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

Storytelling (USA 2001, 87 min, dir: Todd Solondz cast: Selma Blair, Robert Wisdom, Paul Giamatti, Mark Webber, John Goodman, Noah Fleiss).

Explaining Tood Solondz’s humor is like trying to parse a sick joke that everyone laughs at so hard they pee in their pants; at least if they are stoned. Storytelling should be up there with The Big Lebowski as one of the all time, never-get-tired-of-it stoner comedies.

Where else can you take gleeful satisfaction in the white suburban high school girl hanging with her black lit professor as he commands her to strip naked in his apartment and fucks her from behind while making her scream “fuck me hard nigger.” (I watched the R-rated version from Netflix). When she writes an essay about the fucking in her lit class, the other girls criticize it mercilessly until it becomes obvious they have all done the same deed with Mr. Teacher.

At the family dinner table, her slacker brother Scooby announces that if Hitler hadn’t ordered the Holocaust, the Jews wouldn’t have fled to American, and neither he, his sister, nor his parent would have been born. So, he reasons, they should all thank Adolph Hitler for their good fortune. Stuff like this doesn’t come out of a normal mind. It comes out of Todd Solodnz’s inspired mental process. No psychiatrist on the planet is up to explaining it. But any one of us who has suffered through American high school will have no comprehension problem.

Todd Solodnz has only given us too few films. Some are easy to see, some are tougher to fathom (like Palindromes). The big money in Hollywood abandoned him as he got more weird and kinky. But if he lived in Austin, Texas, he would be a national hero. Alas, there is no place for slacker heroism in Newark, NJ (his home town). It is not the place where a yearly Todd Solodnz film orgy will every be held. It will more likely play some college town theater with broken seats. Maybe Madison, WI, during exams, so all those students who find studying to be personally repressive can have an alternative. I’d fly there and bring my own beer.

A Prairie Home Companion (USA 2006, 105 min, dir: Robert Altman, cast: Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, Lindsay Lohan, Kevin Kline, John C. Reilly, Woody Harrelson, Virginia Madsen, Garrison Keillor)

At the end of the movie, the Angel of Death enters an all-night cafe where the cast is having coffee and reminiscing. The implication is she will take them all. But Garrison Keillor and his troupe survived. Director Robert Altman is dead.

The radio show on which this film is based has been broadcast every week since 1974 (with a five year hiatus when Keillor moved to Europe) It is a living American phenomenon. Yet Garrison Keillor wrote this script about death. The Angel of Death is one of the stars (Virginia Madsen).

The movie hasn’t been liked by many. My enthusiasm is a minority view. It’s tough to make a movie about a legend when the legend lives in weekly installments that are more interesting than any movie. To view A Prairie Home Companion objectively you would need to be from Mars (or maybe Cambodia). Then the question is: why would you give a shit about a lot of old farts singing folk songs and dying?

Keillor’s audience is not Cambodians; it is American Baby Boomers (born between 1946-1964). The America in which these citizens came of age included The Atom Bomb Scare, the Communist Menace, Civil Rights, the Vietnam War, Women’s lib and The Pill. A Prairie Home Companion is their connection to the mythical America of their parents where everything was supposedly the way it should have been.

Garrison Keillor is a gifted storyteller and a clever borrower. Don McNeill’s Breakfast Club was on the air from 1933 to 1968. If you really want to know the roots of A Prairie Home Companion get the book Don McNeill and his Breakfast Club and listen to the enclosed CD of some old shows.

But Don McNeill was just doing a breakfast show. Garrison Keillor is our pastor and his sermon is about death. Yes, death is the theme of the radio show and also the movie. Did you know the title comes from the Prairie Home Cemetery in Moorhead, Minnesota? Garrison’s soothing voice is a reassurance that even though we missed the great years, we can still relive them on the radio and carry eternity like a backpack. He conjures up the same mystical hypnotism that makes us endlessly watch new productions of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town and leave teary-eyed.

In the movie, Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, Lindsay Lohman, and John C. Riley top the cast that circles Garrison and tries to lift him out of his melancholia. He gives himself a pivotal role but lets them carry the spotlight. A lot of people are disappointed he didn’t just stick with the radio show and make himself the big star. But this is a MOVIE. It has a point of view. It is drama, not a daily breakfast show or weekly Saturday night variety show.

The writer is telling us that the America of the radio show, the America in our heads: is no longer. It is a childhood myth we need to get past. Maybe that is why Lindsay Lohman, the only character in the entire movie who is too young to be a Baby Boomer, makes her mother, Meryl Streep, sign power-of-attorney papers in the ending scene. She’s telling her Mom it’s okay to go on believing in her lovely boomer fairytales about American as long as her daughter is practical enough to decide when to cut off life support.

