Can a film be so retro it’s new; so anachronistic it’s a thing of now? Harvard grad Damien Chazelle’s low-budget 16mm black-and-white hand-held, in-your-face jazz musical romance “Guy and Madeline On A Park Bench” pretty much finds (or loses) its audience under its opening credits. A light yet still brassy jazz number accompanies images of a couple in contemporary Boston: a jazz trumpeter and a shy girl. Dance will ensue, as well as breaking out into song. Much of the camerawork and editing feels more like a 1970s student film than a relic of the 1960s or a product of the 2000s, but Chazelle’s willingness to pastiche everyone from Demy to Cassavetes to Godard marks the film as of recent moment. Either its whimsy failed me or I failed it, dunno. When I tell friends about loving musicals, the way they sometimes recoil may be similar to my reaction here. But other reviewers are charmed, including the LA Weekly reviewer who found it “thrillingly innovative,” and the New York Times’ Manohla Dargis, who named it one of the thirty best of 2010. And the Village Voice’s J. Hoberman says it’s “a beautifully shot, rhythmically complex, wildly artistic, willfully eccentric quest for authenticity.” I could well be wrong, or I may just lack the ear for the music on screen. The Bratislava Symphony Orchestra performs Justin Hurwitz’s score. “Presented” by Stanley Tucci. 82m. HDCam video. (Ray Pride)

“Guy And Madeline On A Park Bench” plays Friday-Saturday, Monday-Tuesday and Thursday at Siskel.

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Limber young women in garters gyrate and scheme, live and love, hope and dream. That would include Ali (“short for Alice”), the small-town Iowa girl with large pipes, mom-less since the age of 7, played by Christina Aguilera as well as Cher’s fading boss of a Los Angeles burlesque palace called, fittingly enough, “The Burlesque Lounge.” They all came west in search of their own deeply felt sense of movie-musical cliché. Sex is indicated, but what’s the baddest threat to life, liberty and the pursuit of “Burlesque”? Money. Real estate. A large, wide Sunset Boulevard skyscraper in the making. That emblem of phallic consequence—and vast sums of fiscal investment—weirdly suits the second feature by writer-director Steven Antin, brother of Robin Antin, proprietress of The Pussycat Dolls, who founded that burlesque enterprise in 1995. Read the rest of this entry »

Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky (“Tango & Cash,” “Runaway Train”) delivers the dimmest and least dimensional 3D film of the year. It’s Christmas in Vienna in the 1920s. Uncle Albert (Nathan Lane), a daffy relativist with an Einsteinian hairdo, entertains 9-year-old Mary (Elle Fanning) and her brother Max (Aaron Michael Drozin). In a twist of bewitching, the kids are transported to a rodent Nazified realm under the thumbs of the Rat King (John Turturro) and his mother (Frances de la Tour) where long lines of forlorn children are forced at gunpoint to toss their dolls and toys onto towering piles. Long conveyor belts feed these cherished belongings into the maws of terrifying furnaces. Towering smokestacks billow ominous smoke, while ash-white leaflets fall like snow on the streets below. Mary topples the mean totalitarians to reinstate The Nutcracker (Charlie Rowe) to his rightful throne. “The Nutcracker in 3D” is not for fans of Piotr Tchaikovsky’s score. Far from balletic, this noisy-yet-inert CGI-action fare likely bears little resemblance to the Imperial Russian Ballet’s 1892 premiere in St. Petersburg of the opera based on E.T.A. Hoffmann’s 1816 children’s tale “The Nutcracker and the King of the Mice.” With Richard E. Grant, Yulia Visotskaya and the voice of Shirley Henderson. 101m. (Bill Stamets)

“The Nutcracker in 3D” opens Wednesday, November 24.

