Beaches of Agnes (2008)****1/2

In this delightful memoir, the great Agnes Varda recounts the many adventures that have marked her extraordinary time on Earth. Always a better documentarian than a dramatic filmmaker, Varda utilizes a variety of clever visual tools to intimately acquaint us with her 80-year love affair with life. Name any important creative innovation in art, music or culture since WWII, and there you’ll find Agnes, smack dab in the middle of it. Amusing, heartbreaking, never short of amazing, The Beaches of Agnes is a must see for anyone interested in the mysterious forces that compel the serially creative.

---

Still Walking (2008)****

Fans of the classic films of Yasujiro Ozu will enjoy this contemplative drama of family life in Japan. Director Hirokazu Koreeda uses leisurely strolls over hilly terrain as a metaphor for the passage of time and generational change. Quiet, hypnotic and strangely poignant, Still Walking explores a family’s deepest secrets and resentments through reverent scenes that somehow manage to simultaneously evade and confront.

---

Reno 911 Season 4 (2006)*****

Since most of you think I’m a squat-to-pee film snob, you’ll be shocked to know I LOVE this raunchy, insane, just plain goofy comedy about Reno’s far-from-Finest. Pick any season – they’re all hysterical - but Season 4 ranks as my favorite. Along with the usual gang of talented nitwits (Cedric Yarbrough, Niecy Nash, Ben Garant, Thomas Lennon, Carlos Alazraqui, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Kerri Kenney and Mary Birdsong) there’s great guest stars including Paul Rudd, Paul Rubens and the always hilarious Kim Whitley. Her turn as a prostitute more interested in running errands than collaring an abusive pimp is one of the funniest sketches in the show’s history…and that includes a lot of funny sketches. Hey, there’s more to life than that new penetrating Bulgarian art film. Live a little!

Beaches of Agnes (2008)****1/2

In this delightful memoir, the great Agnes Varda recounts the many adventures that have marked her extraordinary time on Earth. Always a better documentarian than a dramatic filmmaker, Varda utilizes a variety of clever visual tools to intimately acquaint us with her 80-year love affair with life. Name any important creative innovation in art, music or culture since WWII, and there you’ll find Agnes, smack dab in the middle of it. Amusing, heartbreaking, never short of amazing, The Beaches of Agnes is a must see for anyone interested in the mysterious forces that compel the serially creative.

---

Still Walking (2008)****

Fans of the classic films of Yasujiro Ozu will enjoy this contemplative drama of family life in Japan. Director Hirokazu Koreeda uses leisurely strolls over hilly terrain as a metaphor for the passage of time and generational change. Quiet, hypnotic and strangely poignant, Still Walking explores a family’s deepest secrets and resentments through reverent scenes that somehow manage to simultaneously evade and confront.

---

Reno 911 Season 4 (2006)*****

Since most of you think I’m a squat-to-pee film snob, you’ll be shocked to know I LOVE this raunchy, insane, just plain goofy comedy about Reno’s far-from-Finest. Pick any season – they’re all hysterical - but Season 4 ranks as my favorite. Along with the usual gang of talented nitwits (Cedric Yarbrough, Niecy Nash, Ben Garant, Thomas Lennon, Carlos Alazraqui, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Kerri Kenney and Mary Birdsong) there’s great guest stars including Paul Rudd, Paul Rubens and the always hilarious Kim Whitley. Her turn as a prostitute more interested in running errands than collaring an abusive pimp is one of the funniest sketches in the show’s history…and that includes a lot of funny sketches. Hey, there’s more to life than that new penetrating Bulgarian art film. Live a little!

Ozon's Hideaway (2009) ✭✭✭1/2

Hideaway is a simple drama told with uncharacteristic restraint by Francois Ozon. The film is all about wounded souls who escape the pressures of city life and attempt to repair themselves in an ivy-covered cottage on the French coast. Ozon takes a break as well, forsaking his typical flights of strange and, on occasion, shocking fancy to channel his pastoral inner-Rohmer. While the film is bookended with dark and dangerous textures, its sprawling middle is leisurely sedate, and replete with life’s unhurried pleasures.

Isabelle Carre, who excels at evoking repressed turmoil, stars as a privileged young woman named Mousse. She and her ersatz bohemian boyfriend Louis – played by Melvil Poupard, star of A Summer’s Tale and perhaps another Ozonian nod to Rohmer – spend their days shacked up in a Parisian rental property owned by Louis’s mother (the icy Claire Vernet). Heroin has become the center of their lives and Ozon effectively depicts the crushing depression junkies endure while awaiting their next fix.

Mousse awakens in the hospital to learn that Louis has fatally overdosed, and only last minute intervention by paramedics saved her from a similar fate. In the process, it’s discovered that she’s pregnant with Louis’s child, and now faces a wrenching decision. At Louis’s funeral, she meets his sympathetic brother Paul (Louis-Ronan Choisy), but the rest of the family makes it very clear they want no part of Mousse or her unborn child.

