“Actually our work depends on how much we can appropriate from other people’s work! Painting, music, films, literature … it’s all grist for the mill. We think of our work not as individual creativity but like a lifelong baton relay. Your work passes through your body and your life; you transform it into something, and then you pass it on to the next generation.” Hiyao Miyazaki interviewed by Roger Ebert for The Chicago Sun Times, October 1999

My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
Written by Hayao Miyazaki
Produced by Toru Hara
86 minutes

Picking a film produced by Studio Ghibli is like tasting sushi when you’ve been raised on a diet of meat and potatoes animation from Walt Disney or Hanna-Barbera your whole life. The world of Hayao Miyazaki is one without heroes to cheer, villains to hiss at or talking animals to cue laughter. There are families and houses. Children learn to deal with change and to assume greater responsibility. In addition, the unseen surrounds them. As the story begins, there’s a slight feeling of unease, as well as fascination as the invisible world reveals itself. No film from Miyazaki exemplifies these sublime characteristics like the first to bring him an international audience, My Neighbor Totoro. 10-year-old Satsuki Kusakabe and her bratty 4-year-old sister Mei settle into life in the countryside, where their professor father has moved them to be closer to their mother, who recuperates from a long illness at a local hospital.

The Kusakabes are both excited and disquieted to discover their new house is inhabited by soot sprites, harmless creatures which scatter from light and whisper in the rafters. While Satsuki attends school, Mei explores the yard. There, Mei encounters two forest spirits, overstuffed rabbits which lead her into a magnificent camphor tree where the girl finds an even bigger forest spirit snoozing. Offering the name “Totoro”, the spirit vanishes before Satsuzki can meet him. She gets her chance while waiting for her father’s bus in a downpour and makes an impression on Totoro by introducing him to an umbrella. The spirits return the generosity of the Kusakabes by sprouting their garden to enormous heights. The spirits are unable to heal the girls’ mother and after losing her temper with her sister, Satsuki blames herself when Mei disappears. When search efforts by the townspeople falter, Totoro and his friends step in.

For his fourth feature film, animator Hayao Miyazaki sought a return to his childhood in Sayama Hills, which was farmland in the 1950s before it became suburban Tokyo. Miyazaki’s mother spent many years under bed rest with spinal tuberculosis, a detail that worked its way into the story. Executives at Tokuma Shoten Publishing Co. didn’t feel that sketches of Miyazaki’s nature spirits looked promising, so producer Toshio Suzuki proposed that Totoro be made in tandem with an adaptation of the novel Grave of the Fireflies and released as a double feature. A modest box office success in Japan, Miyazaki’s output began attracting comparisons to Walt Disney. Reaching an agreement with Tokuma for worldwide video distribution of Miyazaki’s films, The Walt Disney Company produced an English language dub of My Neighbor Totoro in 2005 featuring the voices of Dakota Fanning, Elle Fanning and Tim Daly as the Kusakabes.

Miyazaki’s compositions have fantastic depth of field, basking light on the old farmhouses, lush forests and rice fields the characters move past. To those who grew up on Josie and the Pussycats, the novelty of My Neighbor Totoro isn’t just the animation, but its spiritual depth. Respect for the natural world and an open mind toward the unseen course through the story, not as teaching points, but as an alternative to the lifestyle the Kusakabes are retreating from. My Neighbor Totoro is a bounty of both joy and imagination, as if Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are had been adapted for an Eastern audience. The girls are stricken early on with a giddiness that doesn’t cross over very well, something Miyazaki would change with his Oscar winning Spirited Away in 2001, but the pure enjoyment of the film is how different it is. Instead of catering to what the we expect, this magic carpet takes us somewhere different.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 75,711 users: 94% for My Neighbor Totoro

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: N/A

What do you say?

“I think a lot of it has gone into comic books, and to me, in comic books, it’s all about the men — and because they were written in the ’50s and ’60s especially. It just wasn’t where it was at for those writers and there’s only so many band-aids you can put on that to make it relevant for today’s society. There are gorgeous, occasionally kick-ass characters like Scarlett Johansson in Iron Man 2, but in general I don’t think those guys were thinking about women in those ways. I think as long as Hollywood is doing that, there won’t be these amazing action-women characters.” Sigourney Weaver interviewed by Eric Larknik for moviefone, July 2011

Aliens (1986)
Directed by James Cameron
Screenplay by James Cameron, story by James Cameron and Walter Hill & David Giler, based on characters created by Dan O’Bannon & Ronald Shusett
Produced by Gale Ann Hurd
137 minutes (theatrical version)/ 154 minutes (special edition)

