chrispalmersblog

Directed by Austrian documentary-maker Ulrich Seidl, “Dog Days,” his first
fiction feature, is a multicharacter tale with the raw emotion of a Dogma
drama or John Cassavetes film. It also recalls Robert Altman’s multicharacter
“Short Cuts” in its interweaving of stories and its straight-on look at people
teetering on the edge.

Anna, a deranged woman, spends her days loitering in supermarket parking
lots, begging strangers for rides and then hectoring them with streams of
drivel and personal questions (”Do you still have sex? Do you still
menstruate?”) until they boot her from their cars.

We meet an old man, alone except for his dog, who obsesses over the weight
of each item he buys at the supermarket; a sweaty alarm-system salesman who
goes door to door in the heat; a frail blonde who risks her life with her wild-
seed boyfriend, Mario; and an austere Greek who doesn’t appreciate the ex-wife
who still shares his house (even less so the lovers she drags home).

Seidl shoots these characters with a marked lack of judgment or imposed
values. He’s fascinated by them, aware that they’re foolish and frightening
and unintentionally funny — and yet he never condescends to them. His camera
is shocking in its intimacy, his film surprisingly casual in its depiction of
extreme behavior and the randomness of violence.

Seidl sets “Dog Days” in the outer fringes of Vienna: nondescript highways,
bland tract housing, over-lit shopping malls. There’s a slight absurdist edge -
- the pink-hued sunbathers look like George Segal sculptures — and an
undercurrent of danger as the stifling dog days strain everyone’s nerves.

The film was cast with both professionals and nonactors, but “Dog Days” is
so unaffected, so lacking in artifice, that it’s difficult to know which is
which. This is a lament on the human condition, free of scented roses and free
of solemnity.

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Advisory: This film contains raw language, nudity and sexual situations.

– Edward Guthmann

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‘PREY FOR ROCK & ROLL’

Musical drama. Starring Gina Gershon, Lori Petty and Drea de Matteo.
Directed by Alex Steyermark. (R. 100 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)

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Anyone in any doubt that 40 is the new 30 needs to take a look at Gina
Gershon in “Prey for Rock & Roll.” Joan Crawford in “Mildred Pierce” never
looked like this: With her tight stomach muscles, tattoos, three-toned hair
and enough attitude for two 20-year-olds, Gershon has to be one of the coolest
women on the planet.

The movie is an interesting little curiosity that Gershon produced, based
on a musical written by a rocker named Cheri Lovedog. Gershon plays Jacki, a
woman who dreamed all her life of being a rock star but now, after two decades
of lugging her amplifiers up and down the back stairs, is no closer to her
dream than when she started. Her 40th birthday, just two days away, will find
her with no money, a go-nowhere job in a tattoo shop and no health insurance.
But then, she doesn’t look as if she needs health insurance. She looks pretty
healthy to me.

“Prey for Rock & Roll” doesn’t follow much of a linear story but gives us
the flavor of band life. The bassist, Drea de Matteo (Christopher’s girlfriend
in “The Sopranos”), is a trust-fund baby with a drug and alcohol problem, and
some of the movie is about her flaking out on practice. Lori Petty brings an
engaging, quirky humanity to her role as Faith, a lesbian guitarist also
around 40. As for Jacki, she likes girls, she likes guys, but she loves rock
‘n’ roll.

In most movies about fledgling bands, the band is understood to be either
bad or good, but it takes a while to figure out which of those Jacki’s band is
supposed to be. The loud-fast punk music she plays sounds like something out
of 1983 — maybe it’s come back and no one’s told me — and the songs are
mediocre. They’re made worse by Gershon’s nasal singing, which sounds like
Chrissie Hynde with sinusitis. As good as Gershon looks — that’s how bad she
sounds.

The musical numbers are the only real drag on this otherwise odd and
appealing picture.

Advisory: This film contains simulated sex, strong language and sexual
violence.

– Mick LaSalle

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‘TIBET: CRY OF THE SNOW LION’

Documentary. Directed by Tom Peosay. Written by Sue Peosay and Victoria
Mudd. (Not rated. 100 minutes. At the Opera Plaza and Act One and Two in
Berkeley.)

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Documentaries can be informative, entertaining and provocative, but rare is
the documentary that makes you feel so engaged (and enraged) that it prompts
you to action somehow. “Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion” is that kind of film —
at least for anyone who doesn’t know much about the brutal history of the
Himalayan land.

Since 1950, when China sent troops to subdue the formerly independent state,
Tibetans have lived under the shadow of Beijing, subjugated by a military
authority that has banned the Tibetan language in schools, banned photos of
the Dalai Lama, arrested and tortured dissident monks, killed thousands and
repopulated the region with non-Tibetan Chinese. Jeane Kirkpatrick, the former
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, says in the documentary that “ethnic
cleansing has been under way for 20 years” in Tibet.

Using archival footage and previously unseen still photos, filmmaker Tom
Peosay shows some of this violence, including scenes of monks being kicked,
hit with rifle butts and forced to wear torture implements. Interviews with
monks who fled Tibet for India and other countries give a tearful voice to
anguished Tibetans. Their plight was made worse, Peosay reminds us, by their
betrayal at the hands of Washington, which financed an army of Tibetan rebels
for years (via the CIA) before the Nixon administration pulled the plug in an
effort to appease Mao Zedong.

