In Brief

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

FAVELA RISING

unrated, 80 minutes

C’ ity of God” made the slums of Rio legendary, but nothing can prepare the viewer for the first half of the AfroReggae documentary “Favela Rising.” Shot on blown-out digital video, it drops right into the middle of police raids and drug deals, with garbage-choked streets, crumbling apartment houses crammed together like rotting teeth in the devil’s mouth, machine guns and pistols casually brandished in broad daylight, cops taking bribes on camera, and lifeless bodies sprawled across doorways.

It’s against this backdrop of grinding poverty and endless crime that the AfroReggae movement began. Starting as a newsletter, it became a musical trend. Its founder, the charismatic Anderson Sa, has the regal bearing of a young Isaac Hayes. Mr. Sa and his ghetto-dwelling comrades position AfroReggae as a neutral zone for kids who don’t want to be caught in the crossfire between drug dealers and police. And he pays for his neutrality again and again. Eventually AfroReggae became a social movement and spread from slum to slum, favela to favela. “I am a warrior who fights for peace,” Mr. Sa sings.

But the longer “Favela Rising” runs, the tackier it gets, eventually becoming a hagiographic account of Mr. Sa’s recovery from a spinal injury. AfroReggae and its war for peace are genuinely inspirational, but Mr. Sa doesn’t need to be anointed the next messiah. In the final scene, as he dances in slow motion to the swell of a heavenly chorus on the soundtrack, this looks less like a documentary about a revolutionary movement than a Liberace concert video.

DISTRICT B13

R, 85 minutes

You can blame the French for a lot of things, but you have to give them credit for parkour, the unofficial sport that’s the engine driving “District B13.” Parkour is best described as extreme walking, with participants navigating the urban landscape by running up the sides of buildings, nimbly skittering down lamp-posts, and leaping from the top of one skyscraper to another. “District 13” is slathered with action sequences and parkour chases, and they’re filmed without many stunt doubles, wires, or camera tricks. The whole movie carries the authentic reek of torn ligaments, blown-out knees, cracked ribs, and stitches. This is the kind of movie Jackie Chan used to make before his cartilage turned to dust.

The Parisian government of 2010 is weary of its crime-riddled housing projects, and so it walls them off and throws away le key. Wiry Leito (David Belle) runs the cleanest building in his particular district, but a run-in with a bunch of thugs lands him in the slammer. Time passes and a cartoon weapon of mass destruction gets stolen and turns up back in his rotten little ‘hood, so he’s drafted to bring it back with the help of Damien, a cop played by Cyril Raffaelli, a martial artist who’s as fast and flexible as a spider monkey on Red Bull.

Totally self-aware, full of self-parody, loaded with adrenaline, and light on its feet, “District B13” is easily the most satisfying comic book movie of the summer. Vive le parkour!

– G.H.

COASTLINES

R, 110 minutes

Regionalist director Victor Nunez has long been respected in indie circles for his quiet works rooted in rural Florida locales, most notably 1997’s “Ulee’s Gold” (which memorably revived Peter Fonda as a grumpy beekeeper). The slack “Coastlines,” playing at the IFC Center, perhaps partakes too much of the Panhandle’s backwoods languor. This tale of homecoming, reluctant adulthood, and old friendships squanders its sense of place and simple observation with underacting and a weak script.

Fresh from prison, coal-eyed Sonny (Timothy Olyphant) meets up with married friends Dave (Josh Brolin) and Ann (Sarah Wynter). They’ve gone respectable (he’s a deputy sheriff, she’s a nurse) but remain fiercely loyal to their missing third. Dave does his best to keep Sonny from slipping into crime again, a tough task as Sonny’s accomplices owe him $200,000.

Those small-town baddies (Josh Lucas and William Forsythe) would rather be rid of Sonny, but in trying to bomb his father’s house they instead kill his dad (too bad, since it’s the expressively sad-eyed Scott Wilson, recently of “Junebug”). It’s one of a few melodramatic bumps that are a bad fit with the rest of the story, as is a romance that plays as inevitable: Ann proves a little more than loyal to Sonny, who rekindles old flames on the floor of the kitchen.

Mr. Nunez’s short-story eye for moments of repose and domestic feints is lost on Mr. Olyphant and Ms. Wynter. Though both are cute enough to look at, they bring little to their characters for us to grab on to. Better is Mr. Brolin, muscular and mustachioed, bringing a yearning that Mr. Olyphant could use; though Ms. Wynter’s face does have a lovely way of subtly rippling through series of expressions.

“Coastlines” may be one of Mr. Nunez’s slighter efforts, but the open-hearted 60-something director should find enough support to shoot another quiet study (and, hopefully, a DVD label to present early triumphs like “Gal Young ‘Un”).

WOODENHEAD

unrated, 90 minutes

‘The world is a difficult place,” Plum advises her lover, the simple Gert, as they wander absentmindedly into a dark forest. “Stop wearing your heart on your sleeve, or your innocence will be corrected by the scrupulous.” Gert, unfamiliar with that last word, asks if he can take a turn riding the donkey.

This exchange is one of the more obnoxious moments in “Woodenhead,” a pretentious fairy-tale pastiche that tempts the audience to walk out for an hour until it turns into a perfectly watchable suite of music videos.

Made in New Zealand – probably for less money than it cost to ship it here – “Woodenhead” mixes an overtly Freudian mishmash of “Hansel and Gretel” and other fairy-tales with jarring nonsequiturs. An overbearing father has young Gert (Nicholas Butler), the local trash collector, escort his daughter Plum (Teresa Peters) to her wedding in a far-off town. Moments later, we find Plum peeing in the grass as Gert almost drowns in a nearby stream. Then they both go have milkshakes in a forest clearing. After losing their way, Gert and Plum end up at an abandoned cottage, where they pass a night of sinful pleasure. For this they are swiftly punished, by various bogeymen, in a bizarre and horrific fashion.

Stylishly filmed in black and white, “Woodenhead” aims to provoke the eye. But none of its images are particularly imaginative, and a good deal of them are the property of Luis Bunuel, the pioneer of surrealist cinema whose early oeuvre “Woodenhead” freely plunders. (Keep an eye out for priests and livestock and a reference to the unforgettable scene from “The Golden Age” in which the main character lustfully applies his mouth to a foot.) An awkward soundtrack – the character”s voices are not those of the actors who play them – attempts to imitate the early sound era, but that stops during the last few sequences, when the scenes shift to the craggy, windblown New Zealand coast. Director Florian Habicht abandons his urge to rehash old shocks and Marc Chesterman’s gently hopeful score allows the film to breathe some fresh air. But “Woodenhead” would have worked better as a music video all along.


The New York Sun

© 2024 The New York Sun Company, LLC. All rights reserved.

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. The material on this site is protected by copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used.

The New York Sun

Sign in or  Create a free account

By continuing you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use