Sequels start out as business deals and often build a case of buyer’s remorse among audiences as soon as they drive off the lot, but James Cameron wasn’t interested in business as usual when he signed on for part two of Ridley Scott’s 1979 outer space spookfest Alien. With ideas bountiful enough for three good movies, Cameron races away with a film that laps other sci-fi, horror and war movies for a far greater prize: the mantle of epic filmmaking. Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), lone survivor of the freighter Nostromo, is discovered drifting through space by a salvage crew. Revived after spending 57 years in hypersleep, the home office remains skeptical that Ripley scuttled the Nostromo because a hostile alien (with acid for blood) got on board and killed her crew. The moon where Ripley first encountered the creature is now the site of a terraformed colony which hasn’t reported any trouble. Not yet.

Plagued by nightmares of her ordeal in space, Ripley is notified by smarmy case officer Burke (Paul Reiser) that contact with the colony has been lost. Burke promises to reinstate Ripley’s flight license if she accompanies him and a unit of colonial marines to investigate. These include the green Lt. Gorman (William Hope), quiet Cpl. Hicks (Michael Biehn), cocky Pvt. Hudson (Bill Paxton), two macho gunners (Jenette Goldstein, Mark Rolston) and an “artificial person” called Bishop (Lance Henriksen). The marines find one colonist, a girl named Newt (Carrie Henn) crawling in the ventilation ducts with no sign of the others. Advancing on an atmosphere processing station, the marines with their pulse rifles and motion trackers are overwhelmed by a swarm of ferocious creatures seeking human hosts. Ripley saves what’s left of the unit, which is now marooned with her and Newt in hostile terrain 17 days short of any rescue.

James Cameron was scrambling to finance a low budget sci-fi thriller he’d written titled Terminator when he met with Walter Hill & David Giler. Cameron pitched a few ideas, none of which went over well, until the producers mentioned they were thinking about a sequel to Alien. The up and comer submitted a 40-page treatment for Alien II, which Hill & Giler developed with Cameron, who was retained to write a screenplay. He turned in only 90 pages before departing to direct Terminator, but based on what they’d read, the producers made the unusual call not to hire another writer. Armed with the prestige of The Terminator, Cameron was handed directing duties for the sequel, with his 29-year-old partner Gale Ann Hurd producing a studio film for triple their last budget. Cameron coaxed Sigourney Weaver back, survived a skeptical British crew at Pinewood Studios and again exceeded expectations in the realm of modestly budgeted sci-fi.

Cameron wrote Aliens in tandem with First Blood Part II and without Sylvester Stallone’s input, Aliens persists as an allegory to the colonial wars of past, where superior technology is overrun by an indigenous enemy. As fantastic as the tech is — the next generation power loaders from Caterpillar are beautifully designed and rendered — Aliens is Zulu in deep space. Instead of making a copy, Cameron actually gives each element from the original film sharper and deeper imaging, from the alien biology, to the culture of a maritime shipping corporation, to space travel. What makes this business so engaging are characters drawn with distinctive humor and guts who live and die memorably based on those established traits. Instead of a plot pushing her from point A to point B, Ripley’s fear of the aliens and her desire for motherhood is what drives the expansive narrative, a trick that may be the most enduring Cameron was able to pull off.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 374,363 users: 90% for Aliens

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: N/A

What do you say?

Whoever said that talking about politics, religion or sex on a blind date was a bad idea could just have easily applied that rule to movies. Or maybe like Peter Venkman said, it’s more of a guideline than a rule. I caught two movies recently that were the flip side of the same coin: independently financed romantic dramas ripe with political intrigue, both written and directed by women under the age of 40. Let’s see Blockbuster Video devote a shelf to that genre.

Night Catches Us (2010)
Directed by Tanya Hamilton
Written by Tanya Hamilton
Produced by Ron Simons, Sean Costello, Jason Orans
88 minutes

Tanya Hamilton was born in Jamaica and arrived in the United States with her mother at the age of 8, growing up in Maryland. A young painter for many years, she started making short films as an undergrad at The Cooper Union in New York. When it came to ideas for a feature film, Hamilton was inspired by a close friend of her mother’s, who had once organized a sit-in at the Johnson White House to protest racial violence in Selma and received a 1-year prison sentence as a result. Struck by how you could spend the rest of your life paying for a single decision, Hamilton workshopped a script at the 1999 Sundance Film Lab Institute. She assumed that like classmates Darren Aronofsky (Pi) and Debra Granik (Down to the Bone), getting a feature film off the ground might take her two years at most.

