In a Better World

Opening this weekend: In a Better World, directed by Susanne Bier

Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film!

Synopsis from the film's website:

Anton is a doctor who commutes between his home in an idyllic town in Denmark, and his work at an African refugee camp. In these two very different worlds, he and his family are faced with conflicts that lead them to difficult choices between revenge and forgiveness.

Anton and his wife Marianne, who have two young sons, are separated and struggling with the possibility of divorce. Their older, ten-year-old son Elias is being bullied at school, until he is defended by Christian, a new boy who has just moved from London with his father, Claus. Christian's mother recently lost her battle with cancer, and Christian is greatly troubled by her death.

Elias and Christian quickly form a strong bond, but when Christian involves Elias in a dangerous act of revenge with potentially tragic consequences, their friendship is tested and lives are put in danger. Ultimately, it is their parents who are left to help them come to terms with the complexity of human emotions, pain and empathy.

Queen to Play

Opening this weekend: Queen to Play, directed by Caroline Bottaro

Synopsis from AllMovie:

A middle-aged maid with few prospects before her finds a new lease on life via the game of chess, in this unusual tale that marked the first directorial go-round of acclaimed scriptwriter Caroline Bottaro (Les Aveux de l'innocent). French screen siren Sandrine Bonnaire (À Nos Amours) stars as Hélène, a Frenchwoman employed as a housekeeper in a posh Corsican hotel. Though devoted and diligent as a wife and mother, she lacks any real passion in her life. That changes in a single, defining instant when Helene espies a mysterious couple (the female played by Jennifer Beals) exchanging erotic glances and seductive gestures over a chessboard, on a nearby balcony. Feeling sexual arousal, Hélène misguidedly tries to parlay this into her own personal life by giving her boatworker husband an electronic chessboard, but the connection between this and a need for greater intimacy eludes him. Hélène's curiosity about chess nonetheless endures, and when she fails to teach herself to play sans assistance, she turns to an eccentric, reclusive American whose house she cleans, Dr. Kroger (Kevin Kline) and asks him to mentor her in the game. In time, her expertise outstrips Kroger's and she begins to live and breathe chess, but this very passion also threatens to alienate the woman's family, who perceive a form of infidelity in this new obsession.

Wretches & Jabberers

Opening this weekend: Wretches & Jabberers, directed by Gerardine Wurzburg

Synopsis from the movie's website:

In Wretches & Jabberers, two men with autism embark on a global quest to change attitudes about disability and intelligence. Determined to put a new face on autism, Tracy Thresher, 42, and Larry Bissonnette, 52, travel to Sri Lanka, Japan and Finland. At each stop, they dissect public attitudes about autism and issue a hopeful challenge to reconsider competency and the future.

Growing up, Thresher and Bissonnette were presumed “retarded” and excluded from normal schooling. With limited speech, they both faced lives of social isolation in mental institutions or adult disability centers. When they learned as adults to communicate by typing, their lives changed dramatically. Their world tour message is that the same possibility exists for others like themselves.

Between moving and transformative encounters with young men and women with autism, parents and students, Thresher and Bissonnette take time to explore local sights and culture; dipping and dodging through Sri Lankan traffic in motorized tuk-tuks, discussing the purpose of life with a Buddhist monk and finally relaxing in a traditional Finnish sauna. Along the way, they reunite with old friends, expand the isolated world of a talented young painter and make new allies in their cause.

From beginning to end, Thresher and Bissonnette inspire parents and young men and women with autism with a poignant narrative of personal struggle that always rings with intelligence, humor, hope and courage.

Netflix It: Innocence

Available through Netflix: Innocence, written and directed by Lucile Hadzihalilovic

Synopsis from AllMovie:

A strange institution prepares young girls for their future in a manner they don't truly understand in this surreal drama laced with fantasy. Iris (Zoe Auclair) is a six-year-old girl who arrives in a coffin (though alive and well) at a remote boarding school, where she and a handful of other girls are looked after by teachers Mademoiselle Eva (Marion Cotillard) and Mademoiselle Edith (Hélène de Fougerolles). Handpicked for the school and taken away from their families at a young age, each girl's age and place in the school's hierarchy is identified by the color of ribbon they wear in their hair (the oldest students, about 12, get purple ribbons), and they are forbidden to leave the campus grounds. Violating the rules is dealt with harshly, and their lessons focus on little besides ballet and biology. Each evening, the older girls are taken away to a different program they are not allowed to discuss, and the students get the impression that they are somehow being trained for future responsibilities, though what and why both remain a mystery. The first feature film from writer and director Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Innocence was adapted from a short story by Franz Wedekind.

