Our reviewers select and review the best independent and foreign films on amazon.com, cd universe, and netflix

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (USA 2010, 112 minutes, dir: Edgar Wright, cast: Michael Cera, Ellen Wong, Mary Elizabeth Winstead).

Michael Cera, as Scott Pilgrim, has less sexuality than a monkey. Once you can get by his lusting after the unattainable girl in the red wig, this film is one of the more imaginative young love movies of recent times.

It is also one of the few movies shot in Toronto that is actually set in Toronto. Budget filmmakers love to shoot Toronto for New York or Chicago or just about any big city because it looks like just about any big city. Although, to be fair, no New York director would confuse Manhattan and Toronto.

The story is minimal: Scott is a gee wiz kid living with his slacker buddies and second guitar in their band. Romona (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is a recent transplant from New York who appears in the mix of young adults trying to find direction. (She comes to Toronot to find herself? She could have gone to Yonkers).

Soctt persues, she resists. Meanwhile Scott has been dating a high school girl (Ellen Wong) who fights Ramona (Mary Elizabeth Winstead )at every opportunity to keep her man (why does she want him? Never answered).

The strength of Scott Pilgrim vs. The Word is not the story but the style. Director Edgar Wright inserts words, titles, comic book “Pow” and “Crash” in a way that tries to emmulate the graphic novel origins of the story. He suceeds in punching up a ho hum tale with cleverness.

The merger of the graphic novel style with live action film is a next step in evolution of visual presentation, and this movie is enjoyable as a fluffy fling and also, at a future point, a benchmark along the way to a graphic movie form we are only just discovering.

Love Ranch (USA 2010, 117 min, dir: Taylor Hackford, cast: Helen Mirren, Joe Pesci, Sergio Peris-Mencheta).

Helen Mirren has a few sexy miles left in her even when surrounded by a trailer full of gorgeous Nevada whores half her age. She climbs into bed with Spanish hunk Sergio Peris-Mencheta (Armando) who is 30 years her junior.

Why would the actress who won an Oscar for playing Queen Elizabeth (The Queen) want to play the wife and partner of a desert brothel owner (Joe Pesci)? Probably for the same reason Meryl Streep followed It’s Complicated with The Iron Lady.

Actresses of a certain age (Mirren was born in 1945, Streep claims 1949) need to follow class with ass or visa versa. Otherwise they only get offered the roles for wordly wise, flinty, post menopausal grand dames. No one wants to be told, “you’d be perfect as Mother Teresa.”

Love Ranch is very very loosely based on the goings on at the Mustang Ranch near Las Vegas. Charlie (Joe Pesci) and Grace (Helen Mirren) run the joint successfully until Charlie decides they should branch out into the prize fight business. Armando is an Argentine boxer down on his luck. The real Sergio Peris-Mencheta ia actually a Spanish heart throb from Mardrid. He pucnhes his way into Grace’s tough-love heart. His performance is worth the movie.

Digesting the plot requires some teeth gnashing, but there are so many really good scenes you (almost) forgive the rest. Taylor Hackford started his career in documentaries, and maybe this vison of hot sex on the cold desert plateau based on a true story was a reminder of his doc days working for Public TV.

Or maybe it was a chance to give his wife, Helen Mirren, a sexy star turn to wash away the preception that she was more regal than Queen Elizabeth.

Funny how male English actors don’t suffer from being called Sir or Lord, but if a woman is called Dame she’s expected to wear long skirts and go teas. Love Ranch has Helen Mirren playing a nude love scene. See it; because it may be the last time anyone wants to look.

Spoken Word (USA 2009, 116 min, dir: Victor Nunez, cast: Kuno Becker, Ruben Blades, Persia White).

No modern film I can remember is about poetry. Not the kind you read in high school English class, but the slam poetry that is a form of rap with rhythm but no melody. Spoken Word attempts to supply the melody.