Hamilton’s script — which she began writing at age 31 — was set in Philadelphia 1976 amid the ashes of the once potent Black Panther Party. A 10-year-old named Iris begins to piece together events that led to the murder of her father, a Panther shot by the FBI on information furbished by Marcus, an ex-Panther who returns to Philly to bury his father. Marcus rekindles his relationship with Iris’ mother Patty, now an attorney. A Black Panther project without guns, an adult romance as opposed to a shoot ‘em up, Hamilton spent years listening to financiers tell her “no” until her fiction writing husband urged her to look for private investment from the black community. In June 2009, Night Catches Us finally began shooting in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia.

Playing DVDs on my MacBook, I’ve noticed a link between the quality of a movie and whether I finish it in one sitting or not. If I can make it to the end credits without ever hitting the pause button, that’s worth a 5-star rating. It’s in there with The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three as far as I’m concerned. Taking a break to jump on the world wide web and listen to music or watch Australian backyard rasslin’ on YouTube means something is awry; I lop off one star each time I hop on the web. Taking multiple nights to finish a movie indicates systematic failure by the filmmaker and if I send it back to Netflix unfinished? The ship done sunk. Night Catches Us is not Casablanca, but it’s more than seaworthy; credit Tanya Hamilton and her painter’s aesthetic to keeping my fickle senses peeled to her debut film.

With lush strokes, Germantown PA circa 1976 stands apart from any community I can remember seeing in a film. Pinned between the idealism of the ’60s and the realities of the next decade, uniformly black, the ghetto I was expecting seems overwhelmed instead by nature; trees, creeks, empty space. This gulf carries over into the lives of the characters, who struggle to find a common ground while holding onto the secrets they carry. Vintage R&B platters make cameos on the soundtrack while Philly’s own The Roots provide the low key musical score. It’s such a short, simple story that Wendell Pierce seems under nourished in his role as a crooked cop, but Anthony Mackie and Kerry Washington are credible as the fated ’70s lovers. Tanya Hamilton demonstrates a fantastic eye and ear for adapting her world to film.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 964 users: 60% for Night Catches Us

Metacritic “Metascore” average among 18 leading critics: 65 for Night Catches Us

What do you say?

Logging in to Netflix Instant for a movie to watch is like being hungry and shown to a food replicator. It doesn’t solve my problem — it introduces one thousand new ones. Luckily, I can see which genres are rated higher in nutritional content, in this case, 4 or 4 ½ star ratings out of 5 stars. “Documentary” had a lot of those. So did “Anime & Animation”. In the month of November, I take another trip around the globe to sample recent animated feature films. Next stop: Melbourne, Australia.

Mary and Max (2009)
Directed by Adam Elliot
Written by Adam Elliot
Produced by Melanie Coombs
92 minutes

With its whimsical design and a sonorous screenplay, Mary and Max soars like a Dr. Seuss fable made for grownups. After winning an Academy Award for Best Animated Short with Harvie Krumpet in 2004, Adam Elliot made the rounds at Disney, Pixar and Fox with pitches that fell on deaf ears. Returning to Australia, he began rereading letters by a New York pen pal he’d been corresponding with since the age of 17. Elliot felt that his long distance friend of 20 years — Jewish, atheist, a sufferer of Aspberger’s Syndrome — had all the makings of a character for his next film. Elliot spent six months storyboarding Mary and Max and another year and a half writing a script while producer Melanie Coombs raised financing. Screen Australia, Adirondack Pictures (a New York based film finance company) and Film Victoria ended up bankrolling Elliot’s first feature film at roughly $8 million AUS.

Elliot served as his own art director and designed all the characters for what took 50 crew members 57 weeks to shoot inside a Melbourne warehouse. Mary and Max was screened for the first time when it was selected to open the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, a first for a claymation feature. Elliot’s characteristic clay figures border on the grotesque, but the strength of his writing suggests an award winning graphic novel more than a movie script. Mary and Max is the anti-Shrek, brandishing abundant wit and imagination to do more than entertain kids, exploring characters who struggle to get out the door each morning. The result pushes the boundaries of animation. Barry Humphries (aka Dame Edna) provides the Seussian narration, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s vocal transformation as Max is superlative and even the hilarious product labels in the picture are worth a rental.