Looking at the film as a sunset ode to the Boomer Generation makes it more than informational. Keillor and Altman are Boomers both. They are writing their own epitaph. For Altman it was (his last film). I wish Keillor many more years. When he ended the radio show back in 1987 (and resumed it five years later), he closed with a remembrance from his boyhood when he imagined floating around the bend in the river to a world he could only imagine.

For those who heard that last broadcast the image has never faded, and the hope of what is to come has not dimmed. His is the lulling voice calming our fears about what is to come. If you are a certain age, see the movie and understand what Keillor and Altman are trying to say. If you are Cambodian, see Ghost Banana Tree instead.

New Jersey has a special call to its young, even when they get older. If Bruce Springsteen had been born in Ohio, would he sing about it? Zach Braff walks in the footsteps of John Sayles (Return of the Secaucus Seven), shuffling back to his boyhood haunts and old conflicts in his native New Jersey.

For a guy who is an actor turned director, it is a pretty impressive stroll. As in most “return to” films, the plot doesn’t make a lot of difference. His mother has died and he goes back for the funeral. High school buddy Peter Sarsgaard is now a gravedigger. Langerman (Braff) is a hang loose, hang low, lost sort of guy who is still looking around corners hoping to find himself.

Then he meets Sam (Natalie Portman). She’s so far gone in Jersey she wears a helmet to keep her from bashing her head. Natalie Portman is one of the chameleon actors (Billy Crudup is another; though he isn’t in this movie). Natalie can be the lively center of a film, or so plain looking and featureless that she blends into the background. Either way her performances are always terrific. In Garden State, she’s not only there, she is it. The film comes alive with her: a neat trick in a movie about death.

Zach Braff works by absorbing the characters around him. Whether he can actually act or he is playing a credible version of Zach Braff is hard to tell. But he had the good sense to cast Natalie Portman and Peter Sarsgaard in his movie. They make the toll on the Garden State Parkway worth the price of going beyond the Meadowlands into the hazy unknown.

Late Marriage (Israel 2001, 102 min, dir: Dover Kosashvili, cast: Ronit Elkabetz, Lior Louie Ashkenazi).

Two enormously fat Georgian (Soviet) Jews invade the love nest of their son in Tel Aviv and demand he leave his lover for his wife. He’s not married yet, but they have plans and love shouldn’t get in the way. We normally think of Israelis as shrewd men and tough women. But in an immigrant nation, there’s no such thing as normal.

It’s a melting pot where nothing melts. There’s an old joke about a Jew marooned alone on a deserted island who builds two synagogues. When he is rescued they ask why two? He says, “one to worship in and the other one I wouldn’t set foot in.”

Zaza is 31. He’s in love with a 34 year-old divorcee with a young daughter. He is blissfully happy, especially in the very sensual bedroom scenes with Judith (Ronit Elkabetz). She’s pretty amazing, in bed and out, and has gone on to many more movies, mostly in France. But in Late Marriage she’s content to take off her clothes and jump on Zaza, making him the happiest Georgian in town.

But she’s divorced, and she’s not of his Georgian tribe. When his parents storm her apartment she’s sure he’ll chose love over tradition. Ha! You can accuse director Dover Kosashvili of short-handing a lot in the parents’ characters, but he precisely asks the right questions of conviction versus convenience. Zaza tries to slink back, but you don’t slink with Judith.

Judith’s had enough of him, and Ronit, seems to have had enough of Israel. She moved to France and continued her career with Origine Controlee, an intriguing little movie that was brought to American as Made in France. (This takes the all-time prize as the worse title translation ever).

Meanwhile at home, the Israelis are still battling one another to prove ethnic and moral superiority. Tradition battles commerce, religion battles secularity. It makes one of the most fertile cultures for filmmaking even if it is the worst for peace and politics. I’m reminded of the old Kingston Trio song, They’re Rioting in Africa, that goes:

The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles. The Italians hate Yugoslavs, the South African’s hate the Dutch. And I don’t like anybody very much.

Coyote (USA 2007, 94 min, dir: Brian Petersen, cast: Brett Spackman, Brian Petersen, Carley Adams, Marina Valle)

Thousands try to run across the Mexican border every month and pay good money for the chance. Why does all the profit go to smugglers who can’t even pronounce, “Maximize revenue?” This is an opportunity for American businessmen to turn misery into money.

Coyote’s wicked premise is that two erstwhile entrepreneurs do just that. Several veterans of the Napoleon Dynamite team re-assemble for this effort. But the picture belongs to Brett Spackman, who plays J, the half-Mexican smuggler-in-chief.