Cruz (Kuno Becker) is a west coast poet living sensually with girl friend Shea (Persia White) and teaching poetry to high school kids. He gets a phone call from New Mexico saying his father (Ruben Blades) is dying of cancer and he must come home.

The film has all the usually suspected traumas of returning home again; including alcohol and drugs. Somehow it all looks like a lot cleaner when you throw the empty bottles against adobe walls that look out over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

What distinguishes Spoken Word is not story words, but poetry words. Cruz speaks them eloquently to articulate his journey. The words belong to the poet Joe Ray Sandoval, who collaborated on the screenplay. But the movie belongs to director Victor Nunez.

He specializes in small stories supplying much feeling but not much conflict. Ulee’s Gold, Ruby in Paradise, and Gal Young ‘Un are other good examples. It is not easy to be the go to filmmaker for offbeat, sentimental subjects and Nunez is kind of the Sundance pro.

Like many Nunez movies, you keep waiting in Spoken Word for something to happen and then realize, at the end, that it already did.The journey is the objective, the poetry is the force, and this small movie is as gold as the honey that Ulee makes it his backyard honeypot.

Holly Rollers (USA 2010, 89 min, dir: Kevin Asch, cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Bartha (best friend), Ari Graynor (girl), Danny A. Abeckaser, Mark Ivanir).

Poor Jesse Eisenberg, he’ll always be the Jew. If you look through his credits he’s played guys named Eli, Daniel, Benjamin and Mark (twice). In Holy Rollers he is Sam Gold, and orthodox black hat Jew in Williamsburg, Brooklyn who forsakes davening for the drug trade.

Eisenberg is an excellent actor and director Kevin Asch makes the point in his movie (based on a real story) that if you take away the tzitzis and black coats, these guys and their girl (Ari Graynor) are no different than any other punk Ecstasy pushers.

When you look at Jesse dressed up as a Hassid, you can’t help thinking what Mark Zuckerberg might look like if Facebook went kosher. Zuck might be one of the richest men in the word but he has the sex appeal of a gnat.

One scene that also gives some deja vu thoughts in Holy Rollers is when Sam’s (Jesse Eisenberg’s) father sits him down at the dining room table and says the Rabbi told him Sam is not coming to shul anymore. Sam tries to regain his father’s confidence by telling him he is still religious and his goal is still to be among the faithful; but to no avail.

We’ve been here before. Let’s flash back to 1927 and The Jazz Singer (or 1952 or 1980 for the remakes). Al Jolson tells his father he wants to sing jazz, not kol nidre, and is disowned. Holy Rollers gives it new twist. Now it’s ‘Dad, what I really want to do is deal drugs.”

Drive (USA 2011 100 min. dir: Nicolas Winding Refn, cast: Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, Albert Brooks, Ron Perlman).

Albert Brooks was born Albert Einstein. He decided it wasn’t a good name for a comedian. Watching him through Real Life, Defending Your Life, and The Muse he might have stayed with the Einstein name. He’s that good. Each film is a slightly flawed gem that still manages to offer pointed satire on American life while shamelessly focusing on its spotlight-hogging star.

The genius he brings to Bernie Rose, the character he plays in Drive, is the embodies the characters he plays in all his earlier films but with a world-weariness that has turned him lethal. There’s the same “wouldn’t you know it” sigh and resignation but now the disappointment is not losing all his money in Las Vegas and ending up a school crossing guard; but seeing his gang fuck up the big one and sadly setting it right by killing everybody.

His scene with Shannon (Byran Cranston) is one of the coldest murders ever on screen. Bernie slashes the artery in his arm and says sympathetically, “that’s it, no pain,” as if he was Shannon’s nice guy father come to administer a little spanking to a child who knows he has it coming.

Brooks is not the star of Drive. That honor belongs to Ryan Gosling, who drives the movie extremely well. And the cool-y observed existential LA of nights and freeways is the amazing creation of Nicolas Winding Refn, the director. Every generation creates their LA existential movie. Refn: a Dane from New York and Copenhagen has defined it for the now we live in.