In the Mount Waverly suburb of Melbourne in 1976, a Narrator (Barry Humphries) begins “Mary Dinkle’s eyes were the color of muddy puddles. Her birthmark, the color of poo.” A painfully awkward child, 8-year-old Mary Daisy Dinkle (Bethany Whitmore) counts a pet rooster named Ethel as her only friend. Her favorite activities include drinking condensed milk and watching a cartoon called The Noblets, diminutive creatures that appeal to Mary because they never lack friends. Her father Noel works in a factory attaching strings to tea bags. Her mother Vera Lorraine Dinkle consumes liberal amounts of the sherry she uses in her recipes. Meanwhile, in New York, 44-year-old Max Jerry Horovitz (Philip Seymour Hoffman) also watches The Noblets. A chronic overeater who worships chocolate, Max has trouble sleeping and keeping pet goldfish alive.

Mary chooses Max’s name at random from a New York City phone book and writes him, including a Cherry Rite chocolate bar. Max is “confuzzled” by human beings and reacts to Mary’s letter by having an anxiety attack. Calming down, he answers Mary’s questions — like where babies come from in America — with candor. He also details his abhorrence of crowds, bright lights, sudden noises and strong smells, admitting that New York has all of these. Basking in Max’s words, Mary adopts a pen pal. She sends him chocolate. He advises her how to handle being teased at school. Max’s tension is diagnosed as Aspberger’s Syndrome, which adult Mary (Toni Collette) hopes to eradicate by studying disorders of the mind. She falls in love with her neighbor Damien (Eric Bana) and marries, but struggles with self-worth while a continent away Max continues to fight his inner demons.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 4,594 users: 89% for Mary and Max

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

What do you say?

Logging in to Netflix Instant for a movie to watch is like being hungry and shown to a food replicator. It doesn’t solve my problem — it introduces one thousand new ones. Luckily, I can see which genres are rated higher in nutritional content, in this case, 4 or 4 ½ star ratings out of 5 stars. “Documentary” had a lot of those. So did “Anime & Animation”. In the month of November, I take another trip around the globe to sample recent animated feature films. Next stop: Paris, France.

Persépolis (2007)
Directed by Marjane Satrapi & Vincent Paronnaud
Screenplay by Vincent Paronnaud, based on the graphic novels by Marjane Satrapi
Produced by Marc-Antoine Robert, Xavier Rigault
96 minutes

Instead of racing on the cutting edge of technology, Persépolis looks backwards for its inspiration and proves as potent as anything requiring 3-D goggles to enjoy. Chronicling her coming of age during the Islamic Revolution, Paris based cartoonist Marjane Satrapi saw her graphic novel Persépolis published to critical acclaim in 2000. Marc-Antoine Robert of upstart French production company 2.4.7. Films convinced Satrapi that her story should be adapted into an animated feature film. To co-write a script and co-direct, Satrapi contacted her friend Vincent Paronnaud, a comic book artist and filmmaker. So uncomfortable with tech that Satrapi & Paronnaud wrote their script in pencil, financiers in France, Germany and the U.K. responded to the project and co-financed a budget of roughly $8 million. An animation unit of one hundred went to work at a studio in the Tenth District of Paris.

Persépolis would share the Grand Jury Prize at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Film. Pulling back a curtain to reveal to Western audiences the darkness of 20^th century Iran, the strength of the film is its hand drawn charm, which pokes and prods the imagination in ways a live action melodrama of this material never could. Instead of feeling familiar, this story of innocence and uncertainty, family ties and loss, is never at a loss to enthrall. The simplicity Satrapi & Paronnaud bring to a story that is anything but black & white is remarkable, while the wit and visual panache of the cartoonists proves a perfect compliment to film. Once Catherine Deneuve was cast as the mother, the actress’s then 33-year-old daughter Chiara Mastroianni lobbied to play the voice of Marjane.

Arriving at Paris-Orly Airport, 22-year-old Marjane Satrapi (Chiara Mastroianni) handles a severe case of culture shock by lighting a cigarette and reminiscing on her childhood in Tehran. As a child in 1978, “Marji” (Gabrielle Lopes Benites) obsesses over French fries with ketchup, Bruce Lee and Adidas sneakers. Her educated parents (Catherine Deneuve, Simon Abkarian) embrace the revolution that sweeps away the brutal regime of the Shah. Her beloved uncle Abouche (François Jerosme) — a Marxist-Leninist who spent nine years in prison — gains his freedom and predicts that justice will flourish in their country at long last. But when the new Islamic order begins to purge the country of dissidents, Abouche is taken into custody and executed. By 1982, Marji is matching his defiance, mocking the nationalistic rhetoric of her teachers and buying a contraband Iron Maiden tape on the black market.

