, which proved all too radioactive at the box office. The lazy, brutish new rampage retains fashionably off-center non-stars (Edward Norton, Tim Roth) but reverts character, plot, and logic to their summer standard... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/herzog-at-the-end-of-his-rope/79624/ Tue, 10 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST Grumbles and gripes have filtered through the film world since "Encounters at the End of the World," Werner Herzog's latest adventure into extremity, made its premiere last fall at the Telluride Film Festival. By all accounts, this remarkably average, grumpily narrated chronicle of an Antarctic research outpost seemed to suggest that Mr. Herzog was aging into a crank who simply happened to have access to better nature footage than the rest of us. But rather than a curmudgeon or a coot... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/the-presidents-analyst-dodging-bullets-feeling/79450/ Fri, 6 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST Many spoofs of the 1960s failed partly because they couldn't top the inherent ridiculousness of their target. "The President's Analyst," starring James Coburn in the title role, surges past an ordinary hippie jaunt with assured Cold War nuttiness, a few gun-toting suburban liberals, and a zany conspiracy theory that may ring true to current Verizon customers. The 1967 caper, which Film Forum is reviving for one week beginning today, benefits from affable performances and playful direction, and... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/guy-maddin-goes-home/79431/ Fri, 6 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST 'Winnipeg or trains." Those were the two subjects suggested to Guy Maddin by the Canadian television station that financed his first documentary after 20 years of fiction filmmaking. Yet the resulting autobiographical film, "My Winnipeg," which opens in the city next Friday, is anything but an ordinary travelogue. A signature melding of exuberant obsession and whiz-bang cinematic anachronism, it's a hometown memoir of a rare sort — and in a form new even to Mr. Maddin, whose most successful... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/kung-fu-panda-deadlier-than-the-average-bear/79449/ Fri, 6 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST All available clues suggested that "Kung Fu Panda" would be a dumb, loud pratfall that would get lost in the dust kicked up by the summer's real blockbusters. First there were those nagging trailer bumpers in which Jack Black, voicing the butterball hero with his usual ridiculous swagger, admonished us about cell phone use. Then there was the nervous distance separating this DreamWorks picture's release date from that of the Pixar juggernaut, "Wall*E," which arrives in theaters later in the... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/a-young-iraqi-bites-the-helping-hand/79351/ Thu, 5 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST You can take the kid out of the quagmire, but you can't take the quagmire out of the kid. That's one way of looking at "Operation Filmmaker," a spry, morbidly entertaining documentary about a 25-year-old aspiring filmmaker spirited out of Baghdad and dropped onto a Hollywood set as a production assistant. But as director Nina Davenport involves herself in her subject's cross-cultural growing pains and intrigues, her provocative film becomes just as much an unfolding anatomy of fiction-making as... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/tornatores-cinema-of-misery/78918/ Fri, 30 May 2008 00:00:00 EST If you remember Giuseppe Tornatore as the director of "Cinema Paradiso," the 1988 ode to Il cinema that was immediately destined for those cheesy Academy Award montages, then the Italian director's new movie is not going to change anything. Last seen putting Monica Bellucci (and slavering audiences) through paces in 2000's "Malèna," Mr. Tornatore now delivers a protracted, forgettable revenge thriller. "The Unknown Woman," which opens Friday at the Angelika Film Center, turns the plight of an... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/movies-in-brief-the-strangers/78932/ Fri, 30 May 2008 00:00:00 EST Ah, lazy, hazy summer — that time when Americans escape to the countryside and get killed. "The Strangers," from first-time director Bryan Bertino, yields an early, serviceable chunk of home-invasion horror with echoes of "Them," "Funny Games," and "Vacancy." Kristen (Liv Tyler) and James (Scott Speedman) are a couple in formal wear who crash at his family's empty country house after a friend's wedding reception. Their particular brand of relationship limbo casts a spell of melancholy and... