Half Moon

aka Niwemang
Bahman Ghobadi, France-Iraq-Iran, 2006 (8.6*)
A legendary elderly Kurdish musician named Mamo (Ismail Ghaffari), living in Iran, has finally received government permits, after months of trying, to travel to Iraqi Kurdistan for a final reunion concert with his sons.

They set out on the journey in a derelict bus, but Mamo feels he needs a female singer (Golshifteh Farahani), who are banned in Iran, one he remembers who has the 'voice of a siren'. This excursion to a town of exiled female singers leads to one of the most unforgettable scenes in all of film, as hundreds of women line the rooftops of the town and sing in unison. This scene alone makes this film a must-see for all cinephiles, as there is nothing like it in any western film.

Mamo's journey becomes a metaphor for life, with the old bus becoming a symbol for old, failing bodies. Ghobadi's films are eye openers for those of us in the west - his Turtles Can Fly is perhaps the best anti-war film ever made, in which he used real Kurdish war orphans as the cast to tell an unforgettable and poetic tale.

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Baran

Majid Majidi, Iran, 2001 (8.4*)
aka Hamsay-e Khoda
A locan Iranian teen, Latif (Hossein Abedini) loses his position at a construction site to an illegal Afghan refugee named Bahrat (Zahra Bahrami, who does all her acting with just her eyes, never speaking a word), hired because an accident injured his father with a broken leg. He seeks revenge through a series of pranks, only to discover that Rahmat is actually a girl. Local officials are constantly raiding the site, searching for illegal Afghan workers, who work for less and take jobs away from Iranian citizens (gee, sound familiar?)

Latif begins to feel for the girl, forced to lift heavy bags of cement and to do other demanding labor, and begins to seek out her family in a nearby village of refugees. He discovers more about himself as he finds out about the plight of Raman's family.

This is a small unpretentious film, perhaps a bit light on story development, that says a lot about the universal human condition, and especially about war refugees forced out of their native lands and to seek survival any way they can. It manages to be touching without sentimentality, and loving without romance or personal concerns.

Majidi's films (Children of Heaven) concern the poor and working classes and their struggle for survival, and hopefully can help westerners dispel their prejudices against this part of the world and other religions.

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Almost Famous

Cameron Crowe, 2000 (8.8*)
When he was a 15-year old teen, Crowe convinced Rolling Stone magazine through some letters that he was an adult rock music critic. Surprisingly, he was selected to follow an up-and-coming rock band on the road and report on the tour. This film humorously documents that period in Crowe's life, and Crowe himself won an Oscar® for the screenplay.

Patrick Fugit plays the teen, William. Frances McDormand is terrific, as usual, as his mom, Mrs. Miller. Kate Hudson, daughter of Goldie Hawn, was a breakthrough as groupie "Penny Lane" (obviously named after the Beatles song); she steals the movie, and garnered an Oscar® nomination for supporting actress as a result. [photo rt, w Fugit]

Jason Lee and Billy Crudup are the singer and guitarist in the band. This is a funny and at times touching take on the lifestyle of rockers, from the band to the fans to the critics. This is one of the more fully realized rock music films, which should make it of interest to all film fans, not just rockers. If you like this, check out his earlier (and even funnier) grunge rock comedy Singles, from 1992.

Overall, the film won 44 awards and got 120 nominations (awards page at IMDB), making it one of the biggest critical successes of any rock film. Both Kate Hudson and Frances McDormand won multiple acting awards for this, and Crowe won several for his screenplay, several for film.

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A Hard Day's Night

Richard Lester, 1964, bw (8.6*)
Perhaps dated a bit by time, talented British director Richard Lester attempts to comically show the world the typical day in the life of The Beatles at the height of the mania inspired by their combination of pop music hitmaking and photo-congeniality, which made them the new Elvis in the hearts of teenage girls worldwide. This movie was in such demand that I remember having to buy tickets in advance, like a music concert, that every showing sold out, and we had to try to hear the film over the unending screaming of all the girls in the theater, especially when they showed Paul onscreen.