Through air raids inflicted by Saddam Hussein and domestic crackdowns by the Guard Corps, Marji remains close to her grandmother (Danielle Darrieux), who tries to instill integrity in her granddaughter through uncertain times. Marji’s parents make the decision to send her to school in Vienna. She is accepted by a small group of punk teenagers fascinated by her tales of revolution, but Marji rebels against her Catholic benefactors as instinctively as she did her Islamic teachers. Longing for Iran, Marji returns home, where the streets have been renamed after war martyrs and her father admits times are more brutal than ever. Nearly succumbing to depression, Marji rededicates herself to school and even falls in love. Agreeing to a marriage of convenience at the age of 21, Marji believes she has life almost figured out.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 23,619 users: 92% for Persépolis

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 90 for Persépolis

What do you say?

As days get shorter, nights get longer and All Hallow’s Eve beckons, I can say that I won’t be wandering the streets dressed as Chewbacca begging for candy. What I can’t say is whether or not at my age, horror movies still have any surprises left in them. In the search for originality, it’d be a good idea to start anywhere but Hollywood. For the month of October, I take a trip around the globe to see what’s scaring some of my favorite countries these days.

Left Bank (2008)
Directed by Pieter Van Hees
Written by Pieter Van Hees & Dimitri Karakatsanis
Produced by Bert Hamelinck, Kato Maes, Frank Van Passel
102 minutes

Cut with the same psychological straight razor that splices the great films of Roman Polanski, Left Bank unsettles like only the most powerful thrillers can. After directing several short films in Belgium, Pieter Van Hees was looking to break into features with a project called Dirty Mind, a thriller that had morphed into a social satire. Waiting for financing to fall into place, Van Hees started work on a story “that creeps up in the head of a confused young woman struggling with her relationship.” Having lived briefly on the left bank of Antwerp, Van Hees huddled with writing partner Dimitri Karakatsanis and wrote a script. Brussels-based Caviar Films — producers of commercials, music videos and feature films — had worked previously with Van Hees and raising a budget of €700,000, were prepared to put Left Bank into production ahead of Dirty Mind.

Left Bank is one of those movies that leaves a mark, not with excessive gore or sadism, but overwhelming atmosphere and characters suffering afflictions of modern living that seem almost too real. Its potent blend of sex and mystery gives the film far more weight than what usually plays in American theaters. Left Bank picks up where Rosemary’s Baby and Blue Velvet left off, with an exceptional cast, highly effective sound montage and a disquieting musical score composed by electronic group Eavesdropper and featuring cellist Simon Lenski. While Van Hees and director of photography Nicolas Karakatsanis took visual cues from movies as disparate as The Shining, The Thin Red Line and The Yards, the film swims the same currents as The Ring or Dark Water, driven not by a boogeyman but a spiritual dread that creeps in from every direction.

22-year-old Belgian sprinter Marie (Eline Kuppens) is in training for the European Championships when she meets a car salesman and recreational archer named Bobby (Matthias Schoenaerts). Going out on a date, they return to his apartment on the left bank of the Scheldt River in Antwerp and make impassioned love on the floor. Tearing the cartilage in her knee during a run, Marie moves in with Bobby for some peace and quiet while she recuperates. Her new neighbor Veerle (Sara De Bosschere) notifies Marie that the apartment’s previous tenant Hella Govaerts (Ruth Becquart) mysteriously disappeared. When an envelope arrives for the missing woman with information about the black mud the building was built on, Marie telephones Hella’s boyfriend Dirk (Tom De Wispelaere), who instructs Marie to throw the package away.

During a visit from Marie’s mother (Sien Eggers), Dirk arrives to share research his girlfriend was working on before she disappeared. During The Middle Ages, the left bank was reserved for outcasts: witches, criminal gangs, plague sufferers. The locals believed they lived near a black hole that descended into the underworld. Marie’s mother agrees that she has always felt a negative energy here and urges her daughter to come home. Conducting her own research, Marie discovers a link between a pit in the left bank with the pagan festival of Samhain on All Saint’s Day. As her health deteriorates and her athletic career is jeopardized, Marie confides to Bobby that she wishes she could just start over again. Her mother becomes convinced that an underground stream runs beneath the basement.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 254 users: 46% for Left Bank

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

Kimberly Lindbergs raves about Left Bank on her superlative B-movie blog Cinebeats.

As days get shorter, nights get longer and All Hallow’s Eve beckons, I can say that I won’t be wandering the streets dressed as Chewbacca begging for candy. What I can’t say is whether or not at my age, horror movies still have any surprises left in them. In the search for originality, it’d be a good idea to start anywhere but Hollywood. For the month of October, I take a trip around the globe to see what’s scaring some of my favorite countries these days.