What is so delicious is typical American business acumen focused on human smuggling across the border. The first step is to study methods and logistics. Next comes a glossy brochure featuring three kinds of service: bronze, silver and gold. The gold promises to get you across, deliver you to a destination of your choice, and even get you a job.

Most clients settle for the bronze. At least until reigning Mexican coyote king, Senior Juarez, senses these gringos are muscling in on his cartel’s business. Then the business plan sees some major faults: death threats. Spackman (playing J.) is the success story of the partnership because he finds true love south of the border.

This is the same Brad Speckman who directed and participated in the short doc, Run to Jays: Tournament of Champions. The premise is an annual foot race risking death against on-coming traffic to win a 20oz bottle of soda. The artistic leap from that film to this one is a mere hop.

The style of Coyote is somewhere between satire and whacky college humor. Not a bad combo. The same team made Think Tank; where they save a small town through their genius at being inept. (see Christopher Null’s review at filmcritic.com. He obviously had not smoked enough when he saw Think Tank).

They are better at thinking up original ideas then sustaining either movie; but both movies are fresh and are the budgets low. What has happened to these guys? Their online profiles are almost blank. Tough to get any respect when you make low budget comedies. Maybe they should make original web movies and charge a buck? I would pay (I think). Certainly they’re better than the endless date comedies Hollywood thinks are funny.

The Stoning of Sorayra M. (USA 2008, 114 min, dir: Cyrus Nowrasteh, cast: Mozhan Marno, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Jim Caviezel)

Jim Caviezel played Jesus in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. In The Stoning of Soraya M. he plays a reporter happening upon a story about a modern woman who must walk her own steps to her village’s version of the crucifixion. This actor’s personal passion expressed in his adopting of special needs children, and his support of politically incorrect causes; makes his participation in this singular, powerful movie all the more interesting.

A movie is what it is on screen: that is everything. Or is it? The writer/director of The Stoning of Soraya M. is known for taking on non PC subjects and making statements of personal conviction. Both Caviezel and director Cyrus Nowrasteh are drawn to a story that defies audience sensitivities to paint truth, harshness, courage and sadness. Soraya (Mozhan Marno) brings dignity to her own death.

Mozhan too, is no stranger to speaking out. She starred in a one women show 9 Parts of Desire about women in war-torn Iraq. The play, written by Heather Raffo (also the title of a book about the Middle East by Geraldine Brooks), comes from Ali ibn Abu Taleb, an early leader and scholar of Islam who said, “God created sexual desire in ten parts: then he gave nine parts to women and one to men.”

Soraya M’s husband accuses her of adultery so he can be free to marry a younger woman he has found in a nearby city. That the punishment for adultery is death by stoning doesn’t disturb him. Nor does he flinch at throwing the first stone at the head of the mother of his children as she waits defenseless: buried to her waist in the village square.

It’s easy to eject the DVD after seeing The Stoning of Soraya M. and condemn Iran as a primitive country driven by the intractable dogma of the Ayatollahs. But Iran is, in may ways, actually quite permissive: if you are a man.

Soraya M. is about that one part of desire granted to men and how the rage, feared impotence and lust for domination over those other nine parts propels men towards madness and grisly murder. Ali ibn Abu Taleb did not restrict his observation to Muslims. Violence towards women can happen anywhere, and it does.

Paraiso Travel ( USA 2007 116 min. dir: Simon Brand, cast: Aldemar Correa, Angelica Blandon, Magarita Rosa de Francisco, John Leguizamo).

Can a movie be a big screen bore and a small screen jewel? Marlon searches for his lost love named Reina (Queen) on the mean streets of a borough named Queens.Columbian director Simon Brand and an all Latin cast shoot an American movie in New York City with subtitles.

Marlon arrives with Reina after she has seduced him into abandoning their squalid life in Medellin, Colombia, for the glitter of NYC. He loses her almost immediately and spends the movie obsessed with finding her. He is not only searching for Reina but for himself: and the obsession with the first blinds him as he stumbles in the second. How else could he turn away from a gorgeous thing like Magarita Rosa de Francisco? She’s the heart of the picture and magnificent. On the small screen you can study every move of her body, every emotion that clouds across her face. On the big screen, you’d be out buying popcorn.

John Leguizamo turns up here and gives an idea for a flat screen double feature: Paraiso Travel followed by Where God Left his Shoes. This 2007 movie traces a homeless family trekking to find shelter in the same hostile boroughs. What is it with the outer boroughs? I always thought charity and compassion began there. From these two films you’d think Manhattan, by contrast, was full of innkeepers with warm smiles.

Many cross-the-border films detail the trials of the trip, but few talk about the travail of the destination. Paraiso Travel is a New Yorqueno movie that shows life under the Elevated where Roosevelt Boulevard meets Junction Boulevard and where the last intersection was Tecun Uman on the Mexico-Guatemala border.