But the movie belongs to Albert Brooks as much as another movie with a great heavy many years ago belonged to another comedian. That film was about a pool shark at the end of his days much like Drive features a petty mobster at the end of his days. Brooks looks at the racer up on a grease rack and says his name could have been on the side. Jack Gleason looked at a pool cue in The Hustler and thought he could come back for one more win. Both movies show us what happens when laugher turns to anger and younger men snatch the dreams. See them both.

Me and Orson Welles (UK 2008, 114 min. dir: Richard Linklater, cast: Christian McKay, Claire Dames, Zac Efron).

Towards the end of his life Orson Welles would agree to appear in any film, TV show, or commercial that would pay him $2000 a day. His bulk required a wheel chair and an oxygen tank at the ready to help him breath. He died owing thousands on his house account at Ma Maison: the one restaurant that let him run a tab.

The Orson Welles of this film is young, vital, creative, egoistic, charismatic and thoroughly mesmerizing. Christian McKay played Orson in a one-man show long before signing to play this part. His familiarity and ease with the role make the movie.

The plot isn’t much. Orson’s Mercury Theatre troupe is about to perform Julius Caesar on Broadway. Orson hires a young aspiring actor (Zac Efron) to play a small part. Zac falls in love with Claire Danes (Sonja) without realizing Orson is also bedding her.

What makes Me and Orson Welles rise above the plot is its examination of the theater, of the belief that great things came happen there, and that actors are really escape artists fleeing from themselves. “If for 90minutes I get this great reprieve from being myself—that is what you see in every great actor’s eyes.�

Too bad a movie about the soul of Broadway had to be shot in London. This is a British production trying to overcome the lack of money by faking just about everything from Central Park to 45^th Street. Maybe it was deemed too risky for Hollywood.

The risk also led to an advertising campaign featuring the young romance angle (Zac and Claire) and completely ignoring the power of the film vested in Christian McKay as Orson. His wonderful examination of an actor’s soul—or lack of it is what’s worth watching. Me and Orson Welles also has a lot to say about an amazing period in American theater (during the Great Depression) and the crazy genius who went from staging Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar as a Nazi parable to vowing “We will sell no wine before its time� in TV commercials.

Greenberg (USA 2010, 107 min. dir: Noah Baumbach, cast: Ben Stiller, Greta Gerwig, Rhys Ifans.

Every generation makes its mid-life crises movie going back to Bye Bye Braverman. But Noah Baumbach’s take on the problem is especially good because of Greta Gerwig and Ben Stiller.

Yes, Ben Stiller can actually act. That’s the news from Greenberg. And Greta Gerwig is nothing but a very good actress in a role that calls for underplaying. She’s Florence, the assistant to Roger Greenberg’s (Ben Stiller) successful brother. The brother and his family are conveniently away on vacation, allowing his brother from New York to live in their house and build a new doghouse for the German shepherd (Greenberg is a carpenter).

Florence sings at a small, empty club when she isn’t taking care of the dog. Roger laments that his life is nothing more than his life. Of course they have an affair and the first sex scene is wonderful for it’s total lack of emotion. He can’t give much more than a good ejaculation. She expects nothing more of any man.

Roger laments to his old drop-out buddy Ivan (Rhys Ifans) that it is probably too late to go to med school or even veterinarian school at 50. Truth be told, at fifty he doesn’t even drive a car and seems confused by more than Florence. “Where is my life going?� is the question none of this genre a movies can ever answer except to shrug and conclude, “That’s my life.�

What makes this one different is good performances, especially from Greta Gerwig as the sweet, clunky girl who is not quite pretty enough and ambitious enough to find herself. And to make it more complicated, she’s pregnant by someone else (whom we never meet).

