Film

BendFilm and the Tower kick off the Series with the Breast Cancer DiariesFor a few days in October, the Tower Theatre becomes home to the
BendFilm festival, packing the historic venue with diehard film buffs,
as well as locals who just like to get a taste of independent cinema
without leaving town. But when the festival closes down, documentaries
and out-of-the-mainstream feature films, although not completely vacant
from our cultural landscape, are much tougher to find.

While some
might think of BendFilm as an entity existing only during that long
weekend in October, the organization has teamed with the Tower Theater
to present a bi-monthly series of independent films from the festival's
library and beyond. Kicking off Indie Reels is The Breast Cancer
Diaries, a film documenting a woman's battle with the disease.

These pirates don’t have scurvy.This is one of those highly entertaining, insightful, humorous,
fact-filled documentaries that can be enjoyed by those on both sides of
the political fence, despite its clear agenda.
I saw this movie
at the BendFilm Festival and was glad to see our local community radio
station KPOV 106.7 FM bringing the documentary to McMenamins on
Wednesday. As a DJ on KPOV, I confess that I'm somewhat biased -
sharing an affinity for the free-speech rights of local broadcasters
over large media conglomerates, having volunteered at the station for
more than three years.

How many 60-year-olds can kill like this?Let's get this straight right off the bat, something I'm sure we ALL
know … DO NOT MESS WITH RAMBO. This movie sledgehammers that fact home
by combining preachy stereotypes and super-gore. And you know what?
Parts of it are actually all right.
Rambo opens with grisly authentic
stock footage of the atrocities in Burma (oddly never referred to by
the nation's present-day name of Myanmar). Stallone said he wants this
movie to carry a "real" message, so people will become aware of the
genocide that plagues Burma, but then he chucks himself into a fake-ass
drama smack-dab in the middle of it, allowing him to come across as a
hero, "find" himself and kill tons - and I mean tons - of people in the
meantime.

Nothing like a good ol’ fashioned awkward moment…The Savages, the title of which refers to the characters' names as well
as their predicament, is not, as luck would have it, another bleak film
about people behaving badly. It can't avoid being a grim picture in
places, what with its subject matter – the death of a parent by
dementia – likely to provoke nearly universal feelings of dread. But
writer/director Tamara Jenkins (Slums of Beverly Hills) presents The
Savages as a tale of survival, one in which Wendy (Laura Linney) and
her brother Jon (Philip Seymour Hoffman) reshuffle their lives when the
father who abandoned them can no longer care for himself. It's a savage
undertaking, to be sure, but Jenkins isn't interested in death as much
as how death reorganizes the lives it doesn't take.

Just one of the dizzying moments in Cloverfield.After many months of prerelease hype and viral marketing, audiences are
finally getting a look at Cloverfield - a scary, very shaky
(physically, not technically) disaster movie whose effect is often
distressingly real. So real, that some folks I saw it with seemed ready
to vomit.
The premise is that a tape has been found in Central Park
after an unexplained disaster, and our task is to sit back and watch
it. It begins with playful couple Rob and Lily (Michael Stahl-David and
Jessica Lucas) as they speak to one another after a night of apparent
unabashed sexuality.

Welcome to CGI hell. Save yourself the pain, go rent Excalibur.Good lord. The Transporter goes medieval…kinda. This movie is such a pile of horse manure I hardly know where to start. I thought I could give it a semi-pass because kids would like it, but I think kids will feel ripped off. They're too smart for this junk, being exposed to the high-tech CGI world of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. This film is based on a video game of the same name, but it's so defiantly low-budget it falls somewhere below a Robin Hood after-school TV special.

The nutshell description involves Farmer (Jason Statham), a simple man whose wife (Claire Forlani) is kidnapped by ravaging and pillaging "Krugs" (ultra-crummy Lord of the Rings monsters) and his quest to retrieve her. There's an evil Sorcerer, Gallian (Ray Liotta), who commands the army of Krugs, an aging king (Burt Reynolds) whose wisdom is beyond comparison, a wimpy-spoiled-brat heir to the throne (Matthew Lillard) with a traitorous agenda, a good sorcerer (John-Rhys Davies) who wants to make things right, and his daughter (Leelee Sobieski) who stares blankly at any and everything.

If you saw the preview for Marc Forster's (Monster's Ball) adaptation of The Kite Runner and thought the overblown voiceover and tacky gold title made the movie look like a bit of a chore to watch, you're not alone. Little about the preview looked appealing beyond the dark eyes of Khalid Abdalla, who stars as Amir, a writer living in the Bay Area in 2000. A phone call from an old family friend who speaks meaningfully of "a way to be good again" sends Amir home to Afghanistan, but not before Forster treats us to a lengthy, languid flashback that explains some of the caller's mysterious offer.

Pretty Woman II: Dirty DebutantesEarly in Charlie Wilson's War, a speaker intones that without Charlie Wilson, history "would be largely and sadly different." Whether history would be largely different without Wilson – a U.S. Congressman from Texas for 25 years – is debatable but probably accurate, but the reference to sadness caught my attention. Wilson, a buoyant rascal, elevated revelry to an art form, so whether history would have been gloomier without him is beyond a shadow of a doubt. What makes the story of Charlie Wilson's War so irresistible is how a scoundrel and hard-drinking womanizer like Wilson (Tom Hanks) stumbles into the crossroads of history and, once there, has the good sense to stand his ground. What makes Charlie Wilson's War one of the year's best films is how artfully the screenplay plays Wilson's weaknesses into strengths.

Bark at the MoonHere we go with another Japanese remake to accompany The Ring, The Grudge, Dark Water, and Pulse. The original versions have always achieved a creepy ghost story atmosphere, perhaps due to the fact that the Japanese have been telling these "possession" stories for centuries. Now, the tales have become a loose-cannon commodity, as spin-offs run rampant in Japan as well as in the U.S. The only thing the American versions have in common is their ability to botch a potentially cool idea. One Missed Call (a remake of the 2003 Japanese flick Chakushin Ari) is no exception. Although this idea is pretty damn far fetched, even by Japanese horror standards-ghosts in a cell phone? Yeah right, sure.

Among the best films of 2005 was The Squid and the Whale, a dark drama that happens to be wickedly funny. If it leans a little heavily on Wes Anderson (Rushmore), it at least gives fans of Anderson a director to lionize in Noah Baumbach. Produced by Anderson, with whom Baumbach wrote The Life Aquatic, The Squid and the Whale is the story of Baumbach's parents' divorce, a bitter breakup told from the children's point of view. From the perspective of two awkward, bemused teenage boys, the arrogance and stubbornness of their parents - rival writers - feels unexpectedly light and whimsical. The script earned Baumbach an Oscar nomination and a number of passionate supporters. Now his follow-up, Margot at the Wedding, arrives with little fanfare but great expectations.