Fingers (USA 1978, 90 min, dir: James Toback, cast: Harvey Keitel, Tissa Farrow, James Brown) The Beat That My Heart Skipped (France 2005, 108 min, dir; Jacques Audiard, cast: Romain Duris, Aure Atika)

Rarely is an American movie remade as a French one. Usually it is the reverse. What’s clear is our style is brute confrontation and theirs is subtle manipulation. These two films, both excellent, are a Rosetta stone of Anglo-French cultural understanding.

James Toback made Fingers in 1978 with a young Harvey Keitel. You have to forgive him carrying a boom box everywhere on his shoulder: not even Sony Walkmans had been invented yet. Jacques Audiard makes Romain Duris a Belmondo-like thug who hides his musical ambition as a concert pianist by playing imaginary keyboards on cafe tables.

Audiard also adds characters and levels of plot absent from Fingers. It would be easy to say the French version has more depth and polish. But it is easier to improve than create from nothing. I think the American version is actually subtler for what it leaves out, and more electric for emotions that are not stated.

Witness the two love scenes. Harvey Keitel is crude and forceful. Romain Duris is expressive, romantic, yearning and wanting. One is a trashing animal ready to climb on his conquest. The other is opening himself up to feelings long simmering. But which has more heat, and what is more honest in human passion? I think Toback takes the prize and his film, though less sophisticated and less of a successful character study; finally has more raw power. See them both together and acknowledge them both as excellent. See them for Tissa Farrow and Aure Atika adding very sexual interpretations to the same part. Then go on see Toback’s Tyson and Audiard’s The Prophet to understand the extent of their cinema art.

Sugar (USA 2008, 120 min. dir: Anna Boden, cast: Algenis Perez Soto, Rayniel Rufino, Ellary Porterfield)

The Wizard of Oz is about a girl from Kansas who lands in a strange land and wants to go home. Sugar is about a boy from Oz who lands in Kansas and he just wants to go home too.

Oz is the green fields and palm-shaded towns of the Dominican Republic. Sugar is a baseball pitcher good enough to (maybe) be a star. Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico are to ball players what Iowa is to corn. Iowa exports corn and the D.R. and P.R. export young ball players headed for the farm teams for the major league American teams. Playing big league ball is the dream exit from poverty.

Sugar’s landing in Iowa is a little different from Dorothy’s in Oz. She arrives in a house. He steps off a plane and into a station wagon for the drive to his new home. Mom and Pop’s contact with internationalism is hosting a succession of young Dominican and Puerto Rican ballplayers who’ve come to join the local Bridgeport, Iowa team.

Baseball and going to church are about all there is to do here. Sugar can’t speak English. He is black. He is expected to say prayers and take dinner with the family. He’s also expected to keep his eyes off their redheaded daughter. There is no game that will play him out of his loneliness.

So is this a baseball movie? Not really. That is why it is so good. Like Dorothy’s saga, the yellow brick road for Sugar also leads to the Emerald City. But “The City” looks a lot likened York. Miguel gives up baseball for Spanish Harlem and the street life where he feels at home. He won’t be a star, but he’ll join the millions who have made the journey here from his homeland and found some small happiness. If he could speak enough English, he would smile and say, “Not in Kansas anymore.”

Paraiso Travel ( USA 2007 116 min. dir: Simon Brand cast: Aldemar Correa, Angelica Blandon, Margarita Rosa de Francisco, John Leguizamo).

Sometimes a movie is a big screen bore and a small screen gem. A Colombian director and Latin cast shooting an American movie in New York City with subtitles? Reina seduces Marlon into abandoning squalid life in Medellin for the mean streets of NYC. He loses her almost immediately and spends the movie looking for the girl named “Queen” (Reina) is an a place named Queens.

John Leguizamo turns up here and gives an idea for a flat screen double feature: Paraiso Travel followed by Where God Left his Shoes. This 2007 movie traces a homeless family trekking to find shelter in the same hostile outer boroughs. What is it with the outer boroughs? I always thought charity and compassion began there. From these two films you’d think Manhattan was, by contrast, a borough full of innkeepers with warm smiles and open hearts.

Many cross-the-border films have shown the trials of the trip, but few talk about the trails of the destination. Marlon is not only searching for Reina but for himself, and the obsession with the first blinds him in the second. How else could he turn away from a gorgeous thing like Margarita Rosa de Francisco? She’s the heart of the picture and magnificent. Paraiso Travel is a neoyorquino movie that shows life under the Elevated where Roosevelt Boulevard meets Junction Boulevard and the next turn is Tecun Uman on the Mexico Guatemala border.