We know where this will end, but the curiosity that sustains the movie is our getting there with them. Too bad the setting is Los Angeles’ west side. There’s a lot of truth in this story that gets lost in Beverly Hills and Bel Air. The map restricts the point of view because everything is circumscribed by wealth and ease.

But you can’t help warming up to poor schnook Greenberg as he flails and fails and even brings a cheeseburger to Florence’s hospital bed while she recovers from her abortion. “I thought you might be hungry,� he explains as he sets it on her stomach.

Brothers (two versions). (Denmark 2004 117 min. dir: Susanne Bier, cast: Ulrich Thomsen, Connie Nielsen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas.USA 2009 105.min, dir: Jim Sheridan, cast: Tobey Maguire, Natalie Portman, Jake Gyllenhaal).

The most amazing fact about Brothers is that it was made twice. Once might have been more than enough. There is an old Hollywood story about the producer and the writer alone in the desert dying of thirst. They spot a cold clear jar of water. The writer says, ‘Shall we drink it?’ The producer says, “let’s piss in it first.”

Susanne Bier’s Brothers is a modest movie about the romantic yearnings of two people when one happens to be the brother of the other’s husband. The husband has conveniently been declared dead on an Afghani war mission. But he is really being held captive and we know he will return.

It’s a good movie (which is why it is included in MovieWithMe, we only review the ones we like). But it is plot driven rather than character driven. Things have to happen to push it forward, and the audience knows where it is headed. Plot driven movies are like building a fence around the property and thinking what kind of house you will put in the middle.

Taking this modest house and remodeling it so Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Natalie Portman can live in it ruins the architecture. To begin with, Tobey Maguire has no sex appeal. The Muppet of Spiderman is not a leading man. Natalie Portman has some heat with Jake Gyllenhaal, so did she marry Tobey?

Jim Sheridan is a very talented director, up there with Susanne Bier in all respects except one: he’s working from a script that has been remodeled like the house to suit the new star tenants. No subtlety is allowed. Many of the scenes are exactly alike, but the remake doesn’t play like the original. When the military messengers come to inform the wife that her husband is dead, Susanne Bier gets to do it almost without dialogue.

Jim Sheridan’s version is more concerned with the two cute, precocious little girls who open the door for the soldiers. Everybody has to talk and explain. I guess the producers wanted to make sure they milked every emotion from wife to children. Did I say milk? I started this review talking about a joke with water. Choose your liquid but don’t drink the remake. Somebody has pissed in it.

Entre Nos (USA 2009, 80 min, dir: Gloria La Morte with Paola Mendoza, cast: Paola Mendoza, Sebastian Villada, Laura Montana.

If you are Latin, the proving ground for human strength is not Colombia or Mexico, it is Queens. At least according to several recent films set in the borough. Entre Nos joins Paraiso Travel and Where God Left his Shoes (both on Movie With Me) as a gritty emotional movie about tough life and tough love on the streets off Roosevelt Avenue.

Laura Montana (as Mariana) stars in her own story, which she dedicates to her mother. Her husband leaves at the beginning of the movie and she is penniless with two children. The downward progression to homelessness doesn’t take very long and the family is reduced to collecting cans from garbage to sell for food.

Montana’s own story is not so different. Her Colombian mother brought her up on the streets of LA until she became a teenage gang member.Then she was shipped back to Colombia to live with an aunt. It was there, she says, that she learned that life was more than survival. She came back to LA and went to UCLA film school. That led to a part in a student movie that led to a major role in Sangre de mi Sangre (2007). That film is set in Brooklyn.

Entre Nos is remarkable that it got made at all. Small films like this are only possible because of filmmakers who burn to tell human stories. Laura Montana says in a YouTube Interview that her film is about survival and coming of age: first for the woman she plays, then for her son (Sebastian Villada). “We’re told time and again stories of white males, but we’re not told stories of complex people of color…and I thought instead of complaining about it I was going to do something about it and I started writing.”

The result is effecting, personal, and original.