What gives Tibetans hope is their Buddhist religion (Peosay shows Tibetans
praying and doing rituals in shrines that are visually breathtaking), their
commitment to a nonviolent solution and their resolve (symbolized by the Dalai
Lama, Tibetans’ spiritual leader) to keep bringing their cause to the world’s
attention. Peosay, who spent 10 years making the documentary, includes the
comments of Chinese diplomats who castigate the Dalai Lama and defend
Beijing’s handling of Tibet — but these diplomats’ strained rationalizations
are in stark contrast to the powerful pleas of Tibetans who Peosay shows
protesting for a “Free Tibet.”

“Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion” features a phalanx of well-known Americans
who advocate for Tibet, including Martin Sheen, who narrates the film; Susan
Sarandon and Ed Harris, who do some of the voice-overs; and the group R.E.M.,
which is seen doing a benefit concert. As “Tibet” is released around the
United States, it will undoubtedly inspire some viewers to join Sheen,
Sarandon, Harris and R.E.M. in the Tibet movement. At a minimum, “Tibet” will
change its audiences’ perception of a state that has been blessed with beauty
and majestic peaks and cursed with a strategic location that made it coveted
by rulers from Mongolia, Britain, China and other countries. The history of
Tibet is both sad and inspiring.

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Advisory: This film contains some strong language and scenes of disturbing
violence.– Jonathan Curiel

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‘THE EVENT’

Drama. Starring Parker Posey, Don McKellar and Olympia Dukakis. Directed by
Thom Fitzgerald. (R. 112 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)

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The stakes are low and the mystery is virtually nonexistent in this drama
about an assistant district attorney’s investigation into the circumstances
surrounding an AIDS patient’s death. Was it suicide? Was it an assisted
suicide? These questions form the occasion for a series of flashbacks, in this
heartfelt but interminable movie about a terminally ill man.

Parker Posey, who plays the investigator, has an aura that’s so hip,
downtown and sympathetic that it takes most of the movie to figure out that
she’s supposed to be some kind of villain. Observing a rash of suicides among
AIDS patients, the investigator concentrates on the death of one, a cellist
named Matt (Don McKellar) who took his life at the end of a party, surrounded
by family and friends.

The flashbacks are used to celebrate Matt’s life, but Matt is not an
especially vivid character, and to the extent that he has a personality, it’s
a lousy one. In an early scene, we see him berating an old lady on an airplane
and then setting off the plane’s smoke alarm while smoking pot with his
boyfriend in the bathroom. If director Thom Fitzgerald included the scene in
order for the audience to think, “What a guy, what a loss,” he miscalculated.

Throughout, there’s not much to investigate. If Matt’s suicide was a
solitary act, he is beyond the reach of the law. And if he had help — is
anybody really going to go to jail? Not likely. Lacking any real consequence,
the investigation becomes just a crude means to tell the story. Posey
disappears for long stretches, while the plot details Matt’s physical slide.
Then we get endless scenes of “the event” — Matt’s suicide party — which
looks like a losing combination of dreadfully boring and grotesque, though the
participants seem to be having an uproarious time.

Listen to music online

By the way, look out for the last 15 minutes. There are about seven endings,
each more unnecessary than the last.

Advisory: This film contains drug use, sexual situations and strong
language.

– Mick LaSalle

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‘BOLLYWOOD/HOLLYWOOD’

Musical comedy. Starring Rahul Khanna, Lisa Ray. Directed and written by
Deepa Mehta. (PG-13. 105 minutes. At the Galaxy, Shattuck in Berkeley and
Camera in San Jose).

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“Bollywood/Hollywood” is a musical comedy that’s mirthless and barely
musical. Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta’s attempt to bridge two worlds has to
be the least lively movie ever associated with Bollywood, the Indian film
industry that churns out exuberant melodramas.

The film evokes both Hollywood and Bollywood in that it’s a motion picture.
Otherwise, the ties are tenuous. The title leads to the wrong conclusion that
the film’s opening scene, in which a dying father uses sports cliches to
impart life lessons to his son, is actually a cheesy film within a film. But
the cameras don’t pull back to reveal a facade.

The son, Rahul (Rahul Khanna), has shamed his well-heeled family by taking
up with a non-Indian actress. Their outrage reaches a climax when Rahul’s
grandmother calls the actress a “white whore” to her face. Luckily for all
concerned (especially the viewer, given Jessica Pare’s hammy acting), the
actress character is killed off. Then Rahul meets a real whore (Lisa Ray), or
at least an escort, at an upscale watering hole. Maybe this is the “Hollywood”
part, because he pays her, “Pretty Woman”-style, to pose as his girlfriend for
his mother, who insists that Rahul find an Indian wife.

Rahul thinks the call girl, Sunita, is Spanish pretending to be Indian
until she reveals during a gathering at his family’s mansion that she really
is Indian. That she does so by breaking into a lip-synched Hindi song is a
show of patented, and welcome, Bollywood silliness. Resplendent in sari and
jewels, Ray brings an infectious joy to the moment, even softening Khanna, who
generally plays his role as if he were an insurance adjuster inspecting a
flooded basement.

“Bollywood/Hollywood” has a frustratingly patched-together quality. For
instance, when Rahul first meets his fake girlfriend, she gives no indication
she’s anything but a modern woman having a drink. Only through later
references do we figure out she’s an escort. Also, the family keeps talking up
a women’s “sing-song” to accompany a wedding feast, thus promising the
audience a respite from the flatfooted story. It never happens.

The few remaining musical numbers lack the elaborate staging and glittery
hues that enliven Bollywood productions. One bizarre number has Rahul’s driver
(Rajit Chowdhry) turn female impersonator. In a remarkable display of acting,
Chowdhry keeps his dignity.

Advisory: This film contains raw language.

– Carla Meyer