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/the-bridge-that-built-ken-burns/77322/ Fri, 23 May 2008 00:00:00 EST The Brooklyn Bridge seems ageless in its monumental beauty, but Saturday marks the glorious span's 125th year of connecting New York City to itself. To celebrate the occasion, the Brooklyn Academy of Music is offering a free, onetime screening that afternoon of a 1981 documentary about the structure by a filmmaker who is himself a fixture of American history — on the storytelling side of the equation. "Brooklyn Bridge" marked the debut of the popular mythmaker and PBS stalwart Ken Burns. If... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/buying-and-selling-the-good-fight/77329/ Fri, 23 May 2008 00:00:00 EST "War, Inc.," the presented-by-John-Cusack satire of Iraq War profiteering, is neither as bad nor as brave as advance press in various quarters has suggested. It's essentially a riff on Mike Judge's 2006 dystopian comedy "Idiocracy," transposed to an anonymous Eurasian locale, with Mr. Cusack reprising his conflicted hangdog hit man from "Grosse Pointe Blank." After hitting some early polemical points in a freewheeling blaze of mordant absurdity, the film putters through incongruously... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/when-sudden-success-attacks/76557/ Fri, 16 May 2008 00:00:00 EST Now let us import sad young literary men: "Reprise," the debut feature by the Norwegian director Joachim Trier, traces the divergent paths of two 20-something friends and writers in Oslo. Recasting the theme of camaraderie and performance anxiety from last spring's "Poison Friends" and its French university students, "Reprise" skitters with a heady, hit-the-ground-running style that cools off with the fading of its characters' illusions and energies. Mr. Trier shoots for a youthful touchstone... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/lazy-days-for-a-war-torn-family/76398/ Wed, 14 May 2008 00:00:00 EST Paz Encina's "Paraguayan Hammock" belongs to a class of overachievers, a resplendent suite of seven films commissioned for the 2006 New Crowned Hope festival in Vienna, held in celebration of Mozart's 250th birthday. Some are extraordinary ("Syndromes and a Century," "I Don't Want to Sleep Alone"), none are less than very good, and, perhaps most amazing, only one has failed to materialize on American screens. Tonight, Ms. Encina's technically striking 78-minute debut, the last of the group... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/mother-of-all-pool-sharks/76174/ Fri, 9 May 2008 00:00:00 EST The actress Famke Janssen plays against a few types in "Turn the River," Chris Eigeman's respectable debut as a writer and director. Still very much an arresting figure as an ex-model and more recently as an "X-Men" fanboy fantasy, Ms. Janssen slumps into jeans and a loose T-shirt to play a frustrated, small-town pool hustler and returning absentee parent. Typically, those characteristics are reserved for the men of the silver screen, but her character's slightly desperate devotion to her son... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/what-would-rambo-do/75756/ Fri, 2 May 2008 00:00:00 EST According to the long tradition of breakout projects, "Son of Rambow," the second feature film by the British writer and director Garth Jennings, should either show its creator "cutting loose" or, alternatively, "finding his footing." Such would be the natural follow-up to Mr. Jennings's first effort, the unwieldy studio adaptation of the Douglas Adams cult classic "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." The 2005 film was greeted with predictable bemusement despite (or because of) its fidelity... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/mamet-fights-for-the-right-to-fight/75755/ Fri, 2 May 2008 00:00:00 EST Perhaps the greatest distinction of David Mamet's fine new film, "Redbelt," is that it lasts not a second longer than necessary: The curtain falls precisely when all that really matters has been said and done. In many ways his most straightforward film, "Redbelt" is a ruthlessly executed tale of cloistered warrior honor exposed to the open air of a fallen world. In other words, it's an old samurai story, but Mr. Mamet's clockwork mechanism is downright cathartic and his leading man, Chiwetel... NICOLAS RAPOLD http://www.nysun.com/arts/failing-the-ghosts-of-abu-ghraib/75296/ Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST By the end of the feature-length frustration that is "Standard Operating Procedure," the maverick documentarian Errol Morris reminds you of the oblivious, tunnel-vision eccentrics from his past films. Where other filmmakers and writers have looked at the infamous photos of the Abu Ghraib scandal and sought to chronicle the relevant events and policies, Mr. Morris ties himself into knots by questioning photographic truth and by embellishing the events with luxuriant re-enactments in this...