GERALD PEARY

Days and Clouds

GERALD PEARY — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 04:18:06 GMT

Well shot but predictably depressing
Not exactly the escape movie the doctor ordered from abroad for our own economic miseries.

Religulous

GERALD PEARY — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 04:28:14 GMT

Unabashedly agnostic and skeptical
He’s as cocky and smarmy as Michael Moore, but somehow Bill Maher is also more endearing and credible, as he prances about the globe making jest of sanctimonious true believers.

Allah Made Me Funny

GERALD PEARY — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 01:18:34 GMT

But not that funny.
Muslim comedy is still a work-in-progress, to judge by this videotaped rendition of a three-man stand-up comedy show of Muslim-American jokesters.

Blindness

GERALD PEARY — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 01:12:02 GMT

An old-fashioned disaster-movie yarn
The Fernando Meirelles–directed film is, of necessity, less literary and philosophical.

To Hell and Harry

GERALD PEARY — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 23:12:34 GMT

Hell Girl, The IT Crowd
American hetero pornography is, most often, a fantasy celebration of exhibitionist sluttiness, itchy whores on their knees, opening their legs, without a moment’s hesitation or a flicker of shame.

HELL GIRL: Anyone want to revel in teenage shame and humiliation?

American hetero pornography is, most often, a fantasy celebration of exhibitionist sluttiness, itchy whores on their knees, opening their legs, without a moment’s hesitation or a flicker of shame. The primal Japanese porn scenario is different: a sad-faced female is at the center, trembling and virginal, often a “schoolgirl,” and she cries and shrieks as she’s humiliated, penetrated, and soiled. I’m not able to explain this abiding Japanese pleasure in masochistic suffering, but it certainly reappears in a non-pornographic guise in the strange, unhappy anime Hell Girl, a Japanese series dubbed into English and showing on IFC starting this Tuesday, September 30.

Each program is about a kind, vulnerable middle- or high-school student who’s beset by troubles, brought so low and treated so wickedly and unjustly, that there’s no way out, except maybe suicide. Hell Girl dwells in excruciating close-up, as does Japanese porn, on the agony, the distress, the intense psychic pain — and four of the initial five episodes sport attractive young (animated) schoolgirls as their protagonists. Middle-schooler Mayumi is victimized by a pack of bullying mean chicks who make it appear that she’s stolen money and has been going to the bad part of town and cavorting with sordid boys. She is publicly shamed by their sadistic lies — and this is Japan! Teen Ryoko has, for an entire horrid year, been stalked by a cruel policeman. He leaves erotic messages on her e-mail; he breaks into her home and lays a dress on her bed. Ryoko is going mad, but the authorities will do nothing to help her.

All the narratives are the same: innocence unprotected, defiled, defeated. There’s just one slim hope: get to your computer and, at midnight, avail yourself of a weirdo Web site, HellCorrespondence, where you can get help from Hell Girl — but at what a price! A forlorn-eyed, zombie-like teen who resides with her grandmother in the country, Hell Girl hands you a crude straw voodoo doll. Untie the string around the doll’s neck and Hell Girl goes into action. She freaks out your enemy, then ferries him or her to Hell.

A happy ending? Not on your life. If you contract for Hell Girl’s services, you too will end up in Hades when you expire. Damned if you don’t, and truly damned if you do. Why should these poor adolescent-aged kids be faced with such a dilemma? But they are, and each episode ends with the troubling knowledge that the young protagonist is punished for all eternity! Whew! Hell Girl may fly in Japan, but this bummed-out American felt done in after watching the first three pessimistic programs.

Making us stronger

GERALD PEARY — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:09:50 GMT

Boston’s What Doesn’t Kill You scores at Toronto
I’m back from the 33rd Toronto International Film Festival, where the unexpected hit among discerning critics was a Boston-made crime melodrama.

WHAT DOESN’T KILL YOU: Brian Goodman (right, with Mark Ruffalo) has turned his felonious life into an outstanding crime melodrama.

Wicked awesome! Pride of the Hub! I’m back from the 33rd Toronto International Film Festival, where the unexpected hit among discerning critics — check the chirpy reviews in Variety and the Hollywood Reporter and Screen International — was a Boston-made crime melodrama written and directed by an ex-drinker and ex-cokehead and ex-jailbird from Southie. You’ve never heard of Brian Goodman, who bravely re-creates his own seedy, impaired, felonious life in WHAT DOESN’T KILL YOU? Neither had I. But in his first stab at filmmaking, this brawny, unschooled director goes straight to the summit of authentic Boston movies, from The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) to Mystic River (2003). Dare I say it? What Doesn’t Kill You is better, more credible Boston cinema than Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning The Departed. It’s certainly far more heartfelt.

Since 1998, Goodman — paroled and rehabbed — has parlayed his Southie street brio into a freelance acting career, doing character parts in films and TV series. But he couldn’t shake the psychological scarring of his former existence: destitute, sleeping in Southie hallways, years up the river, and almost losing his alienated wife and angry children because of his life of violence and drugs. In search of catharsis, he wrote up his story as a screenplay. In 2001, he brought the script to a new actor friend, Mark Ruffalo. He wanted Ruffalo to play him in a movie.

“Brian hands you a script, ‘This is my life story,’ ” Ruffalo recalled at Toronto. “Thank God I liked it.” He liked it so much that he spent seven years back-of-the-scenes in Hollywood trying to get the movie financed. He related to Goodman’s grim biography so deeply that — and I’ve never seen this before at a press conference! — he broke down crying and became totally speechless when a journalist queried him about playing Goodman.

