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

My Best Friend (France 2006, 94 min. dir: Patrice LeConte, cast: Daniel Auteuil, Dany Boon, Julie Gayet)

If Daniel Auteuil was an American, he would be Richard Gere. Auteuil is that always available, always serviceable, but never quite exciting star. He had great beginnings in Jean de Florette back in the mid-eighties. Here he is again, voila!

This time he is a Paris antique dealer with a good business but an empty life. He has no friends. So here’s the studio pitch: man with no friends takes a bet to find one and learns what friendship is all about. Before you say “Pass-adena, remember that producers in France don’t need to make money on pictures; they just make their fees and move on.

Where the film gets interesting is when it happens to land on the SAME plot device used in Slumdog Millionaire. Bruno (Dany Boon), the hapless taxi driver who was suckered into Francois’s (Auteuil’s) bet, is also a trivia expert. Thanks to some high-powered manipulating by Francois, he gets picked for the French version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? (According to movie lore, the only country that has not had a version of this show is Iceland, where the bankers ran off with everybody’s money).

So it comes down to the “Lifeline” phone call where the contestant reaches out to one special friend who can help answer the most difficult question. The lifeline call to Francois is the beginning of an emotional connection between them. Francois finally begins to understand friendship.

In both Slumdog and My Best Friend, the phone call is the story turn towards resolution. In both films it works; we are emotionally hooked. Watch My Best friend and Slumdog Millionaire and ask yourself: Where would the movie writers be without David Briggs, Mike Whitehill, and Steve Knight.? These three veteran UK game show creators came up with the TV idea. The answer: up the creek without a third act, that’s where.

Title: The Killing
Year: 1956
Director: Stanley Kubrick (Dr. Strangelove)
Writers: Stanley Kubrick and Jim Thompson, based on a novel by Lionel White
Stars: Sterling Hayden, Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards (Murder By Contract), Jay C. Flippen, Marie Windsor, Elisha Cook (Electra Glide in Blue)

The Story: A career criminal recruits five frustrated working men to help him heist a horse track on race day. As a god-like narrator dissects their failings, we see how a series of small errors lead to one disaster after another.

Why It’s Great: Anyone who’s seen Kubrick’s more famous movies will recognize many of his favorite themes in utero here: the uselessness of ambition, the treachery of emotion and the ironic triumph of fate over free will. Kubrick made such a classic-looking noir, that it seems like it could have been shot ten years earlier, but there are also progressive touches that mark it as way ahead of its time. In one scene a member of the team is doomed by his own racist treatment of a parking attendant. In another, our hero’s grizzled old drinking buddy suddenly admits that he wants to marry him! I react with disbelief every time I watch the movie! Did I hear that right?? But there’s really no other way to interpret it. At least not to my modern ears.

Two more reasons at Cockeyed Caravan!

Zelary (Czech Republic 2003, 148 min, dir: Ondrej Trojan, cast: Ana Geislerova, Gyorgy Csehaimi)

Do all of us want to walk through an unmarked door into a secret life better than the one we thought we wanted? Eliska/Hana has two names in Zelary because she has two lives. One is as the big city hospital nurse who assists her surgeon boyfriend in saving the life of a rough country peasant by giving him a transfusion of her own blood.

That is before the Gestapo gets wise to the hospital staff’s resistance activities. Suddenly, that night, she must flee. It has all been arranged. She will accompany the peasant laborer she helped save back to his mountain village. There she will pose as his wife until the war is over.

The best war movies are about uprooted people and the generous acts by strangers who preserve the flame of life and compassion. The best of these stories must sometimes age with the storytellers. Kveta Lagatova didn’t think of writing a book until she was in her 80s. Then she took out a story she had written thirty or forty years before, based on what she had heard when she was a schoolteacher in the isolated mountain region were Joza (Janda) takes his new bride, Hana (known as Eliska before she went into hiding).

“The characters there (in the mountains) have very sharp contours, that which elsewhere is not so well-defined” commented Kveta. Her book, Jozova Hanule, became a best seller in the Czech Republic and the basis of Zelary. Like Hana in the movie, Kveta witnessed a culture that hadn’t change is a century, and would soon disappear with the rush to modernity.