Netflix It: Going the Distance

Available through Netflix: Going the Distance, directed by Nanette Burstein

I fully expected this to be terrible, but Going the Distance is that rarest of gems—a romantic comedy in which two appealing actors portray likable characters whom we want to end up together. Shocking concept, I know. And the guy isn't a total loser, and the gal isn't an uptight prig! And chemistry! And Bechdel test! And no pedicures!

Synopsis from AllMovie:

Drew Barrymore and Justin Long star in this romantic comedy about a long-distance romance that may be worth fighting for. Garrett (Long) is still nursing the wounds from a recent breakup when he meets Erin (Barrymore), an unflinchingly honest girl with a big talent for bar trivia. Hitting it off immediately, the pair spend a romantic summer together in New York City. It was supposed to be a summer fling, but as fall approaches and Erin returns to San Francisco, the spark is still there. Subsequently dividing his days between working and hitting the bars with best friends Box (Jason Sudeikis) and Dan (Charlie Day), Garrett drops everything whenever Erin calls. The more Garrett's phone rings, the more his pals begin to suspect that their drinking buddy is taking the relationship a little too seriously. And they're not the only ones; Erin's sister, Corrine (Christina Applegate), is keen to ensure that her smitten sibling doesn't repeat the mistakes of her past, and she makes no attempts to sugarcoat the fact that she disapproves of the coast-to-coast romance. But the heart wants what the heart wants, and as the texting becomes more intense, both Garrett and Erin start to suspect that their summer fling may just be the real thing.

Desert Flower

Opening in theaters this weekend: Desert Flower, directed by Sherry Hormann

Cracks

Opening this weekend: Cracks, directed by Jordan Scott

Synopsis from AllMovie:

A teacher who prides herself on being different meets a student who matches her nonconformist nature in this period drama. It's 1934, and Miss G (Eva Green) is a teacher at a private school for girls near the eastern coastline of England. While most of the teachers at the school are severe and strait-laced women who reinforce its reputation as a repressive environment, Miss G is more youthful and glamorous than her colleagues, and enjoys dropping hints of a free-spirited past to her young charges. Miss G encourages her students to challenge conventional norms of the day, and organizes a diving team at the school, which she oversees with great interest. Miss G also sees a danger in the cliques that dominate the school, and she tries to undermine them, much to the annoyance of Di (Juno Temple), who holds a high place in the school's pecking order. But things change for both Miss G and her students when Fiamma (Maria Valverde) enrolls at the school. Fiamma is from Spain and has a strong independent streak; she doesn't look to her peers for approval and insists on doing things her own way, which makes her all the more exotic and appealing to the other students. Fiamma also earns the approval of Miss G, but before long rumors begin to spread that the teacher's interest in her new student is more than academic.

Motherland

Opening this weekend: Motherland, directed by Doris Yeung

Synopsis from the film's website:

After a long absence abroad, a young Asian American woman, Raffi Tang, is called home when her estranged mother is murdered. She becomes increasingly drawn into a web of deception and incompetence while at the same time dealing with her own grief. The ultimate betrayal leads to her confronting truths in her family that have been hidden for far too long. The American Dream can come at too high a price.


Confusingly, the film shares a title with a documentary by Jennifer Steinman about women who've lost children. Rotten Tomatoes, for one, can't seem to tell the difference.

Red Riding Hood

Opening this weekend: Red Riding Hood, directed by Catherine Hardwicke


I am excited about this movie and will plunk down money to see it, not because I love Hardwicke (Twilight was a little too much plotless-meditation-on-the-beauty-of-R-Pattz for me), but because she is one of the few women out there directing potential blockbusters and I want her to succeed, damnit! Also, I love Amanda Seyfried.


