Beloved Berlin Wall (***1/4)

Sure East Germany was a ruthless police state, but there were things there to be nostalgic about, like the way a West German woman living near a checkpoint could cross into East Berlin and get some very fairly priced groceries. So it is that the perky heroine (Felicitas Woll) of this unusual romantic comedy winds up spilling her packages in view of one of the East German guards (Maxim Mehmet), who quickly descends his tower and comes to her aid.

Unlike an ordinary courtship, theirs is one of carefully arranged meetings and the frisson of danger. A single woman frequenting East Berlin could be a spy, could she not? It is 1989, and the democratic contagion in Poland and Hungary would soon spread west, but meanwhile the Stasi still went about its business. This is all explored with a good deal of cuteness, not entirely different from that in Goodbye, Lenin, the popular film that also displayed a certain kind of nostalgia about the communist era. But when someone does discover the whole affair, there is a stronger reminder of the truly nefarious nature of a totalitarian state. Yet the tone manages to stay light, and the last third of the film becomes a nearly farcical comedy of mistaken identities, questioned loyalties, and bureaucratic bumbling. Bordering on the contrived, it’s kind of clever and charming too.

IMDB link

viewed 4/12/11 at Ritz East [Cinefest 2011 screening] and reviewed 4/12/11

Catfish (***1/4)

If you believe the story told in this documentary—and some people don’t— New Yorkers Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman didn’t set out to make a feature, but just to document the friendship between Ariel’s photographer brother, Nev, and an eight-year-old girl in Michigan. We’ve all heard cautionary tales of grown men and children online, but this is nothing like that, although the anonymity afforded by the Internet is part of the story. It seems that the girl had sent Nev a painting of a photo of his that had been published. And it was good, not My Kid Could Paint That good, but really good. And so, as the movie tells it, Nev began to chat online with the girl, her mother, and her older sister, who seems attractive—and age-appropriate—to Nev. More surprising developments ensue, the details of which are best unknown to anyone planning to see the movie.

Besides the storyline, the film points to the effects of technology on moviemaking and ordinary lives. The filmmakers use portable video cameras to create something that wouldn't have been possible a few years ago. Unless the film is a complete fiction, Joost and the Schulmans wouldn’t have had any reason to document the early part of the story. Yet because Facebook leaves a trail, they're easily able to re-create the history that seemed too trivial to film at the time. Much of the early part of the movie is shots of computer screens, and probably this kind of thing will become trite, but seems novel now. Later, a GPS figures into the story, and cell phones are one key to the mystery that unfolds.

Yet the reason Catfish winds up being something more than a great yarn you could tell someone at a party—no movie needed—is the humanity behind the technology. There’s a point in which the film seems like it may be a little mean-spirited, and then it becomes almost sweet. And the way that happens is really the second big surprise. No doubt the movie is better if you know less about it. But even if I had known the big spoiler everyone’s taking pains not to reveal, the last half would have still been worth a look.

IMDB link

viewed 9/15/10 at Ritz 5 [PFS screening] and reviewed 9/16–26/10

Greenberg (***1/4)

A moody, self-absorbed, depressive is one way to describe Ben Stiller’s character in Noah Baumbach’s third feature as writer-director. Slacker doesn’t quite work because he’s a little too intense. He spends his days doing things like writing complaint letters to airlines. A New Yorker (like all of Baumbach’s characters, so far), he’s in Los Angeles housesitting for his brother, meeting up with old friends, taking care of the family dog, and starting a haphazard relationship with his brother’s assistant/errand girl (Greta Gerwig).

Stiller is best known for playing slightly hapless but likable regular-guy types in comedies such as There’s Something About Mary or Meet the Parents. Less often he plays egomaniacal types who are simultaneously heroes and objects of ridicule, as in comedies such as Zoolander or Tropic Thunder. But he has occasionally played more three-dimensional roles—a junkie in the non-comedy Permanent Midnight, a rabbi in the existential rom-com Keeping the Faith, and an aimless narcissist only intermittently comedic effort.






IMDB link

viewed 5/13/10 at Ritz East and reviewed 6/6/10

Ajami (***1/4)

Tel Aviv natives Yaron Shani and Scandar Copti collaborated on this Oscar-nominated debut feature. Shani is a Jew, but Copti (who acts, too) is a Muslim, and their interwoven stories explore the ways that Jews and Arabs interact in Israeli (and occasionally the Palestinian territories). Almost always, the dramatic thriller avoids we’re-all-the-same-under-the-skin platitudes, or the we’re-all-connected pretensions, of movies like Crash or Babel. The main characters, to the extent there are main characters, are Arab brothers trying to come up with money to avoid the (undeserved) consequences of a family feud, an illegal restaurant worker trying to pay for his mother’s operation, and a police officer trying to solve the stabbing of a fellow Jew.

I doubt that you could make a movie about Israeli Jews and Arabs and not have it reflect the deep tensions between the two peoples, but there are no suicide bombers and no military incursions here, mostly the day-to-day transactions among people who are partly separate and partly intertwined. The politics are those of everyday life in an inherently political setting. The directors play tricks with the chronology, and between that and the large slate of characters, I got confused a few times, and maybe not as emotionally involved as I would have been had they stuck with a couple of major characters. But the inside look at the cultural practices of the Palestinians was intriguing, particularly where a Bedouin elder calculates the monetary payment that can potentially end the cycle of retribution that started with a restaurant shooting.

IMDB link

viewed at Ritz 5 and reviewed 3/18/2010