PDQ

Film, Film Festival, and

Television Reviews

by

Assorted and Sundry

Rabble Rousers

Bend it Like Beckham Young Jess defies her traditional Sikh Indian family in London's suburbs to showcase her talent for football (soccer). She breaks gender, societal, cultural, and racial boundaries as she follows her dream inspired by her idol, English sports star David Beckham. Jess weaves through competition on the field and off, and emerges victorious from a jealously tinged girl-friendship and a crush on her oh-so-cute Irish coach.—COD

Boarding House: North Shore Punch drunk love.—OMH

Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star This formulaic gag reflex of a movie redefines just how trite, dull, and stupid Hollywood can be, and begs this question: Why does David Spade have a job when hundreds of real actors don't? Particularly awful is the closing sequence featuring a "We are the World"-style chorus of aging child stars bitching in verse about how fame ruined their lives. If you paid more than a nickel for your ticket, you'll be screaming, "Just shoot me."—Sam Dlugach

Down With Love Ewan McGregor as Catcher Block may act like a dog in his hounds-tooth jacket, but he really is the cat's pajamas in this spritz of a film that winks at the war between the sexes while it works its 60s fashion sense.—KMH

Finding Nemo Disney's dementia division: When Pixar's kids are bad, they're horrid; remember vicious Sid in Toy Story? Dental (im)patient Darla's no darling in Nemo; she and ditzy Dory swim away with this undersea story.—KMH

Holes Dig it.—Kissin' Kate Monahan Huntley

Keen Eddie starring American actor, Mark Valley, as a U.S. police detective working in London with Scotland Yard. Quirky and quick; Valley is beautifully supported by top flight (Is there any other kind?) British "character" actors.—KRM

The Method Fest You know when Martin Landau arrives in beautiful downtown Burbank to attend your film festival—you're firmly pinned on the indiefest map. The Holiday Inn, the "official hotel" of The Method Fest is also the site of Frank T.J. Mackey's infamous "Seduce and Destroy" seminar in Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia. Talk about method acting . . .—KMH

Nowhere in Africa An elegant evening gown serves as both contentious point of bitterness and savior of sanity for an exiled German Jew family in 1930s Kenya. Internal marital conflict set against the backdrop of WWII — on the vast plains of Africa — is yet another filmic realization of history's necessary lessons.—KMH

Personal Velocity and Women on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown engage us with risqué and at-risk women and their tame-to-tragic tales. Both end with unborn babies who have a personal velocity of their own that will not be denied.—KMH

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl A bit of Shakespeare, silent film, vaudeville, with many asides to a complicit audience. Depp at his most inventive; Rush stole his voice from Hannibal Lechter. All ages may safely enjoy this ride.—KRM

Rabbit-Proof Fence A beautiful film—handled with unusual cultural sensitivity. Kenneth Branagh is his superb self, playing an insensitive civil servant (who genuinely thinks he's civilized and sensitive), the rest of the cast, for the most part, are Aboriginal young people with no prior acting experience. The result, filmed against an arresting Australian background, is a stunning triumph of the human spirit. The rabbit proof fence is a metaphor for the walls that separate the Aboriginal people from the white invaders of their ancestral land. Another example of colonial imperialism gone awry.—KRM

Surf Girls Blue Crush, but with cheesecake and whine.—KMH

Talk to Her Obsessive Love (El Amor Obsesivo), appears to be the theme of Pedro Almodovar's Academy Award winning screenplay. Marco, a journalist, is obsessed by his ex-girlfriend, who was obsessed by drugs. Lydia, obsessed with with being bullfighter, to upset her disapproving father. Benigo, a male nurse, first obsessed by mother, then by Alicia, the comatose girl in his care. Alicia, obsessed by ballet before her accident. Her ballet teacher, played by Geraldine Chaplin in a wonderful turn, obsessed by Alicia and by ballet. The director presents the viewers with a plateful of so-seemed misfits. In the end, however, each character has given something positive to Marco and Alicia, who, the audience is left to believe, will become obsessed with each other, in a healthy way. An interesting footnote: on a bedside table, a Spanish translation of The Hours.—KRM

Whale Rider Winner of Audience Award: San Francisco, Sundance, and Toronto. A 12 year old Maori girl in New Zealand struggles to change her grandfather's patriarchal mindset. Through Paikea 'Pai' Apirana's single-minded persistence and an astonishing ocean journey, she eventually convinces Koro that she is as equally capable as a male to head up their tribe — and that sometimes, certain traditions and cultural ways need to make way for the new. This is an optimistic, mystical, and spiritually uplifting tale the audience really wants to believe in, and therefore wholeheartedly does.—KRM