watching for... lamb of god

"Diablo Cody, the writer behind Juno, will make her directorial debut with Lamb of God. The comedy follows a young conservative religious woman who loses her faith after a plane crash, decides to go to Las Vegas to live the life of a sinner, and on her journey finds her way back to her faith. The company is fast-tracking the project and wants to begin casting as soon as possible."

edited from Hollywood Reporter

in a better world

No longer playing in Vancouver. Watching for the DVD release...

A few years back, two equally remarkable foreign films appeared, at around the same time. I never understood why one of them - The Lives Of Others - was seen and celebrated by pretty much everybody, where the other - After The Wedding - went largely unwatched. Perhaps because the Florian Henkel von Donnersmark film won the Oscar: perhaps because it was directed by someone with the irresistable name Florian Henkel von Donnersmark - Oscar bait for sure. I ended up preferring Susanne Bier's neglected After The Wedding, but that could just be my anti-band-wagon-istic tendencies. This much I'll say: alongside Please Give, one of only two films I can think of about philanthropy.

In any case, this time around Bier nabbed the statue, so one can hope her latest lensing will draw the wider audience that the shiny little dude seems to attract.

I finally managed to see the film the other day and recommend it, though it can be tough going at times. It cuts close, in a city still coping with the display of human violence that was the Stanley Cup riot: it's about violence and power, retribution and conscience, on a schoolyard in Denmark and in Darfur refugee camps.

Not only is it directed by Bier, but the screenplay is by Anders Thomas Jensen, who wrote After The Wedding. Both films are complex, mature, unpredictable, taken up with difficult interpersonal / moral questions. A personal favourite (but definitely not everyone's cup of tea) is the extraordinarily black, extraordinarily bizarre, extraordinarily (Scandanavianly) funny Adam's Apples, also written and directed by Jensen. I really can't escape the impression that he and/or Bier must be Christian, or at least preoccupied with or steeped in Christian faith.  (I see that Jensen/Biers both have roots in the Dogme movement, and have collaborated before, on Open Hearts [2002] and Brothers [2004].)
In A Better World shows only once daily, at 2:30, at the Denman - the last stop for films on their way out of town. And with the demise of Videomatica, I don't know how one will be able to see it once it's gone. So make the effort, before time runs out.

Anton and his wife Marianne are doctors. Much of his time is spent in Africa, where he tends the sick under harsh and even dangerous conditions; she remains at home in Denmark. Now separated, they have two sons, one of whom, Elias, is badly bullied at school — a crisis that endures until a new boy named Christian arrives. At no point does Susanne Bier’s film stray far from the borders of violence, whether it’s the violence of disease, of calculated payback, or simply of insufferable feeling. By and large, the children in the movie cleave instinctively to an Old Testament view of wrongs inflicted and answered, whereas most of the adults, who seem at once weaker and more disciplined, subscribe, at least in theory, to Christian forgiveness. The movie retains grip and grace, and the performances — by the child actors, in particular — quicken the pulse of life. Winner of this year’s Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. In Danish.

Anthony Lane, The New Yorker

Susanne Bier on In A Better World: "It's about the distance between being savable and not savable. At what point does redemption become impossible? Is there such a point?"

now playing... tree of life (terrence malick)

PLAYING June 24-30...
Park 4:00 7:00 9:55 | Sat/Sun add 12:50
International Village Fri Sat Sun Mon Tue Wed: 12:45 1:50 3:55 5 7:05 8:05 10:15

Won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Festival. Kind of the big soul food movie event of the year.

"The story follows a young boy who struggles between being a strong man like his father (Brad Pitt) suggests, or going “the way of nature and the way of grace” like his mother suggests. When he is an adult (Sean Penn) his is still struggling with these two choices as he reaches a pivotal point in his life." flix66

Further notes on Tree Of Life and other Malick films

now playing... bill cunningham new york

CURRENTLY AT THE DENMAN CINEMA
July 1-7, 3:30 daily

Lovely, lovely film. Photography, the streets of New York, and a self-directed man. I think of Ralph Waldo Emerson "On Self-Reliance." I think of the title of that book, "Purity Of Heart Is To Will One Thing." Katie was right: there's even a bit of Soul Food here. Joy, vocation, humility.

“If you don’t take money, they can’t tell you what to do. That’s the key to the whole thing.”

Roger Ebert: "It doesn't matter if you care nothing at all about clothing, fashion or photography. Here is a good and joyous man who leads a life that is perfect for him, and how many people do we meet like that? This movie made me happy every moment I was watching it."

tangled | un-tangling the fairy tale of the gospel

Ken Priebe is a Vancouver animator who writes for Hollywood Jesus. He recently gave a sermon at Cedar Park Church based on Disney's Tangled. There's also a written article which covers some of the same themes.

jun 26 | butch cassidy & the sundance kid | cineplex classic films

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
"Not that it matters, but most of it is true."
Directed by: George Roy Hill
Cast: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Katharine Ross
Plot: Two Western bank/train robbers flee to Bolivia when the law gets too close. Newman and Redford together again, on the big screen!

Sunday, June 26, 1:00pm

Presented in HD. All tickets five dollars. SilverCity Riverport, SilverCity Coquitlam, Colossus Langley, Scotiabank Theatre. The Classic Film Series presents one great title each month on the big screen from September 2010 to August 2011: details here.

BUTCH CASSIDY is available on DVD and Blu-ray at Videomatica

jun 15 & 26 | butch cassidy & the sundance kid | cineplex classic films

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
"Not that it matters, but most of it is true."
Directed by: George Roy Hill
Cast: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Katharine Ross
Plot: Two Western bank/train robbers flee to Bolivia when the law gets too close. Newman and Redford together again, on the big screen!