Synopsis from AllMovie:

Amanda Seyfried stars in this dark retelling of the classic Little Red Riding Hood fable, set in a medieval village where a werewolf has been terrorizing the citizens. Though the night has become a more and more dangerous time for the villagers, who never know when the beast will leave more bodies strewn in its wake, Valerie is a girl on the brink of womanhood, and is so preoccupied with her love and lust for an orphaned woodcutter that she risks leaving herself vulnerable — both literally and figuratively. Meanwhile, the townspeople hire a werewolf hunter (Gary Oldman) to track down the monster and kill it before it wreaks more bloody havoc. But as suspicions brew, the people of the once peaceful town begin to turn on each other, letting the innocence of their formerly happy community fall further and further into the past.

The movie's official website is here.

Foreign Parts

Showing at MoMA: Foreign Parts, directed by Véréna Paravel and J.P. Sniadecki


Synopsis from the MoMA website:

With the support of Harvard University’s Sensory Ethnography Lab, anthropologists Véréna Paravel and J. P. Sniadecki spent two years filming this intimate portrait of the auto repair shops and junkyards that lie in the shadow of the New York Mets’ Citi Field Stadium, in Willets Point, Queens, and the hardscrabble community of immigrants who work and live there. Once ignored and neglected by the city government, these residents recently became the target of a $3 billion redevelopment project of malls, offices, and high-rise condos. The rezoning and gentrification of the area, while perhaps less notorious in the annals of aesthetic crime than the destruction of Manhattan’s Penn Station, has been no less destructive to the vitality and diversity of New York City. Foreign Parts was awarded Best First Feature and a Special Jury Prize at the Locarno Film Festival, and was a highlight of the 2010 New York Film Festival.

The Desert of Forbidden Art

Opening today: The Desert of Forbidden Art, directed by Amanda Pope and Tchavdar Georgiev

Synopsis from the film's official website:

How does art survive in a time of oppression? During the Soviet rule artists who stay true to their vision are executed, sent to mental hospitals or Gulags.

Their plight inspires young Igor Savitsky. He pretends to buy state-approved art but instead daringly rescues 40,000 forbidden fellow artists’ works and creates a museum in the desert of Uzbekistan, far from the watchful eyes of the KGB. Though a penniless artist himself, he cajoles the cash to pay for the art from the same authorities who are banning it. Savitsky amasses an eclectic mix of Russian avant-garde art. But his greatest discovery is an unknown school of artists who settle in Uzbekistan after the Russian revolution of 1917, encountering a unique Islamic culture, as exotic to them as Tahiti was for Gauguin. They develop a startlingly original style, fusing European modernism with centuries-old Eastern traditions.

Ben Kingsley, Sally Field and Ed Asner voice the diaries and letters of Savitsky and the artists. Intercut with recollections of the artists’ children and rare archival footage, the film takes us on a dramatic journey of sacrifice for the sake of creative freedom. Described as “one of the most remarkable collections of 20th century Russian art” and located in one of the world's poorest regions, today these paintings are worth millions, a lucrative target for Islamic fundamentalists, corrupt bureaucrats and art profiteers. The collection remains as endangered as when Savitsky first created it, posing the question of whose responsibility is it to preserve this cultural treasure.

Dear Lemon Lima

Opening today: Dear Lemon Lima, directed by Suzi Yoonessi

Synopsis from AllMovie:

Lovelorn and lonely, 13-year-old Vanessa Lemor (Savanah Wiltfong) plots to win back her popular ex-boyfriend Philip (Shayne Topp) by winning a minority scholarship to the private academy he attends, but finds her plan backfiring when she's immediately lumped in with the unpopular kids. Vanessa is a Yup'ik (Western Eskimo) with a major crush on Philip. Though they were dating for a while, Philip cut things off in order to spend the summer in Paris. Heartbroken, Vanessa pours her heart out to her imaginary friend, Lemon Lima. Then, just when it seems that all hope is lost, Vanessa hatches a brilliant plan to enroll in the same school as Philip and win back his heart. Upon arriving at her posh new school, however, the smitten student receives the brush-off from her former boyfriend and winds up in the company of the misfits known as the FUBARs. Later, when it's announced that the students will be participating in the annual Snowstorm Survivor competition, the unpopular new arrival rallies her reject friends in a concerted effort to take first place, and impress Philip in the process. But as the even gets under way and the competition heats up, Vanessa begins to reevaluate her priorities and question her devotion to the boy who rejects her at every opportunity.

The movie's official website is here.