Lester does a great job combining the wackiness of silent era comedies, particularly Buster Keaton, with the quirky personalities of the individual Beatles, which was more on the side of amiable British eccentricity rather than frightening sociopathic menaces. These were guys that our moms wouldn't mind having over for dinner, even though, of course, they'd like to give them haircuts first.

This film will remain a seminal rock history movie, as the world could barely take another bad Elvis film, and this gave the genre a needed shot in the arm. The film's cinematography and editing are top notch, placing it levels above all rock music films that preceded it. The film ends in a short version of a Beatles concert, so we're given basically a live performance rather than the canned and dubbed fare that Hollywood was dishing out to pop music audiences. Unfortunately, it also spawned the tv pop pablum beginning with the Monkees, which almost made one hate Lester for what he started.

This will remain a must-see for Beatles and 60's music fans, for others it will be a shallow and silly mockumentary style slapstick comedy, with hardly the weight of a guitar pick. There's no real story here (the Ringo attempt at drama is laughable), it's just an excuse for a dozen music videos, and to introduce the world to more Beatles songs and a ready-made multi-million selling soundtrack.

Unfortunately, this refreshing and well shot black and white classic was followed by the atrocious color disaster Help! That had an even worse pseudo-plot about a magic ring of Ringo's, him being chased by primitives, and there the music videos seemed entirely injected and out of place, so neither the story nor the music worked in that one. At least it produced one of John Lennon's best songs, "You've Got To Hide Your Love Away".

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Youth Without Youth

Francis Ford Coppola, 2007 (8.3*)
Francis Coppola's first directorial effort in ten years is a complex, science fiction edged story based on the novel of Romanian author Mircea Eliade. Underused veteran actor Tim Roth, who is always interesting, plays an elderly linguistics expert, Dominic, whose true love has died, and his own research is at a standstill, when he's struck by lightning while crossing the street one night in Austria in the 30's.

He emerges from the burns a much younger man, and apparently oblivious to aging. His first task is to avoid Nazis and scientists, for he realizes his freedom and life would effectively be over. Dominic eventually meets a woman whose own catharsis is born of lightning, so he finds a new purpose in his research.

Much of the film uses the science of linguistics - languages used in the film include English, Romanian, French, Italian, Mandarin, German, Russian, Latin, Armenian, and ancient (and authentic) Sanskrit, Egyptian, and Babylonian.

This film is another that is not straightforward chronologically, and therefore will anger many viewers who need a nice neat storyline. Here the effort will be rewarding to the more diligent viewer, as the haunting and original story will linger for days afterward.

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The Paper Chase

James Bridges, 1973 (8.2*)
From the novel by John Jay Osborn, Jr., this is a realistic look at the competitive and stressful nature of the first year of law school for a group of freshmen at Harvard. Led by Timothy Bottoms, he and his friends learn they must survive Prof. Kingsfield, an autocratic and tyrannical professor of contract law, who bases his evaluations on the daily browbeating of students using the 'Socratic method'.

While wondering if he's in the right career, Bottoms meets and gets a crush on Lindsay Wagner, without knowing her true identity, which I won't spoil here. The stress of academic life is relieved occasionally with this romance, which some may find unnecessarily distracting, and some light humor, yet the overall tone of the film maintains the stressful nature of law school. Students get summer jobs as apprentices at law firms which could hire them after graduation, so the pressure is on from year one.

Former producer John Houseman (Julius Caesar) is the perfect overbearing yet respectable professor (the epitome of aristocratic haughtiness), earning an Oscar® for this former producer who's rarely seen in front of the camera (Three Days of the Condor), and who certainly steals this movie. Houseman repeated his role for a successful cable tv series based on this film that ran for four years, but it lacked the bite of the original film. The first film directed by James Bridges, who would follow this with The China Syndrome and Urban Cowboy.

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Goodbye, Mr. Chips

Sam Wood, 1939, bw (8.6*)
Based on the novel by James Hilton (Lost Horizon), this is perhaps the quintessential Hollywood film about a teacher, in this case a Mr. Chipping, wonderfully played by Robert Donat in a career defining role, an uptight professor at a private boys school. Over time, he opens up and gains the affection of literally thousands of students in a heartwarming story of transformation. On a vacation (and around age 50), he meets the enchanting Greer Garson (half his age, in the supporting role that made her a star) hiding out from a storm, and she changes his life, as well as giving him his nickname, Mr. Chips.