Wednesday, June 15, 7:00pm
Sunday, June 26, 1:00pm

Presented in HD. All tickets five dollars. SilverCity Riverport, SilverCity Coquitlam, Colossus Langley, Scotiabank Theatre. The Classic Film Series presents one great title each month on the big screen from September 2010 to August 2011: details here.

BUTCH CASSIDY is available on DVD and Blu-ray at Videomatica

jun 11-17 | terrence malick at vancity, park, fifth ave

With Terrence Malick's Tree Of Life having recently bagged the Palme d'Or at Cannes, and opening June 17 at the Fifth Avenue (with a special preview showing at the Park at 10am Sunday June 12), the Vancouver International Film Centre is serving up a Terrence Malick retrospective June 11-16. Good on them. Every one of these films deserves the big screen - most especially the magnificent Days Of Heaven.

Pocket Money (1972) is a Malick-adapted screenplay that I saw back in the day, but can't for the life of me say I remember showing any Malickisms. Badlands (1973) was his first directing gig, very potent, distinctive - a dreamy, haunted In Cold Blood. Days of Heaven (1978) is one of the finest films ever made, a strong personal favourite, and sees the director moving in Soul Food directions with a distinct Old Testament flavour. Twenty years later, The Thin Red Line (1998) aims for the same sort of mystical / transcendent themes in a WW2 movie, but I found the sprawling film confused, confusing and narratively awkward - though it has its enthusiasts. At the time I wondered if the story problems could be chalked up to studio demands to drastically trim the almost six hour film to what was considered a more audience-friendly three hour running time: I wondered if it would hang together better in the director's original cut? But The New World (2005) disinclined me to give Terry the benefit of that particular doubt, when it became apparent that a Malick disjointed narrative was a matter either of intention or ineptitude. I found the film excruciatingly annoying, but its defenders are many, the redoubtable Jeffrey Overstreet among them. I'll be giving the film another chance sometime when I'm feeling patient and contemplative: it's clearly one of those movies that can very much depend on the viewer's frame of mind. And, regardless of one's patience for its disregard for narrative continuity, shape and momentum, there's no denying it's fundamentally and explicitly concerned with matters of faith - indeed, of Faith.

So I await Tree Of Life with anticipation and trepidation. Here's hoping it's another Days Of Heaven, or even a New World I might be more in a state to appreciate. But grand or galling, it's a movie I won't be missing.

Here's a rundown of the Malick-o-rama, chronologically. Note the venues carefully.

The Thin Red Line (1998, 170 mins)

Sat Jun 11  8:45 | VanCity

A war movie unlike any other, Terrence Malick's spellbinding film is a poetic refraction of James Jones's autobiographical novel – an account of the US marines' six-month assault on the Pacific island of Guadalcanal in 1942. Making his first film after two decades' silence, Malick shied away from genre. Instead, he gives us a philosophical meditation on life and death in nature and in man, a choral epic suffused in images of limpid beauty and stark horror.

Tree Of Life (2011, 138 mins)
Sun Jun 12  10am | Park Theatre
Special preview

Days Of Heaven (USA, 1978, 94 mins)
Sun Jun 12  8:45 | VanCity
Directed By: Terrence Malick
Cast: Brooke Adams, Richard Gere, Linda Manz, Sam Shepard
A melodrama pared back to the bone and filtered through the hazy consciousness of a child, this may be an unlikely masterpiece but it's now universally acknowledged as one of the most beautiful films ever committed to celluloid. A turn of the century prairie tale of love and death, it was filmed in Alberta standing in for Texas, at harvest time.

The New World (USA, 2005, 135 mins)
Tue Jun 14  8:45 | VanCity
Directed By: Terrence Malick
Cast: Colin Farrell, Q'orianka Kilcher, Christopher Plummer, Christian Bale, Wes Studi
In his last film, Malick imagined the Americas as they first appeared in the eyes of the British settlers, a verdant Eden of mystery and promise. But he also gives us the European colonialists through the eyes of the natives. This is also a love story, but not a very happy one… his Paradise Lost. It's like a diamond, a rhapsodic reverie that reveals new facets every time you hold it to the light.

Badlands (USA, 1973, 94 mins)
Wed Jun 15  8:45 | VanCity
Directed By: Terrence Malick
Cast: Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Warren Oates
The expanse of the Mid-West supplies the intimate distance of Malick’s directorial debut. Against it, runaway teenagers Kit and Holly seem small and remote. And Malick allows them to stay that way. They may be famous, these killers from the middle of nowhere, but they're still nobodies when you get to know them. Laconic and pure, there aren't many better films about the wide open spaces inside us.

Pocket Money (USA, 1972, 102 mins)
Thu Jun 16   7:00 | VanCity
Directed By: Stuart Rosenberg
Cast: Paul Newman, Lee Marvin, Strother Martin, Hector Elizondo
Charismatic performances from Newman and Marvin enliven this low-key contemporary western, a comedy about a naïve cowboy and his savvier sidekick who get burned on a cattle deal in Mexico. Earning his first studio credit, Malick scripted from a novel by JPS Brown. Stuart Rosenberg (Cool Hand Luke) directs.

Tree Of Life (2011, 138 mins)
Fri Jun 17 | Fifth Avenue

P.S. Some nice screen shots at cinema_fanatic

...thanks, Jason

hollywood theatre closed

Last Sunday, Vancouver's beloved, family-run Hollywood Theatre abruptly closed. "Current owner Dave Fairleigh's grandfather Reginald built the 651-seat theatre in 1935. It's been in the family ever since..." CTV

The cinema was used in a 2007 film called Married Life - some stills are posted here.

Really, really sad.  A visit to the Hollywood was time travel, for under ten bucks.

The final evening they screened Cinema Paradiso. Perfect choice. What I would have given to be there for that.

photo from kitsilano.ca