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An adaptation of a 1990s Australian stage musical, “Bran Nue Dae” is a corny road movie about young lovers on the run, with an aboriginal cast, set in 1969. Rachel Perkins directs with bright colors and a peppy pace, suggesting an “Up With People” from Down Under. There’s singing from start to finish, but sadly, little movement toward any kind of dancing. The country-ish songs are forgettable. I can’t vouch for the cultural authenticity, but the occasional lyric like “There’s nothing I’d rather be than an Aborigine” rises to the top. Geoffrey Rush is enjoyably over-the-top as a priest in pursuit of a runaway student. The oft-gorgeous cinematography is by Andrew Lesnie (“Babe,” “Lord of the Rings”). With Rocky McKenzie, Jessica Mauboy, Ernie Dingo, Magda Szubanski, Deborah Mailman, Tom Budge, Ningali Lawford, Dan Sultan, ‘Missy’ Higgins. 88m. (Ray Pride)

“Bran Nue Dae” opens Friday at Pipers and Showcase Icon. A trailer is below.

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As a first-time screenwriter and producer, if you choose to trust the end credits of “I’m Still Here,” actor Joaquin Phoenix (“Walk the Line”) has cast himself “as himself.” Actor and first-time director Casey Affleck (“The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford”), co-credited as screenwriter and producer, likewise appears here “as himself” directing a documentary-style profile of an actor who stops acting to start rapping. The teaserly title of this folly of conceits serves as a disclaimer that Phoenix is indeed still acting. And Affleck is likely the co-cinematographer and co-editor, as the credits state. He appeared in “Gerry” (2002) where he also got writing and editing credits. “I don’t want to play the character of Joaquin Phoenix,” says Joaquin Phoenix, while wearing a sports jersey for the Defiance Bulldogs. He announces his retirement from acting, grows a beard, gets fat, tapes his broken sunglasses, abuses his assistants, raps badly and acts like a talentless asshole all at the same time. No one involved acts as if they have anything of interest to say about documentary or celebrity or self-parody. For a better reveal during the end credits, check out Michelle Citron’s doc-deconstructive “Daughter Rite” (1980). With Antony Langdon, P Diddy Combs, David Letterman, Ben Stiller and lots of others who may or may not have signed releases. 108m. (Bill Stamets)

“I’m Still Here” opens Friday at Landmark Century.

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“Filmed and directed” by Beadie Finzi, “Only When I Dance” is a gorgeous-at-moments clear-headed documentary, small in its aims and scope, yet staking a take on class and race by examining dance in modern-day Brazil. Compassion meets passion: Finzi follows Irlan and Isabela, a pair of young students from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro to unlikely success. 14-year-old Isabela, for instance, would be the first black ballerina in a Brazilian company. Referring to the world around her, she says “Everywhere I look, everywhere I go, it’s always dance, dance, dance.” It’s tender, their dreams of culture beyond their own rich landscape; the triumphant moment against the Manhattan skyline is not without precedent, but lovely nonetheless. With Irlan Santos da Silva, Isabela Santos, Mariza Estrella. 78m. HDCAM video. (Ray Pride)

“Only When I Dance” opens Friday at Siskel.

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One of the richest surprises of the summer is the pungent “Peepli Live,” writer-director Anusha Rizvi’s vivid, bustling satire, in the vein of Billy Wilder’s “Ace in the Hole,” or should we say, opening a vein as “Ace in the Hole” does. Natha (Omkar Das Manikpuri) is a poor famer from the small town of Peepli, and if he can’t pay back a government loan, he’ll lose his land. Thoughtfully yet creepily enough, the government also offers aid to the survivors of farmers who commit suicide. Natha’s brother advocates this course of action, Natha tentatively agrees, and soon the big carnival of media and politicians swoop down on Peepli, sweeping Natha’s grave decision out of the way with their own goals and agendas. Rizvi wrestles with Indian village-versus-city issues with bawdy wit and ample charm. Talking to producer Aamir Khan recently, he told me that “Peepli Live,” the first Indian movie to play in competition at Sundance, is indeed atypical of modern Indian filmmaking, and its dark undercurrents make it atypical of much of what’s called independent filmmaking in this country. Read the rest of this entry »

