Movies 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.

CALLAS FOREVER
unrated, 111 mins.
Although Franco Zefirelli’s “Callas Forever” begins with a surprising burst of punk rock, nobody will mistake it for anything but a warm, comforting blast of the Old World. Suffering from burnout, a gay rock music manager (Jeremy Irons) reconnects with real-life opera legend Maria Callas (Fanny Ardant), who has been living in seclusion ever since a disastrous concert exposed her ruined voice. His plan: Film an opera starring Callas, with her lip-synching to previous recordings, thereby exploiting her star power and skirting the problem of her voice. Predictably, things don’t work out as planned.
Mr. Zeffirelli is not only an acclaimed opera director; he made two fine examples of filmed opera, with 1982’s “La Traviata” and 1986’s “Otello,” both starring Placido Domingo. “Callas Forever” is light on story and substance (despite some vague attempts at dissecting the authenticity of performance); the real attraction here is the ease and grace with which the film moves through its elegant world of reclusive divas, chic European drawing rooms, and lives touched by lovely voices from the past. This is a director working in his element, and it’s oddly soothing to behold.
– Bilge Ebiri
BEAR CUB (CACHORRO)
unrated, 93 mins.
In the quiet and thoughtful “Bear Cub,” 9-year-old Bernardo (David Castillo) lives with his gay Uncle Pedro (Jose Luis Garcia-Perez) in Madrid while his mother Violeta (Elvira Lindo) travels in India. In the amusing opening, Pedro begins to curb his libertine ways for the boy’s sake, but the situation darkens when Violeta is imprisoned for drug possession and Bernardo’s disapproving paternal grandmother, Dona Teresa (Empar Ferrer), begins a custody bid.
A subject like this is ripe for easy laughs or melodrama. Director Miguel Albaladejo and co-writer Salvador Garcia have a subtler approach. Unlike most films about the shifting nature of families, “Bear Cub” shapes its story with a chisel rather than a sledgehammer. Mr. Albaladejo has a good eye for the quotidian: For every scene of coke-sniffing, liquor-swigging, and marijuana-smoking, there’s another of brushing teeth, cooking sausages, or visiting a fairground. These smaller details give us the relationship between uncle and nephew.
Special credit goes to Mr. Garcia-Perez, who plays the burly Pedro, and to Ms. Ferrer, who elicits sympathy for a character that a less intelligent film would paint as a monster. “Bear Cub” never browbeats. Even its moments of greatest tension are subdued, graceful, and humane.
– Arthur Vaughan
BROTHER TO BROTHER
unrated, 90 mins.
Rodney Evans’s “Brother to Brother” is nothing if not heartfelt. Perry (Anthony Mackie) a young, gay black art student having trouble with his sexuality, runs into a strange elderly man on the street, who recites some random poetry to him. Perry soon discovers this gentleman is Bruce Nugent (Roger Robinson), renowned gay Harlem Renaissance poet and co-founder of the literary journal “Fire!” with Langston Hughes and others. A beautiful friendship is born and … well, that’s about it, actually.
Intercutting between flashbacks to the young Nugent’s (Duane Boutte) experiences with the Hughes, and Perry’s increasingly complicated love life, “Brother To Brother” spins its narrative wheels without going anywhere.
The re-creation of the Harlem of the early 20th century is handsomely mounted (especially for such a low-budget effort) and Perry’s strong identification with the Harlem Renaissance – his eventual acceptance of that history as his own – are clearly meant to be empowering. But the film’s bland didacticism makes it seem a bit too much like a sexually frank After school Special.
– Bilge Ebiri
FADE TO BLACK
R, 100 mins.
F’ade to Black” is a documentary only in the sense that it depicts actual events; in spirit, it’s closer to a feature-length music video. But it’s a very good one.
During the title credits, you hear a helicopter blade beating the air. Thwapthwap-thwap-thwap. The sound is ominous, evoking police choppers. But this is not a film about the gritty beginnings of Jay-Z’s career in the projects of Bedford Stuyvesant; it’s one about its celebrated “end.” The helicopter floats over Manhattan gorgeously illuminated at night. The message is clear: This is Jay-Z, King of New York.
“Fade to Black” is the latest encore in the long farewell that began a year ago with the release of “The Black Album,” supposedly the artist’s last. In voiceovers, Jay-Z ruminates about his rise “from Marcy [projects] to Madison Square.” This film follows another trajectory: From the humble studio beginnings of “The Black Album” to his sold-out “farewell” show at Madison Square Garden last November.
Every scene is carefully calibrated to extol and aggrandize its subject. The Garden show is lavishly produced, with huge video displays, more outfit changes than a Britney Spears concert, and cameos from Beyonce Knowles, Missy Elliot, R. Kelly, Twista, and Mary J. Blige. In large venues, rap shows often suffer from bad production, too many microphones, and muddied rhymes. But the concert scenes here have an immediacy to match the best rock concerts. Fans black and white pump their arms in the air and mouth the words to every song. Hardened thugs are transformed into gushing fanboys.
Interspersed with the concert footage, we witness the inception of what will become the album’s best songs: “Encore,” “Dirt Off Your Shoulder,” “99 Problems,” and “Lucifer.” Jay-Z set off on a quest for the perfect beats, and the camera follows him as he visits the studios of hip-hop’s premier producers: Pharrell Williams of the Neptunes, Timbaland, Kanye West, Just Blaze, Rick Rubin. Each showcase their beats in turn and then watch for Jay-Z’s reaction. There’s no mistaking when something clicks. His lips start to move and he begins mumbling words, improvising raps. It’s love at first sound, and a side of hip-hop we rarely see.
– Martin Edlund
FABLED
unrated, 84 mins.
If style were everything, “Fabled” might be one of the more notable films of the year. It’s a remarkably assured visual and aural experience, complete with moody lighting, inventive editing, trancelike music, and bewitching fairytale narration. All to portray the inner life of one Joseph Fable (Desmond Askew), a young man convinced his girlfriend is cheating on him with their psychiatrist and his fellow office-workers are plotting behind his back.
Trying to subjectively depict madness while telling a coherent story is one of filmmaking’s great challenges. (Lodge Kerrigan and David Cronenberg have built careers around it.) Sadly, “Fabled” falls into the usual trap: The film doesn’t so much pull the rug out from under us as point out, repeatedly, that the rug was never there in the first place. As a result, “Fabled” deteriorates into a series of set pieces. By about the third nervous breakdown, most audience members will probably be having their own.
– Bilge Ebiri