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“I’m Pat Fucking Tillman!” were the last words of Pat Tillman, a professional football player who gave up his career in 2002 to become an Army Ranger. It was also the original title of director Amir Bar-Lev’s simmering, furious “The Tillman Story,” a documentary that unravels the military and government cover-up of his death at age 27 by friendly fire near a mountainous pass in Afghanistan. Coinciding with the fakery of the circumstances of the capture and release of Jessica Lynch, Tillman’s death was used to celebrate virtues that the headstrong, freethinking man would never have endorsed. He never publicly explained his choice to leave football and fight, and this agnostic’s intellectual curiosity ranged from religious teachings of other faiths to Noam Chomsky. Was he a hero? Or a victim of an attempt to exploit his death in support of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? His mother, Dannie Tillman, instilled those values in Pat, and her quest to get the government to tell the truth about his death is the emotional center of a keenly observed and subtly structured documentary. (Co-editor-co-writer Joe Bini’s work includes “Wanted And Desired,” Marina Zenovich’s Roman Polanski film.) The memories of his fellow soldiers are often searing, and related in profane terms. Perhaps most infuriating are the layers of deceit in the cover-up of Tillman’s death that Bar-Lev peels away. An emotionally devastating portrait of moral men and women pitted against their own government’s lies, “The Tillman Story” is both fascinating and infuriating. Narrated by Josh Brolin. 94m. (Ray Pride)

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Freed from establishing the background of the French gangster in “Mesrine: Killer Instinct,” director Jean-François Richet (“Assault on Precinct 13,” 2005) is able to leap into courtroom escape and prison-break setpieces for their own explosive pop movie virtues in the second film, “Mesrine: Public Enemy # 1.” The joy that crosses Vincent Cassel’s plumped-up face as he challenges authority, whether bankers at work or judges in their courtroom, is splendid to observe, less a matter of capturing the gangster’s shameless exploits than as a demonstration of actorly verve. You’re conscious of the seductive Cassel as a fine showboat more than him being able to embody the urges of Mesrine as he revels in his newfound notoriety as France’s most wanted crook. Despite all the wigs and mustaches in the world, Mesrine, or Cassel, is always standing out in a crowd. Mathieu Amalric (an Arnaud Desplechin regular) is wry as a criminal accomplice and Olivier Gourmet a cocky cartoon of a police adversary. The reported $80 million budget for the two films again provides for a rich eyeful of 1970s period details. 130m. Widescreen. A review of “Mesrine: Killer Instinct” is here. (Ray Pride)

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The barbarians are coming. From Neil Marshall’s upcoming “Centurion” to Kevin Macdonald’s “The Eagle of the Ninth,” the glories of tactical slaughter are being celebrated by filmmakers across Europe. In this case, it’s Nicolas Winding Refn, the Danish scholar of brutalism (“Bronson,” the “Pusher” trilogy) going full force in the opening passages of “Valhalla Rising” to convince us of a hostile, hallucinatory Viking-populated world of centuries ago. There are echoes of Tarkovsky and Malick in the consistently stunning cinematography, establishing a portentous, mystical tone, and Mads Mikkelsen (“Pusher,” “Casino Royale”) gives his all playing a mute slave known as One-Eye. Still, Refn doesn’t sustain his momentum; the pace is slow, the violence grueling. The opening twenty minutes or so are stellar, and the Scottish locations hold the eye on an extended journey that the Christian Vikings believe is to the Holy Land. As one character observes across the Highlands, “That’s not a curse, it’s just a mist.” And that’s not the sound of the past, that’s just heavy metal. With Gary Lewis, Jamie Sives, Ewan Stewart, Alexander Morton, Callum Mitchell. 100m. 35mm. (Ray Pride)

“Valhalla Rising” opens Friday at Siskel.

RECOMMENDED

The Oscar-shortlisted “Mugabe and the White African” charts the determination of one of the few white farm families left in Zimbabwe since President Robert Mugabe’s violent land-seizure program took effect in 2000. As the country descended further and further into confusion, an indignant Mike Campbell pressed charges of human-rights violations and racial discrimination against Mugabe in an international court in 2008. Lucy Bailey and Andrew Thompson’s brooding documentary is tense and brimming with suspense, effectively playing out as a thriller. Across the course of a year, and coinciding with a presidential election, “Mugabe and the White African” is a terrifying look at the consequences of the breakdown of the rule of law, wherever and under whatever circumstances it might occur. The effective, jangling score is by Jonny Pilcher. 94m. Video. (Ray Pride)

“Mugabe and the White African” opens Friday at Facets.