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The third “Step Up” film turns up the dance technique to “dazzle” on the dial, and dumbs down the storylines of “Step Up” (2006) and “Step Up 2: The Streets” (2008) to new lows in laughable. In literal brightness, though, Ken Seng’s digital 3D cinematography beats this year’s other releases in that retooled format. After two installments set at Maryland’s School of the Arts, writers Amy Andelson and Emily Meyer relocate this one to New York CIty. “Hip-hop fairy tale,” to use the tag in the film’s publicity, especially fits. The first two were merely simple-minded stories of teens dreaming of dancing and doing it. This one stuns with its godawful simplicity. Condescension is the only option. If you didn’t look down, you’d miss it, so oblige and enjoy the show. Moose (Adam G. Sevani) says goodbye to his parents, who trust he’s said goodbye to dancing and hello to electrical engineering. But in the next step, he skips his freshman orientation at NYU and dances up mayhem in Washington Park. “Family is family” is the tautological mantra of this fantasy. Family equals dance crew. (Moose’s dad, on screen for under a minute, is the only one to appear in all three films.) Like a backstage musical, this sports dance numbers that upstage the tossed-off plot. Although the choreography and camerawork are nothing like Busby Berkeley’s, certain sequences of eclectic street styles and cheerleader athletics evoke his deco machine aesthetic. Read the rest of this entry »

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(Kynodontas) I’ve thrown out half-a-dozen ways to write about Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Dogtooth,” a weird gem of Greek black comedy made with an uncommonly assured hand. Contemporary Greek cinema, which I’ve watched a lot of in the past decade, sometimes offers moments of grace and beauty but seldom a fully realized film. “Dogtooth” is a revelation, especially arriving from Greece. Even the elder statesman of Greek cinema, Theo Angelopoulos, began a drift into mannerism with “The Weeping Meadow,” no matter how glorious its production. (Angelopoulos has gone on record as being an admirer of Lanthimos, which is in a class with Ingmar Bergman anointing Lukas Moodysson, the brightest hope of Swedish cinema after his second feature.) “Dogtooth,” which I had the fortune to see among a few hundred extremely amused young Icelanders at the Reykjavik Film Festival, attuned to the film’s black world, is funny peculiar, funny ha-ha and a remarkable singularity: it should come across as pastiche, as a rehash of provocations and surrealist gestures past. Read the rest of this entry »

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“Lets go make music-fucking history!” roadie Le Donk (Paddy Considine) says at the start of Shane Meadows’ sweetly, engagingly silly, largely improvised, shot-in-five-days music-scene mock-doc “Le Donk and Scor-zay-zee.” It’s a manifesto on shooting a feature  in five days for just £30,000, but also a lark with a dark heart: “Spinal Tap” meets the Angry Young Men. Considine is paired with real life Nottingham rapper Dean Palinczuk as Scor-zay-zee, a young “talent” he’s certain he can make into the star he almost was fifteen years ago. Meadows’ filmography includes other comedies, but he’s best known for his accomplished dramas set in the Midlands of Britain, including the boxing tale “Twentyfour Seven” (1997) with Bob Hoskins, the scalding “Dead Man’s Shoes” (2004) (also starring the mercurial, compelling Considine), the excellent coming-of-age “This is England” (2006), set during the Falklands War, and the tender miniature “Somers Town” (2008), shot in eleven days. But there’s always a sense of fun somewhere in even the deepest funks of his films, and he lets that lope throughout “Le Donk.” (Meadows captures the spirit of invective, both as catharsis and as performance, very, very well.) And Considine, as always, breathes a convincing character, even amid the detritus of mockumentary scaffolding. (And he doesn’t carry that awful odor of disreputability that is  Steve Coogan’s taint of choice.) Meadows amuses as the doc-maker named “Shane Meadows.” With The Arctic Monkeys, Olivia Colman, Richard Graham, Seamus O’Neill. 75m. (Ray Pride)

“Le Donk and Scor-Zay-Zee” opens Friday at Facets.