Zelray is a love story, large and romantic, about the most unlikely lovers in a place far removed from history. Yet it makes its own history. The tragedy of the ending, and Hana/Eliska’s return, reminds me of the ending of Akira Kurosawa‘s Dersu Uzala. Both films confront their protagonists with the loss of something wild and free not only in the wilderness, but also in themselves. They know it can never be replaced. They mourn for themselves.

Their tragedy is ours too, because we’ve all joined a more civilized world. It is even more perplexing to us because our choice was also for survival: of a kind just as necessary as in the forests and mountains. Hana can never go back, and she knows it. Could Kveta Lagatova have written this book as a young woman? Kurosawa was in his sixties when he directed Dersu.

Perhaps only a lifetime lived through the 20^th Century could connect the brutality of the Nazis-feared as the destroyers of civilization; to the destruction of nature and traditional life actually caused by civilization. These two films are my idea of an amazing double feature.

Title: Vera Cruz
Year: 1954
Director: Robert Aldrich (Kiss Me Deadly, Flight of the Phoenix)
Writers: Roland Kibbee and James R. Webb, based on a story by Borden Chase
Stars: Gary Cooper, Burt Lancaster, Denise Darcel, Cesar Romero, Sarita Montiel, George Macready

The Story: After coming out the wrong end of the Civil War, a ruined southern gentleman decides to refashion himself as a Mexican Civil War mercenary. Teaming up with a charming horsethief, he tries to earn a fortune by transporting a wagon full of Maximilian’s gold.

Why It’s Great: The basic premise of this movie is so clever that I’m shocked we don’t see it more often: What if a movie like Star Wars culminated in a showdown between Luke Skywalker and Han Solo? We’re so used to seeing the lovable rogue win the trust of the hero that it starts to seems like a foregone conclusion. But what if the rogue turns out to be even scarier than the evil empire he’s helping to overthrow? Said hero is played by Gary Cooper, who never settled into the sort of fatherly roles that would have been appropriate for his advancing age. He kept playing lean, desperate gunfighters until the day he died. He used his age to his advantage: Rather than growing soft, he just became more haggard.

Two more reasons at Cockeyed Caravan.

Americans hate cable. They hate the price, they hate the service, they hate the selection. Now there is something new to hate: cable wars with broadcast networks. The major broadcast networks have always had the option of offering their programs to the cable companies on the basis of either “must carry” or “retransmission.”

Under the FCC’s “must carry” rule, a network (through its local station) has the right to insist that the local cable operator transmit its programming. If the network does not insist, and the cable operator still wants to carry the programming, he must pay the network for the cable retransmission of network programs at a rate negotiated between the two parties.None of this mattered much for many years, but now the networks say they need those cable fees to survive.

This new desire for cash has led to the Cable Wars. The biggest so far is Cablevision vs. ABC/Disney. ABC threatened to cut off the Academy Awards 2010 show to New York City area subscribers if Cablevision did not meet its subscriber fee demands. The show is always pretty bad, but people wanted to at least have the option to see it. The war went to the newspapers where Cablevision subscribers read between the lines and saw both sides preparing them for rate increases. (We didn’t want to raise you bill but they made us do it!)

Too much has been written about this. The one guy who sees beyond it (besides me) is Holman W. Jenkins writing the World Business column on the Opinion page of the Wall Street Journal (be careful using this link, the Journal has a pay wall).

There’s no doubt the cable companies’ current business plan is doomed. (Unload your stock in the next few years.) The systems are too old to fix, the fees too high, and the three-in-one plan with VOIP phone service is about $35 a month more than Skype. (Skype is free). The only place cable companies can raise revenue is by offering you higher speeds and more content on their broadband pipes.

The broadband explosion already underway is toward video. How will a system designed in the 1960′s for military data be expected to transmit iTunes movies and Google Earth? Any plumber who ever cut costs and put in a one-inch water pipe instead of a two-inch one knows the answer: drip drip drip.

The ready solution to this cyber gridlock is expanding the bandwidth allocated to broadband wifi and mobile. This is why Google is rushing to build super speed wifi networks in cities across the country. They are counting on citizen delighted with the results pressuring the FCC to free up more bandwidth.

Where will it come from? The bandwidth hogs are the over-the-air TV stations who have been hoarding bandwidth since the analogue days when they needed lots more of it than they do with new digital transmission. The easy answer to the coming download doomsday is to snatch this unused reserve bandwidth and award it to wifi and mobile.