Requiem (2006)
Directed by Hans-Christian Schmid
Written by Bernd Lange
Produced by Hans-Christian Schmid
93 minutes

Grounded with strong performances and anchored in restraint worthy of a parish priest, Requiem is a horror film on a spiritual fast. Hans-Christian Schmid grew up in a small town in Bavaria and had heard of Anneliese Michel, a college student who died in 1976 after the Catholic Church resorted to exorcism rites to treat her demonic visions. Schmid began sketching treatments in 1997 and partnering with screenwriter Bernd Lange, they finished a script in 2004. Their project secured financing from German public television companies BR (Bavarian Broadcasting), SWR (Southwest Broadcasting), WDR (West German Broadcasting) as well as the Franco-German TV network Arte. In her film debut, Sandra Hüller won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 2006 Berlin Film Festival, while critics awarded Requiem the FIPRESCI Prize.

A U.S. production titled The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005) starring Laura Linney and Tom Wilkinson was loosely based on the court case surrounding the Anneliese Michel story. While that version beat Requiem into theaters, the German production rejects special effects and the supernatural, focusing on mental illness and religious dogma and what would lead a normal college girl to an exorcism. Whether this approach was taken for prestige or for lack of money — most of the film is shot handheld by Polish cinematographer Bogumil Godfrejow — the tension in this “horror movie without any horror” is palpable. In her film debut, Sandra Hüller won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 2006 Berlin Film Festival for conveying something as raw and intense as any team of makeup effects technicians could.

In a small West German town in the 1970s, a 21-year-old devout Catholic named Michaela Klingler (Sandra Hüller) is elated by news that she’s been accepted into university at Tübingen. Her strict mother (Imogen Kogge) uses Michaela’s epilepsy to argue against her leaving home, but appealing to her sympathetic father (Burghart Klaußner) that the pills she’s been prescribed have enabled her to go six months without a spell, Michaela is moved in to her dorm by her father himself. In pedagogy class, she makes friends with a high school acquaintance, Hanna (Anna Blomeier). Michaela takes a parish pilgrimage with her family to the Italian shrine of St. Katherine, where her mother gives her a rosary. Sitting alone in a cafeteria, Michaela’s rosary falls to the floor. Trying to pick it up, she becomes paralyzed with fright and goes into a seizure.

With Michaela’s father covering for his daughter by keeping the spell a secret, Michaela begins to blossom at school, sporting a new hairstyle, new fashions and even finding a boyfriend in a chemistry major (Nicholas Reinke). But when Hanna finds Michaela collapsed on the floor of her dorm room one morning, she insists that her friend visit a doctor. When X-rays prove inconclusive, Michaela visits her parish priest (Walter Schmidinger) and reveals that whenever she tries to pray, hideous faces and voices torment her. The priest refuses to accept this, but is concerned enough to visit Michaela at school with Father Borchert (Jens Harzer), a young vicar who is more open minded to Michaela’s story. As Michaela’s spells grow more intense, Borchert contends that the best way to rid the girl of her demons is through an exorcism.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 1,578 users: 64% for Requiem

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 82 for Requiem

What do you say?

The Bechdel Test was named for Allison Bechdel, whose comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For in 1985 measured the female presence in movies by employing three criteria: Are there two or more women in it, with names? Do the women talk to each other? About something other than a man? Far too many mainstream movies flunk this test, but in the month of September, I take a look at ten movies that pass.

Summer Hours (2008)
Directed by Olivier Assayas
Written by Olivier Assayas
Produced by Marin Karmitz, Nathanaël Karmitz, Charles Gillibert
103 minutes

Taking the scenic route through a story with remarkably deep and affecting ideas, Summer Hours books us passage with the most ordinary family seen on film or television all year. The film leapt from notes filmmaker Olivier Assayas scribbled about how art that once meant something very tangible to an artist inevitably ends up locked in the exhibit case of a museum. Ironically, the project was intended as a short to be sponsored by the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. When the Ministry of Culture pulled financing, Assayas got his script to veteran producer Marin Karmitz. With Summer Hours meeting the approval of the typically fussy French film industry — it was French language, with French actors, shot exclusively in France — a budget of €5.6 million ($7.6 million USD) was raised with much less grief than Assayas’s previous feature Boarding Gate.

Premiering March 2008 in France, Summer Hours screened at the Toronto Film Festival in September and the New York Film Festival in October. Despite receiving some of the best reviews of the year, the film received a very limited release May 2009 in the U.S. While its idyllic pace and seeming lack of earth shattering drama didn’t go over well with distributors, Summer Hours paints a bittersweet portrait of a family moving so fast that only the very old and very young seem to notice something being lost. Assayas demonstrates enough confidence in his cast and in the quiet observations of his script that the everyday nature of the film becomes its strength. Director of photography Eric Gautier helps lend a home movie intimacy, while the Musée d’Orsay opened its doors to filming as well as loaning the production its cultural artifacts.

