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.

Per Questi Stretti Morire (Cartografia de una Passione)

At the Venice Film Festival: Per Questi Stretti Morire (Cartografia de una Passione), directed by Isabella Sandri and Giuseppe Gaudrino

Synopsis from the festival's website:

The perseverance, excess and suffering in the life and works of the explorer, filmmaker and photographer Alberto Maria De Agostini (1883-1960) are arbitrarily reinvented. Having left his village in Piemonte at the age of 26 to become a missionary, he reached Patagonia and the Tierra del Fuego in 1910. He scaled mountains, discovered fjords and explored glaciers, naming them all. On encountering the anguish and pain of the destruction of the last Indio natives, he expressed these feelings eloquently through the photo plates and frames of his beautiful film Terre Magellaniche. All of this ends up as an imaginary and chaotic repository of memories, amongst the sad, hoarded remains of “white civilization.”

La belle endormie

At the Venice International Film Festival: La belle endormie, directed by Catherine Breillat

I really liked her Bluebeard, so I'm curious to see what Breillat does with a slightly less weird fairy tale. Although I've heard that earlier versions of Sleeping Beauty had the princess awakening from the suckling of the baby that was conceived and born while she was in her coma. That makes it weirder.

Synopsis from the festival's website:

Once upon a time... In a castle somewhere in a bygone age... The fairy Carabosse cuts the umbilical cord of a newborn babe, a little girl called Anastasia. Three young scatterbrained fairies appear, their cheeks red from running... Too late, says Carabosse, at sixteen the child’s hand will be pierced and she’ll die.

The young fairies burst into tears! Their tardiness didn’t deserve that. Now they must ward off the fatal curse... They just manage to predict that instead of dying, Anastasia will fall asleep for 100 years.

Sleeping for a century is very boring, so they bestow on her the possibility of wandering far and wide in her dreams during those 100 years of sleep...