After a few minutes, he did manage a few words: “It’s a huge responsibility. To know Brian as I do, with all his disadvantages, to see him reliving his life as we shot. It was extremely powerful. I was bowled over.”

“The reality is me and Mark are friends,” said Goodman. “The reality is we’ve both been in a lot of pain. He’s motivated by fear like me.” And when Goodman realized that the gathered journalists really liked What Doesn’t Kill You? “I’ve got stage fright. I feel like I’m in front of the parole board again. This is a miracle dream come true.”

Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women

GERALD PEARY — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 22:07:17 GMT

A darker-than-usual take on the author
As always with Porter, you can expect intelligence in the writing and insights into the bio subject.

Enlighten Up!

GERALD PEARY — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 21:37:42 GMT

A human and profound yoga documentary
How to make a yoga documentary that will satisfy devotees but also entice those who balk at getting down with “downward dog”?

I Served the King of England

GERALD PEARY — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:53:16 GMT

Ambitious but old-fashioned and sluggish
I Served the King of England , though an arresting story, is the least successful of Czech filmmaker Jiří Menzel's film adaptations.

The Grocer's Son

GERALD PEARY — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:55:41 GMT

Nothing much happens here
Le fils de l’épicier is a dull title, but appropriate for Eric Guirado’s competently made, unexciting movie.

Trumbo

GERALD PEARY — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:27:20 GMT

An epistolary embarrassment
Peter Askin’s movie about the left-wing Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo is fine when it’s in standard-bio-documentary mode.

Elegy of Life. Rostropovich. Visnevskaya

GERALD PEARY — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:39:12 GMT

A great and lasting love story
Sokurov makes his position clear: these are true Russian patriots.

As Tears Go By

GERALD PEARY — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:45:30 GMT

Violence and moony romance
Deliriously good-looking Hong Kong actors posture as iconic Hollywood movie stars, with the most gorgeously lustrous lighting and imaginatively off-kilter editing on the planet.

Man on Wire

GERALD PEARY — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 19:26:25 GMT

Enthralling, exciting, and deeply beautiful
His little venture was not only death-defying but highly illegal.

Avant que j'oublie|Before I Forget

GERALD PEARY — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 18:00:07 GMT

Smart and unusual gay movie goes on too long
Director Jacques Nolot stars in this semi-autobiographical tale of Pierre, a one-time gigolo who, now past 60.

Girls Rock!

GERALD PEARY — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:12:14 GMT

An irresistable, haphazard jumble
The effort was valiant, but the documentary is often a jumble of haphazardly shot footage, with too many interview bites, and sketchy sequences.

Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired

GERALD PEARY — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 19:07:00 GMT

An engrossing documentary of the filmmaker's celebrity trial
A 1977 afternoon of drugs and intercourse with a 13-year-old led to Polanski's arrest in California, and to his celebrity trial, the subject of Marina Zenovich’s engrossing HBO tabloid documentary.

Blood money

GERALD PEARY — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 19:42:07 GMT

Adventures in the slave trade
Katrina Browne’s Traces of the Trade is a legendary local documentary, a film on which all hands in Boston indie production seem to have toiled at some point.

NO HAND WRINGING: Browne’s discovery of a dreadful family secret leads to a sober investigation of the Northern slave trade.

Katrina Browne’s Traces of the Trade, which inaugurates P.O.V.’s 2008 season (June 29 on WGBX Channel 44, June 30 on WGBH Channel 2, both at 10 pm), is a legendary local documentary, eight rough years in the making, a film on which all hands in Boston indie production seem to have toiled at some point. (Disclosure note: my wife, Amy Geller, was employed, six years ago, as a line producer for several weeks of Rhode Island shooting.) It was laboriously edited and re-edited, as numerous people with documentary savvy were called in for consultation. Several years ago, I was privy to one of the endlessly retooled rough cuts.

But who wasn’t rooting for Traces of the Trade to find its way? Browne’s tale is an extraordinary one; it’s also urgent revisionist American history. In 2000, while soaking up her family genealogy, the proud saga of the wealthy, powerful, and respected DeWolf clan of Bristol, Rhode Island, Browne made an astonishing discovery. She learned that the DeWolfs had been, for three generations, our sovereign nation’s #1 family of slave traders. Never mind that their home base was in the “abolitionist” North — they became filthy rich by transporting African captives (10,000 in all) in shackles from Ghana to Cuba, selling them there for a massive 25 percent profit, then loading up with sugar and rum and sailing home triumphant to Bristol, where they built lovely mansions and funded the religious murals in their Episcopal churches.

Browne, a nice, liberal theology student, was horrified, as well she should be. What to do about these big bad DeWolfs? In 2001, she sent out a call across the USA to the DeWolf diaspora, inviting everyone to join her on a trip re-creating the slave journey, and thus acknowledging the evil that built the DeWolf empire. Sixty relatives answered back; nine hearty DeWolfs actually signed on for the journey, which, with their consent, also would be filmed. (Browne’s cousin, Thomas Norman DeWolf, has written a book on the experience for Beacon, Inheriting the Trade.) A camera crew followed the DeWolfs from Bristol to Ghana to Havana. Between emotional explorations of the actual hell spots of the slavery route, the family members sat about in circles and pondered what they saw, and their current-day responsibility in facing up to racism.

Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts

GERALD PEARY — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 14:57:08 GMT

A quietly hagiographic film biography
Glass comes off as a likable, unassuming presence and also a bit of an enigma.

Bra Boys

GERALD PEARY — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 21:57:13 GMT

Awkward and amateurish take on hooligan surf tribe
A cheaply produced Australian documentary of local interest, now exported to America.