At her country estate, Hélène Berthier (Edith Scob) welcomes her children and their families for her 75^th birthday. Frédéric (Charles Berling) is an economics professor who lives in Paris. Adrienne (Juliette Binoche) is an art designer who now resides in New York while Jérémie (Jérémie Renier), his wife and three children have relocated to China for his job with Puma. They’re heirs to a handful of artifacts — including the house and two priceless paintings by Corot — that belonged to their great-uncle Paul Berthier, a renowned artist. Hélène annoys Frédéric by instructing him what to do with each object once she’s gone. The son announces his intent to keep the house and its items in the family, which Hélène sees as improbable. Housekeeper Eloise (Isabelle Sadoyan) confides to Frédéric that despite her energy, his mother has been depressed lately.

When Hélène passes away, her children reunite for the funeral. As their mother suspected, Adrienne expresses no desire to live in France while Jérémie has been promoted and in need of money, also prefers to sell the house and its treasures. Frédéric laments the verdict to his wife (Dominique Reymond), particularly the loss of the Corot paintings, which he envisioned passing down to his children Sylvie (Alice de Lencquesaing) and Pierre (Emile Berling), teenagers who express little interest in bric-a-brac from another era. Donating several pieces to the Musee d’Orlay to avoid estate taxes, Frédéric doubts whether a vase that once held flowers still means anything locked in an exhibition case. He grants his teens permission to throw a graduation party at the country house before its lease expires and even Sylvie begins to sense something is being lost.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 3,670 users: 60% for Summer Hours

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 84 for Summer Hours

What do you say?

The Bechdel Test was named for Allison Bechdel, whose comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For in 1985 measured the female presence in movies by employing three criteria: Are there two or more women in it, with names? Do the women talk to each other? About something other than a man? Far too many mainstream movies flunk this test, but in the month of September, I take a look at ten movies that pass.

The Burning Plain (2008)
Directed by Guillermo Arriaga
Written by Guillermo Arriaga
Produced by Walter F. Parkes, Laurie MacDonald
107 minutes

Pouring on the melancholy and infinite sadness, The Burning Plain has major credibility problems as well as a title problem, but nearly erases both with a cast and a visual sheen that would be the envy of just about any first-time director. After writing Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel, screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga ended his collaboration with director Alejandro González Iñárritu after Iñárritu let it be known that Arriaga had taken too much credit for the success of those films. Arriaga submitted his script The Burning Plain to Walter F. Parkes & Laurie MacDonald, the husband-wife team who once presided over film production at DreamWorks Pictures. Proposing that he be the one sitting in the director’s chair this time, Arriaga won financing from Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban, whose 2929 Productions, in association with Costa Films, put up the budget.

Shot over eight weeks in Chihuahuan Desert of New Mexico and in Portland for a budget of under $20 million, The Burning Plain screened September 2008 at the Venice Film Festival. It opened in Italy weeks later and was available in the United States via On-Demand cable in August 2009. In a few years, this film might become known as the screen debut of Jennifer Lawrence, who broke out in Winter’s Bone and gives a haunted performance years beyond her age. The stoic Charlize Theron is equally possessed, while directors of photography Robert Elswit (There Will Be Blood) and John Toll (Vanilla Sky, who Elswit recommended shoot the Portland sequences) bend light and shadow with technique that is nothing short of majestic. When it comes to the script, Arriaga has squeezed all the juice out of these solemn, multi-arc, multi-lingual melodramas and leaves fruit pulp.

A trailer parked on a deserted plain is consumed by fire. Sylvia (Charlize Theron) manages a seafood restaurant perched along the Pacific Coast, where she marks time in an emotionless affair with a cook (John Corbett). Shuttled to work by a friend (Robin Tunney), Sylvia notices a stranger watching her. Back in the southwest, teenager Santiago (J.D. Pardo) inspects the remains of the trailer, where his father and mistress were burned alive. Santiago’s mother (Rachel Ticotin) sits out the funeral while the husband (Brett Cullen) of his late father’s mistress shows up to vent at the “wetbacks”. Santiago is much more interested in Mariana (Jennifer Lawrence), the teenage daughter in that family. Meanwhile, crop duster Santiago (Danny Pino), his 10-year-old daughter Maria (Tessa Ia) and partner Carlos (José María Yazpik) fly to a job.

