metroactive.com | sanjose.com | metrosiliconvalley.com | MARCH 21-27, 2012
Samuel Goldwyn Films
38
REVIEW
metroactive FILM
New
Revivals
DELICACY
CASABLANCA
(PG-13; 108 min.) See review on page 37. (Opens Fri at Camera 3 in San Jose.)
(1941) A 70th-anniversary screening hosted by TCM. (Plays Mar 21 in San Jose at Santana Row, Century 20 Great Mall and other local theaters.) (RvB)
FOOTNOTE (PG; 103 min.) The story of a family conflict in the world of Talmud studies. Directed by Joseph Cedar. (Opens Fri at Camera 3 in San Jose and the Aquarius in Palo Alto.)
THE HUNGER GAMES (PG-13; 142 min.) See review on page 40.
JEFF, WHO LIVES AT HOME
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Survivor ANDREW ERWIN and his brother, Jon, who photographed, co-wrote and produced October Baby, were inspired to make the film by the activism of Gianna Jessen. Jessen claims that she was aborted at seven months via saline injection and survived. After this, Jessen naturally had terrific health issues, redefined for the purposes of this fictional film as some unexplained “hip surgery” Hannah (Rachel Hendrix) once endured. Hannah, a 19-year-old college student, collapses with asthma during a student play. The event triggers questions about her background; she learns from her physician father (John Schneider, who played Pa Kent in Smallville) that she was adopted. Thus, Hannah and Jason (Jason Burkey) head to Mobile, Ala., to find out why her birth-mother decided not to have her. The script’s attempts to give Hannah some personality fail. She says she shows her crazy side when she plays Scrabble, and we don’t even see her play Scrabble. Any sympathy we might have for this ultimate case of maternal rejection subsides when we see how Hannah is pushed into everything. She’s a passive character, who does things by other people’s fiat. There’s Jason, who talks her into the road trip; there’s a Catholic priest who advises forgiveness (Hannah takes the priestly
advice even though she’s a Baptist). Ultimately, Hannah is forced to go home and then hits the road a second time, because of her father’s intervention. It says 2012 on the calendar, but Schneider’s Dr. Jacob is the kind of man who believes that he has the right to ask his daughter’s potential boyfriend what his FZkfY\i 9XYp intentions are. PG-13 While specific about Opens Friday at Alabama backgrounds, selected theaters in Mobile and the Gulf Coast, October Baby has a polished, impersonal, interstate-hotel style, devoid of regional color. October Baby isn’t about the wrongness of one specific kind of abortion, like the late-term abortion Jessen says she lived through. It’s about the wrongness of all abortions, even for fetuses with birth defects. There’s a story in this film about a would-be aborted baby who also lived: “The doctor says that there wasn’t much brain activity ... but we saw him smile.” Shades of Terri Schiavo. October Baby means, ultimately, to provide the anti-choice movement with a horror story of an aborted baby living to confront its mother and to make her weep with guilt.—Richard von Busack
(R; 83 min.) Jeff (Jason Segel), a hulking Baton Rouge child-man, is aptly described by his brother, Pat (Ed Helms), as a “Sasquatch.” He’s entombed with his bong in his mom’s laminated-wood-paneled den. Pat needs help himself; he’s at a crisis point in his marriage with Linda (Judy Greer). This rising, literal bromance is countered with the story of Jeff and Pat’s mom, Sharon (Susan Sarandon, the prize in this package), who is getting paper airplanes over the top of her cubicle and playful but anonymous emails. Like a few filmmakers who started off with small cameras, the Duplass brothers don’t seem to be composing for the large screen. The film has twin payoffs—an act of heroism and a really good kiss. Sarandon is hitting the age where foxy rebellious grandma parts are all that’s waiting for her, so the role gives her a chance to be a lover once more. And the film is a ringing endorsement of the drifty life—in harsh times like these, our cinema needs more bums. Segel is inarguably cuddly, and he brings in the low notes to this underwritten part of a simple, good person, but the dead spaces and air of underachievement go beyond the subject matter. (Plays at selected theaters.) (RvB)
THE KID WITH A BIKE (Unrated; 87 min.) The new Dardennes brothers film tells the story of a an orphaned boy and the woman who agrees to take care of him. (Opens Fri at Century 16 Mountain View.)
OCTOBER BABY (PG-13; 107 min.) See review at left. (Opens Friday at Cinema 20 Oakridge.)
A DOUBLE LIFE/KISMET (1947/1944) Ronald Colman in a fileunder-noir drama about an actor who has played Othello (see below) one too many times. BILLED WITH Kismet, Colman’s dashing beggar who would be a prince, as long as he can get his hands on the princess (Marlene Dietrich with painted curls). (Plays Mar 27-29 in Palo Alto at the Stanford Theatre.) (RvB)
LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING (2003). Majestic. At Minas Tirith, “the white city”: Gandalf (Ian McKellen) tries to rouse the steward Denethor (John Noble) to action. Like all misrulers, Denethor decides to strike out when he’s at his weakest. Good enough, even without the more quiet drama of the ascent of Mt. Doom by Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin), past a radium-green fortress in Mordor. (Plays Mar 23-25 in San Jose at the Retro Dome.) (RvB)
NILES FILM MUSEUM Regularly scheduled programs of silent films. Mar 24: Chaplin in “The Vagabond” (1916), Harold Lloyd in “Bumping into Broadway,” Buster Keaton in “The Paleface” (1921) and Laurel and Hardy in “Why Girls Love Sailors” (1927). Frederick Hodges at the piano. (Plays Mar 24 at 7:30pm at the Edison Theater in Fremont.) (RvB)
OTHELLO/THE STRANGER (1952/1946) Sixty years later, Orson Welles’ Othello is still the finest film version of the tragedy, despite the financial chaos under which it was made and the controversy it stirred. And there was controversy: Andre Bazin’s throat-clearing first paragraph in Cahiers du Cinema: “If one must be for or against Othello, I am for it”; let alone American distributors leery about exhibiting interracial romance. As the starless and Bibleblack warrior, Welles holds his own against Michael MacLiammoir’s Iago. BILLED WITH The Stranger. Welles plays a sinister prep-school teacher with a past; Loretta Young stars as his newlywed bride; and Edward G. Robinson shows up as the U.S. government Nazi hunter. Very good on the late-show level, with a muchimitated finale atop a clock tower.