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.

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ZIZEK!
unrated, 71 minutes


‘Zizek!” earns the exclamation point. The eponymous subject is cultural studies muckety-muck Slavoj Zizek, a man whose oversized intellect is more than matched by his pyrotechnic public persona. Ranting, twitching, covered in sweat, he rattles off machine-gun bursts of thought, spraying his audience with breakneck rounds of ironic insights, crafty reversals, and academic apercus. Zizek! Pseudo-Hegelian immediate coincidence of the opposites! The crowd goes wild …


Star-struck filmmaker Astra Taylor follows the “intellectual rock star” on his global peregrinations. In Buenos Aires, he’s stopped on the street for autographs; in New York, he packs in the hipsters at Deitch Projects, then races over to Kim’s Video to pick up a copy of “Being There.” We also see him at home in Ljubljana, topless in bed, where the discourse continues at full speed.


This is not the place to learn about Mr. Zizek’s ideas, which range from politics and philosophy to David Lynch and Abercrombie & Fitch. Author of more than 50 books, Mr. Zizek is known for his unpacking of Lacanian concepts in relatively accessible fashion, as when he explains the psychoanalyst’s petit objet a in terms of Hitchcock’s MacGuffin.


Ms. Taylor skims through his thinking in several well-designed animations, but the gist of her documentary is bemused portraiture rather that in-depth explication. Running little over an hour, “Zizek!” is refreshingly brisk and brainy. This is, without a doubt, the most entertaining documentary ever made about a Lacanian-Marxist theorist from Slovenia.


– Nathan Lee


PRIVATE
unrated, 90 minutes


“Private” attempts to be a political film about Israel and Palestine but is much more effective as a home invasion horror movie that conjures up more dread and suspense than any of the horror flicks dumped on the American market this year. Shot in Italy by an Italian director, Saverio Constanzo, the film revolves around a Kafkaesque concept: A Palestinian family named “B” lives outside a settlement and has their home occupied by the Israeli army; they refuse to abandon their property and are confined to one room.


The pacifist Mohammed (Mohammed Bakri) is the patriarch of the family, but as the occupation stretches on, his brood begins to lose it. Some sneak into the forbidden upstairs rooms, spying on the Israeli soldiers, some construct booby traps, and some retreat into catatonia.


As the tense second half tightens its screws, the Israelis begin to come across as at least half-human, but the first half of the movie reads like shrill anti-Israeli propaganda.


– Grady Hendrix


BLACKMAIL BOY
unrated, 100 minutes


‘Blackmail Boy” starts with a car wreck and ends with a family dissolving before our eyes. In between there are nervous breakdowns, suicide attempts, rape, battery, and murder. The thing was half over before I realized it wasn’t an attempt at a parody like “Airplane” but a modern-day Greek tragedy, like “Mourning Becomes Electra.” Oops.


A car accident in the first 60 seconds leaves a father in a permanent vegetative state and kills one of his daughters. Sixteen or so years later, our little Greek family is trying to pick up the pieces, but they’ve all come unglued. Hottie teenage son Christos (Yannis Tsimitselis) is involved with a middle-aged druggie mom and a male town councilor. His mom, Magda (Nena Menti), is having an affair with her daughter’s husband and trying to keep the family’s legacy – a valuable piece of property – from being taken by the city and turned into a public park.


This setup stinks of early Almodovar. There are worse directors to ape, but these guys (directors Thanasis Papathanasiou and Michalis Reppas) have created a tone-deaf film. It isn’t a black comedy shot through with veins of tragedy but a flat-out farce riddled with veins of pretentiousness. Naked men crawl across the floor, shaking and sobbing; women scream at each other whenever they can, and, best of all, there’s an awful dream sequence that’s supposed to be weighted with symbolism but in stead looks like something Theo Angelopoulos dreamed up after a heavy sausage dinner.


– Grady Hendrix


THE SYRIAN BRIDE
unrated, 98 minutes


The wedding in “The Syrian Bride” is something of a nonstarter. As a Druze family assembles in the Golan Heights amid the maddening political stasis and turmoil that plague the region, the bride gets stuck in transnational limbo.


Before the bride can cross the Syrian-Israeli border, a problematic Israeli stamp on her passport puts her in trouble with the Syrian officials. As the two families communicate via bullhorns across the no-man’s-land, a U.N. border guard, shuttling back and forth, tries to mediate.


Previews lead you to believe that the movie consists entirely of this too-perfect border dispute. In fact, before that there is a goodly chunk of extended-family melodrama: grudges, disowning, skeletons in the closet, domineering fathers, and women pushing for independence. These encounters have a ceremonious feel to them, but tend to the soapish.


The film ends with an amazing tracking shot more eloquent than the performances that precede, giving this well-intentioned effort a soft landing instead of a clunk.


– Nicolas Rapold


UNVEILED
unrated, 97 minutes


With a plot comparable to “Boys Don’t Cry” and a screenplay (by Judith Kaufmann and director Angela Maccarone) that often relies on coincidence to keep it going, the strength of “Unveiled” is unquestionably the solid and effective acting of Jasmin Tabatabai.


The Iranian film begins with its lesbian protagonist Fariba (Ms. Tabatabai) fleeing Iran for Germany once her sexual preference is discovered. While awaiting asylum approval, she befriends Siamak (Navid Akhavan), an Iranian political dissident refugee. Siamak, who is racked with guilt over leaving his brother to die back in Iran, kills himself (conveniently) the same day Fariba is told the German government is deporting her. She discovers the body of her refugee friend and assumes his identity, cutting her hair short, hiding his body in her suitcase, and using his temporary permit to find refugee housing.


She takes an illegal job at a sauerkraut factory, and is introduced to Anne (Anneke Kim Sarnau), a single mother of a nine-year-old child. The two begin a courtship, though Anne is unaware of Fariba’s secret.


When the story abandons its themes of loneliness and confusion in favor of implausible situation after implausible situation in the final half-hour, Ms. Tabatabai’s strong and authentic performance stops “Unveiled” from unraveling.


– Edward Goldberger


STEPHEN TOBOLOWSKY’S BIRTHDAY PARTY
unrated, 90 minutes


You know Stephen Tobolowsky whether you realize it or not. The charismatic and personable character actor has appeared in more than 100 films over the past 30 years, perhaps most memorably as insurance salesman Ned Ryerson in “Groundhog Day.” This weekend you can get to know him better at the Big Apple Film Festival at Anthology FIlm Archive, which will be screening his joyously funny and personal film, “Stephen Tobolowsky’s Birthday Party.”


The film (directed by veteran cinematographer Robert Brinkmann) takes place over a full day, and is made up of a series of unscripted monologues told by Mr. Tobolowsky, at first just to the viewer, then to a small gathering of guests at the aforementioned celebration.


Anecdotes range from show-biz memories, like his failed audition to be Ronald McDonald and the joy-turned-horror of his death by piranha swan song scene in “Bird on a Wire,” to intimate details of his private life, such as his being held hostage in a California grocery store, and the experience of learning he was going to be a father for the first time (after announcing the news to his parents, they suggest an abortion).


While each monologue has a different theme, Mr. Tobolowsky excels at attaching layers to his humor, poignancy, or in some cases heartbreak, and he proves here unequivocally gifted as a storyteller.


– Edward Goldberger

NY Sun
NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

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.


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