Moving back in time, Nick (Joaquim de Almeida) reconnects with his mistress Gina (Kim Basinger). Sneaking away to a trailer Nick’s cousin has loaned them, Gina is still sensitive about her body following the loss of a breast to cancer. Back in what we believe to be the present, teenaged Santiago and Mariana overcome resistance by their families and get to know one another. Meanwhile, the crop duster suffers a crash. Moving back in time again, Mariana follows her mother to the trailer where she rendezvous with her lover. Recovering in the hospital, the crop duster dispatches Carlos to reunite Maria with her mother. In Portland, Carlos locates the woman, who has changed her name from Mariana to Sylvia and wants nothing to do with Maria. Moving back in time again, Mariana attempts to end her mother’s affair by setting fire to the trailer.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 6,129 users: 57% for The Burning Plain

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 45 for The Burning Plain

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The Bechdel Test was named for Allison Bechdel, whose comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For in 1985 measured the female presence in movies by employing three criteria: Are there two or more women in it, with names? Do the women talk to each other? About something other than a man? Far too many mainstream movies flunk this test, but in the month of September, I take a look at ten movies that pass.

Jennifer’s Body (2009)
Directed by Karyn Kusama
Written by Diablo Cody
Produced by Mason Novick, Daniel Dubiecki, Jason Reitman
102 minutes

Jennifer’s Body is the Heathers of horror comedies, which could be a checkered flag or a red one depending on how many grade levels you’ve completed. Screenwriter Diablo Cody began working on the script in the summer of 2006 as her first screen credit Juno was being directed by Jason Reitman. Obsessed with ‘80s horror movies like The Lost Boys, Cody wanted to write a genre film in her voice with female characters. 20^th Century Fox took Cody’s script off the market via their short lived genre label Fox Atomic, with Cody’s manager Mason Novick producing with Daniel Dubiecki & Jason Reitman. To direct, Karyn Kusama (Girlfight, Aeon Flux) was hired. Financed by Fox in association with private equity partner Dune Entertainment at roughly $16 million, shooting commenced March 2008 in and around North Shore Studios in Vancouver.

As devoted as Diablo Cody may be to horror movies, Jennifer’s Body resembles Heathers more than anything else, laced with acidic wit pointed at high school and the hypocrisies of a community coping with tragedy. Energy is siphoned to poke fun at indie bands as well. While most mainstream horror movies these days are remakes starved for one good idea, Cody crams enough ideas for two or three movies into this one. The problem is none of the threads tie together, while Karyn Kusama isn’t up for the job of pulling together a dark comedy. Even Cody’s pop culture powdered dialogue reaches the point where you can see the tampon joke coming before the characters do. In one word, Jennifer’s Body is lame. Amy Sedaris is criminally underused as Amanda Seyfried’s mom, while Megan Fox — who may never appear in a movie with this much prestige again — is criminally miscast as a girl who speaks.

“Hell is a teenage girl,” reveals Anita “Needy” Lesnicky (Amanda Seyfried) from behind the walls of a mental institution. Needy reacts to a comment about Toastems by kicking the tooth out of an orderly’s mouth. Thrown in solitary confinement, she begins her story. In the town of Devil’s Kettle, Minnesota, the geeky Needy has remained loyal BFF to Jennifer Check (Megan Fox), the femme fatale of the flag corps, since they played in the same sandbox as girls. Jennifer pressures Needy to drop plans with her percussionist boyfriend Chip (Johnny Simmons) and to go see an indie band called Low Shoulder perform at a local bar. The band’s pretty boy lead singer Nikolai Wolf (Adam Brody) sizes Jennifer up as the virgin they’ve been looking for and when the bar burns down in a blaze, makes off with a disoriented Jennifer in his van.

Needy is worried sick about her friend until Jennifer shows up at her house late that night, covered in blood and vomiting an evil black pool onto the kitchen floor. Arriving for the biology class of Mr. Wroblewski (J.K. Simmons) the next day looking fine, Jennifer acts as if Needy imagined the whole thing. Low Shoulder rockets to fame as a result of the fire and their song “Through the Trees” becomes the town anthem as people work to overcome the tragedy. Meanwhile, Jennifer begins luring horny boys to their death, turning into a demon and devouring their innards. She confides to Needy that the night of the fire, Low Shoulder sacrificed her to Satan, who apparently rejected the offering as far from virgin material and endowed Jennifer with the powers of a succubus. Needing to eat in order to stay beautiful, Jennifer sets her sights on Needy’s boyfriend Chip.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 129,517 users: 38% for Jennifer’s Body

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 47 for Jennifer’s Body

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