Writer-director Florian Gallenberger’s earnest, self-important “John Rabe” won four 2009 Lola Awards at the German Film Awards, for best film, lead actor, art direction and costume design. An indifferently mounted historical epic, “Rabe” tells the story of the “Schindler of China,” (Ulrich Tukur, “The White Ribbon”) as some have dubbed him, a German Nazi businessman who saves the lives of 200,000 Chinese during the 1937 “Rape of Nanking” but who died after the war in disgrace. Battle scenes are kept to a minimum, and the stately pace suggests both sincerity and a deep devotion to the idea of film awards. Narration drawn from Rabe’s diaries demonstrates the man’s methodical, dislikeable mind. A romantic subplot burns screen time and flashes of full-frontal nudity distract. However worthy, the life of John Rabe does not produce another “Schindler’s List.” With Daniel Brühl, Dagmar Manzel, Anne Consigny, Zhang Jingchu, Teruyuki Kagawa and a seriously out-of-place Steve Buscemi as an American doctor. 130m. (Ray Pride)

“John Rabe” plays Saturday and Wednesday at Siskel.

“Takers” is reportedly the largest-budgeted production ever from Sony’s Screen Gems division, at $32 million, and several action setpieces show where much of that money must have gone. Alternating between sun-streaked Los Angeles streets and glam, glum-lit club spaces, director John Luessenhop’s bitter, cynical cops-vs.-robbers-vs.-robbers-vs.-Russians über-mastermind heist movie resembles nothing so much as a late 1990s Hong Kong action entry. Luessenhop is sufficiently fond of the city to show street signs in each major scene, including full-on close-ups in one instance. The Hill Street setting of the story’s big caper evokes “Heat” (and “Inception,” shot after this film) but also the thriving exteriors of Kowloon in movies by John Woo and others in the last century. Luessenhop is fond of jerky camera motion that works against spatial sense, depriving some of the pleasures that extended location work should offer. And, in the increasingly operatic shootout in the film’s third act, the soundtrack is reduced to music and thudding sounds as gangsters systematically shoot up several hotel rooms and a corridor. Read the rest of this entry »

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By Ray Pride

I went into Rob Reiner’s “Flipped” fearing a coming-of-age romantic comedy that would live up to Roger Ebert’s notorious pan of the director’s “North”: “I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it.” I love being wrong when foolish expectations get stamped out, and there are moments in “Flipped” to be loved, loved, loved.

An extended piece in the Los Angeles Times in July on the movie’s marketing left me fearful. “I wanted the story to feel timeless and pure, in a time before texting and Facebook,” Reiner told a columnist. “I thought it was important to strip away the technology so we could get at the true emotions and feelings and make it as innocent as possible. I guess you could say I wanted to make it closer to my own childhood.”

In a small town in Michigan along Bonnie Meadow Lane in the six years leading up to 1963, in the season before the murder of JFK, lives a boy, Bryce Loski (Callan McAuliffe) and across the street, a girl, Juli Baker (Madeline Carroll). The values of their respective families resonate through their behavior toward each other, from Bryce’s stodgy, frustrated father (Anthony Edwards, who throws away the line, “I hate cool”) to Juli’s (Aidan Quinn), whose strength and compassion comes from unexpected places. McAuliffe is Cera-esque in the ways that people who don’t like Michael Cera describe that actor: a milquetoast for Juli to invest her substantial imagination in. You wonder what this wonderful girl sees in him: hope, potential, pretty eyes? She’s a smart child, tomboy with pigtails: Carroll has a feline cast to her eyes, a little of the young Anna Paquin to her features. Read the rest of this entry »