Ozon shifts the story ahead about 6 months and Paris’s damp grays give way to the bright, dappled splendor of Aquitaine in summer. Mousse has taken residence in a remote stone gite, far from the madding crowd, where the gentle sea breezes comfort her – and her now bulbous belly – in this hour of grief. But Mousse’s hermetic life is interrupted by a visitor, as Paul stops by on his way to a vacation in Spain. And what begins as a brief family visit begins to morph into a roadmap for either Mousse’s salvation, or her final retreat from the outside world.

While much of the film is played as peaceful reverie, there are darker elements of a spiritual battle, tempering Hideaway’s lighter moments with a bittersweet edge. Mousse’s baby bump becomes a sort of totem highly prized by everyone except the mother, including Rohmer regular Marie Rivere who has a brief cameo. Paul’s presence is an effort to establish clarity and a moral compass in Mousse’s torpid world of methadone and self pity. But Ozon presents with a reductive lens; moral questions and Biblical allusions subtly flavor but never dominate.

The film’s ending is surprising, but logical, and we realize that Paul may have been a little too effective as Mousse’s redeemer. While Eric Rohmer’s innocent airheads embarked on seaside idylls to escape the pitfalls of romance, Francois Ozon prescribes a similar therapy for the bigger perils of our age. And with Hideaway, gives audiences a pleasant dose of palliative waters.

Ozon's Hideaway (2009) ✭✭✭1/2

Hideaway is a simple drama told with uncharacteristic restraint by Francois Ozon. The film is all about wounded souls who escape the pressures of city life and attempt to repair themselves in an ivy-covered cottage on the French coast. Ozon takes a break as well, forsaking his typical flights of strange and, on occasion, shocking fancy to channel his pastoral inner-Rohmer. While the film is bookended with dark and dangerous textures, its sprawling middle is leisurely sedate, and replete with life’s unhurried pleasures.

Isabelle Carre, who excels at evoking repressed turmoil, stars as a privileged young woman named Mousse. She and her ersatz bohemian boyfriend Louis – played by Melvil Poupard, star of A Summer’s Tale and perhaps another Ozonian nod to Rohmer – spend their days shacked up in a Parisian rental property owned by Louis’s mother (the icy Claire Vernet). Heroin has become the center of their lives and Ozon effectively depicts the crushing depression junkies endure while awaiting their next fix.

Mousse awakens in the hospital to learn that Louis has fatally overdosed, and only last minute intervention by paramedics saved her from a similar fate. In the process, it’s discovered that she’s pregnant with Louis’s child, and now faces a wrenching decision. At Louis’s funeral, she meets his sympathetic brother Paul (Louis-Ronan Choisy), but the rest of the family makes it very clear they want no part of Mousse or her unborn child.

Ozon shifts the story ahead about 6 months and Paris’s damp grays give way to the bright, dappled splendor of Aquitaine in summer. Mousse has taken residence in a remote stone gite, far from the madding crowd, where the gentle sea breezes comfort her – and her now bulbous belly – in this hour of grief. But Mousse’s hermetic life is interrupted by a visitor, as Paul stops by on his way to a vacation in Spain. And what begins as a brief family visit begins to morph into a roadmap for either Mousse’s salvation, or her final retreat from the outside world.

While much of the film is played as peaceful reverie, there are darker elements of a spiritual battle, tempering Hideaway’s lighter moments with a bittersweet edge. Mousse’s baby bump becomes a sort of totem highly prized by everyone except the mother, including Rohmer regular Marie Rivere who has a brief cameo. Paul’s presence is an effort to establish clarity and a moral compass in Mousse’s torpid world of methadone and self pity. But Ozon presents with a reductive lens; moral questions and Biblical allusions subtly flavor but never dominate.

The film’s ending is surprising, but logical, and we realize that Paul may have been a little too effective as Mousse’s redeemer. While Eric Rohmer’s innocent airheads embarked on seaside idylls to escape the pitfalls of romance, Francois Ozon prescribes a similar therapy for the bigger perils of our age. And with Hideaway, gives audiences a pleasant dose of palliative waters.

Mélo (1986)**

You just never know what Alain Resnais is going to come up with next. Over his long career – in excess of 60 years – he’s created everything from the powerful holocaust documentary Night and Fog, to the one of the most pretentious, impenetrable - and downright prissy - films ever made, Last Year at Marienbad. His most recent emission, 2009’s Wild Grass, came very close to be being a fascinating and seductive romance, only to shatter its own spell with some very strange casting and a truly WTF ending. But these misfires are not really mistakes; I have a feeling his films turn out exactly the way he plans. That wacky Al; he’s such a card.