Perhaps the one flaw in the film is that we get a lot of detail in the beginning and end of his teaching career, but the central portion that forms the core of his adult life is shown as a montage of calendars and images of time passing in just a minute or so. I felt cheated of the stories that would have made the students revere and honor him. We're visually led to believe that simply time moving by is responsible.

Mr. Chips was nominated for 7 Oscars®, including picture, director, screenplay, actress, actor - and many today feel that it was a better picture than winner Gone With the Wind. Robert Donat did receive a well-deserved best actor award, upsetting the more popular Clark Gable. Don't bother with the musical remake starring Peter O'Toole; it's one of those that lends argument to prohibiting remakes at all.

I suppose were I to rank the top films of 1939: (1) Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (2) Goodbye, Mr. Chips (3) The Rains Came (4) The Wizard of Oz (5) The Women
The Rains Came actually won the special effects Oscar® over favorites Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind, for it's incredible depiction of an earthquake, dam collapse, and flood in India in 1916 - it's an underrated and under-viewed classic, featuring perhaps Myrna Loy's finest dramatic performance.

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The Chorus

Christophe Barratier, France, 2004 (8.8*)
One of the few really good films about teachers, a worthy successor to 1939's classic school drama Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Clément Mathieu, a new teacher, played by Gérard Jugnot, volunteers for a remote music teaching post. He thinks it's maybe a small private school, but it turns out to be a near prison for juvenile delinquents, and he's basically a warden as well as a teacher.

This story is about how he gains the affection of his students, as well as shaping their dormant musical talents. This simple story never overreaches nor preaches, but remains perfectly within itself. This heartwarming film was nominated for two Oscars, foreign language film and music, and won 11 international awards (Awards Page at IMDB), 3 for music, 7 for director Barratier. On a short list with Mr. Chips and The Paper Chase (James Bridges, 1973) as great films about influential teachers.

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Aguirre, the Wrath of God

Werner Herzog, Germany, 1972 (8.6*)
German director Werner Herzog often became obsessed with films about obsessed men in pursuit of personal dreams above all other concerns in life. He often chose German actor Klaus Kinski because, as Herzog said, "he was quite mad", and his elastic face seems to project the madness outward for the world to see. Their confrontations are legendary, with the crew having to save Herzog from Kinski's homicidal attacks on occasion.

Kinski is the perfect choice to play Aguirre, an obsessed Spanish conquistador in South America who leads a small band of explorers on a quest for the golden city of legend, El Dorado. This is an adventure of Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness) proportions, as the descent into the wilderness coincides with Aguirre's spiritual descent.

Herzog and Kinski work best together when filming Europeans in primitive settings - Fitzcarraldo is perhaps their best and most fully realized adventure, about an opera lover determined to bring a steamship into the jungle rainforest to provide a floating platform for opera performances. The documentary Burden of Dreams shows just how obsessed Herzog became to achieve this film.

Here, in a film made during a hiatus in the Fitzcarraldo shooting in South America, we get to witness some of Kinski's best acting as a madman descending further into madness in search of the yellow metal. Fans of Herzog, Kinski, or John Huston's Treasure of the Sierra Madre will like this one.

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Cobra Verde

Werner Herzog, Germany, 1988 (7.8*)
Another of director Herzog's adventure films in South America with madman actor Klaus Kinski. Kinski here plays a local Spanish bandit, named Francisco Manoel da Silva, but called Cobra Verde by the locale natives, a man avoided by all when he wanders into town.

A local plantation owner decides he is just the sort of man to oversee his slave operation for his massive sugar cane farms. He soon impregnates all his daughters, and as punishment, is sent to Africa to manage slave procurement there, work not completed in a decade due to local uprisings. The authorities are certain they are sending Cobra Verde off to his death.

However, like Herzog's other films with Kinski, this is about a white man surviving and interacting with local indigenous populations. Though not as fully satisfying as Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre, The Wrath of God, this is the last of their five films together as Kinski died soon after this release, and is still a worthy entry into what could be called the "South American Trilogy" of the Herzog-Kinski collaborations.

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