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“Nobody kills me until I say so!” There’s a gangster’s declaration for you, the tagline from the fictionalization of the life and exploits of French crime kingpin Jacques Mesrine. Told in two parts, drawn from a memoir, both directed by Jean-François Richet (“Assault on Precinct 13,” 2005), “Mesrine” takes the shape of a sleekly fitted suit for a plumped-up Vincent Cassel more than a fully-fashioned crime epic. But the movie doesn’t aim for “Godfather”-style complexity or Olivier Assayas-style impressionism (as in the forthcoming five-hour “Carlos”), but rather for a rapid-fire action bauble built on scenes of Mesrine’s rise, then ending abruptly in anticipation of the second film (due for release next Friday). Don’t expect the astringent experiments of a movie like Michael Mann’s “Public Enemies” or the code-of-honor classics of Jean-Pierre Melville (“Le Samourai,” “Le Cercle Rouge”): it’s just a rapid-fire bit of brute pop gangsterism with chewy star turns (aside from the magnetic Cassel, there’s a nice cameo from Gérard Depardieu as a mentor to Mesrine). The latest foreign-language release from adventurous Music Box Films, “Mesrine” likely won’t be the success that “Tell No One” and the Millennium Trilogy (“The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo,” “The Girl Who Played With Fire” and autumn’s “The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest”) have been fiscally, but if anyone is going to get mileage out of kicky big-screen foreign-language fare in the U. S. market, it’s that Chicago-based distributor. With Ludivine Sagnier, Cécile de France. 113m. (Ray Pride)

“Mesrine: Killer Instinct” opens Friday at Landmark Century. The second feature opens next Friday. The trailer is below. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Adrift on atmosphere and sublime visual beauty, “Delta,” (2008) Kornél Mundruczó’s contemporary Hungarian fable about a brother, a sister and a house goes for the eyes and the gut. (The eyes win.) In a village along the Danube, a shaggy-bearded prodigal son (Félix Lajko)returns to his home village to find his lovely, grown sister (Orsolya Tóth) and mother working in a pub alongside her violent second husband. He’s inspired to build a dock and log house on an island that had belonged to his late father, and his sister joins him in the construction. Quiet moments lead to tragic circumstances: consider the ancient Greeks to have warned the pair. The story moves as implacably as a stream, sometimes maddeningly so. Magyar countryman Béla Tarr is listed as a script consultant in the opening credits; Terrence Malick’s nature-sensitive work needs no credit. Winner of the International Critics Prize at Cannes. With Lajkó , Lili Monori, Sándor Gáspár, Lajos Bertók, Mari Kiss. 92m. (Ray Pride)

“Delta” opens Friday at Facets. A trailer is below. Read the rest of this entry »

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(Fuk sau, 2009)  Hong Kong action auteur Johnnie To’s “Vengeance” finds Melville-style bursts of creative inspiration in a story that casts French superstar Johnny Hallyday as the criminal vengeur. Where Sylvester Stallone’s approach to action filmmaking in the twenty-first century is piling on with the violent elephantiasis of the setpieces of “The Expendables,” To’s approach is to take the possibilities of the frame, fracturing and reassembling them through inventive, vigorous editing, and taking the entire idea of genre and the artistic possibilities of moviemaking very, very seriously. Very seriously, especially when the subject is action. Logic comes not from plot or strenuous attempts at plausibility, but from kinetic choreography. Action is character. Motion is wit. The cartoonish is the everyday. And Hallyday’s a perfect raincoat man for his age, as Alain Delon, young and beautiful, was in Melville’s “Le Samourai.” Hallyday’s character is a French restaurateur who comes east when Triad gangsters shoot his daughter (Sylvie Testud) and kill her family. He’s named Costello, just like “Le Samourai”‘s Jef Costello; Hallyday was a last-minute replacement for… Alain Delon. With deep-set small eyes and a deeply lined face, Hallyday’s haunted from frame one, almost a reincarnation of the smaller, bulkier Charles Bronson, and once he’s on the streets of Hong Kong, and later, the more exotic streets of Macau, the former Portuguese colony, he’s all business, whether hiring a team of hitmen (the charming Anthony Wong, Lam Ka Tung and Lam Suet) or wielding a weapon himself. There’s some plodding plotting as well as the use of Polaroid pictures that evokes “Memento,” but it’s not worth the remembering: the bold moviemaking in bright, bold colors sears the mind instead. 110m. (Ray Pride)

“Vengeance” plays at Siskel Saturday, Monday and Wednesday. The Hong Kong trailer is below. Read the rest of this entry »