With Mélo, Resnais seemed to be throwing it all back in his critics' faces. “You want me to stop being creative and just make movies like everyone else? OK, try this on for size!” cried the beleagured director. Mélo is a pot boiling melodrama, pure and simple. Adapted from a play written in 1929, it’s overblown, overwrought, overworked and, by about 20 minutes, overlong. Its narrative structure closely resembles an opera libretto, with a slowly simmering exposition that finally gives way to betrayal, attempted murder, suicide and wrenching remorse. The only thing missing is a hefty Viking woman in full regalia.

Mélo deals with an exceptionally tortured love triangle, consisting of Marcel (Andre Dussollier), a world famous violinist pining for a lost love, Pierre (Pierre Arditti), a childhood friend of Marcel who had to settle for a career as a music teacher, and Pierre’s wife Romaine (Sabine Azema) whose attractive free-spiritedness hides a questionable grip on reality. Backed by intentionally stagy sets, the trio talk themselves blue in the face in the first act – it’s sort of a Rohmer film without the charm – and lay the dramatic groundwork for the gooey maelstrom that follows.

Dussollier gets high marks his efforts here – apparently he missed the meeting where everyone else was informed the film was a parody – and somehow he keeps a straight face and a genuine conviction. His innate elegance and charm pegs him as a sort of latter day Ray Milland, and he pursues his task with admirable fortitude. Azema has neurosis down pat - she plays a similar character in Wild Grass - and here she becomes the embodiment of every amateur theatre director’s idea of a dangerously hot leading lady.

Resnais took a film that showed some early potential and, by injecting the tritest elements imaginable, made it a wobbly weeper. Like many directors, he’s either a talentless hack or a cinematic genius. And at the age of 89, he’s earned the right to be whatever he feels like being. I lean towards the genius side of the spectrum, although at times he’s made it awfully hard to defend that position. As an achievement of a director’s objectives, Mélo should get 5 stars. As a film to actually sit and watch, a rating of 2 is charitable. And I’m sure that’s exactly as Resnais planned.

Mélo (1986)**

You just never know what Alain Resnais is going to come up with next. Over his long career – in excess of 60 years – he’s created everything from the powerful holocaust documentary Night and Fog, to the one of the most pretentious, impenetrable - and downright prissy - films ever made, Last Year at Marienbad. His most recent emission, 2009’s Wild Grass, came very close to be being a fascinating and seductive romance, only to shatter its own spell with some very strange casting and a truly WTF ending. But these misfires are not really mistakes; I have a feeling his films turn out exactly the way he plans. That wacky Al; he’s such a card.

With Mélo, Resnais seemed to be throwing it all back in his critics' faces. “You want me to stop being creative and just make movies like everyone else? OK, try this on for size!” cried the beleagured director. Mélo is a pot boiling melodrama, pure and simple. Adapted from a play written in 1929, it’s overblown, overwrought, overworked and, by about 20 minutes, overlong. Its narrative structure closely resembles an opera libretto, with a slowly simmering exposition that finally gives way to betrayal, attempted murder, suicide and wrenching remorse. The only thing missing is a hefty Viking woman in full regalia.

Mélo deals with an exceptionally tortured love triangle, consisting of Marcel (Andre Dussollier), a world famous violinist pining for a lost love, Pierre (Pierre Arditti), a childhood friend of Marcel who had to settle for a career as a music teacher, and Pierre’s wife Romaine (Sabine Azema) whose attractive free-spiritedness hides a questionable grip on reality. Backed by intentionally stagy sets, the trio talk themselves blue in the face in the first act – it’s sort of a Rohmer film without the charm – and lay the dramatic groundwork for the gooey maelstrom that follows.

Dussollier gets high marks his efforts here – apparently he missed the meeting where everyone else was informed the film was a parody – and somehow he keeps a straight face and a genuine conviction. His innate elegance and charm pegs him as a sort of latter day Ray Milland, and he pursues his task with admirable fortitude. Azema has neurosis down pat - she plays a similar character in Wild Grass - and here she becomes the embodiment of every amateur theatre director’s idea of a dangerously hot leading lady.

Resnais took a film that showed some early potential and, by injecting the tritest elements imaginable, made it a wobbly weeper. Like many directors, he’s either a talentless hack or a cinematic genius. And at the age of 89, he’s earned the right to be whatever he feels like being. I lean towards the genius side of the spectrum, although at times he’s made it awfully hard to defend that position. As an achievement of a director’s objectives, Mélo should get 5 stars. As a film to actually sit and watch, a rating of 2 is charitable. And I’m sure that’s exactly as Resnais planned.

Rain Man (1988)***blu-ray

Rain Man doesn’t even rank among Barry Levinson’s three best pictures – Diner, Avalon and The Natural earn that distinction, in that order – and at times the movie almost suffocates under the weight of its own cuteness. Like leading man Tom Cruise, the film has not worn well, and within its Reagan-era shallowness it’s easy to see why there is so little nostalgia for the 1980s.

Full review posted at IONCINEMA.com

CLICK HERE