But the Internet is still as fast as the slowest part. If packets are routed to Venezuela on their way to New York, “loading” will mean “slow” in two languages. The longer view solution says we should modify the way digital video is delivered to portable devices so that it can use a wider spectrum. The old word for that spectrum is Television.

In the future, TV will send packets rather than programs, and mobile receivers will filter these to give you only the movie you want, just like broadband Internet. “As fast as the slowest part” will no longer apply. But getting there takes vision; and a lot of courage not to give in to the technology of the near moment at the expense of the technology of the farther future.

In the 1960′s, Los Angeles dug up a magnificent interurban rail system and replaced it with roads. Cars were faster and did not need rails. In the 1990′s Los Angles began the expensive process of re-acquiring and re-railing the old rights-of-way to put in a new interurban rail system. Now rails are faster than cars. Think what they could have saved by just leaving things alone for thirty years?

Elsa & Fred (Argentina/Spain 2005, 108 min, dir: Marcos Carnevale, cast: Manuel Alexandre, China Zorrilla)

Manuel Alexandre has played roles in more films and TV shows than most small countries ever produce. He’s a serious movie actor. China Zorilla is a stage actor in comedies. Can a love story star a comedienne? Put them together and you have a pretty amazing pair, especially since China didn’t do her first film until age fifty.

78 year-old Fred, a widower, moves in across the hall from Elsa. She tells him about her life but it isn’t true. This woman wraps beautiful lies the way most people wrap Christmas presents. But she’s charming. You could put Elsa in a stalled elevator and she’d make friends with everyone in the car. What she doesn’t have is much time.

She’s suffering from-does it make a difference? It’s her secret. It’s going to kill her soon, so her fling with Fred is the last round. She leads him through adventures only a daring twenty-year old would try. My favorite is ordering a meal at the most expensive restaurant in town and then bolting the check. Who would suspect a grandma and grandpa doing their arthritic walk for the door were actually running for it?

Elsa has one last wish to top them all. She wants to go to Rome and jump in the Trevi fountain, just like Anita Ekberg did in La Dolce Vita (she was likened to Ekberg when she was young). The life force of Elsa’s character makes this movie.  When Fred finally meets her ex-husband who she claimed was dead, he asks if he would do it again, given all he went through with her. The husband doesn’t hesitate. He says it was a wonderful ride, and she is an original. So is Elsa & Fred.

Title: Miami Blues
Year: 1990
Director: George Armitage
Writer: George Armitage, based on the novel by Charles Willeford
Stars: Alec Baldwin, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Fred Ward

The Story: A rampaging sociopath falls for a giggly prostitute, then steals the badge and gun (and false teeth) of a sad-sack cop. To his great surprise, he discovers that a little bit of legitimacy can be addictive.

Why It’s Great: Baldwin was always great, but his problem early on was that he was cursed with the soul of a character actor trapped inside the chiseled features of a leading man. Only now that he’s weathered and thickened can he been recognized as on of our great actors. This movie gave him a great early opportunity to let some madness shine through those baby blues. Leigh became a little mannered in later years, but she could not be more raw and winning and unaffected here. The easy choice would have been to play her dim-witted role as just a victim, too dumb to see what’s wrong with this guy. She does something far more interesting. They say that when a true sociopath looks at you, their eyes are so direct and intense that you wonder if you’ve ever really look anyone in the eye before. We see Leigh respond to that energy, even though she knows better.

Two more reasons at Cockeyed Caravan.

Hopefully, this will be the last word on the Academy Awards: get out of high school. The Golden Globes has grown into a slick TV show while the Oscars is still a high school musical. The problem with Oscar is he thinks he is the BMOC (big man on campus). But while he is waiting his college acceptance letter s to the top schools, kids like Grammy and Globe are kicking butt.

The biggest embarrassment this year was the banishment of The Hurt Locker producer Nick Chartier because he wrote emails to Academy members asking votes for his team and cited the unfairness of the other team’s (Avatar) giant budget for uniforms and equipment. Oscar punished him by banning him from awards night and not allowing him to collect his trophy on stage with the other kids..

Now doesn’t this sound like high school? Kids would call it pathetic. Parents and teachers would call it silly. Only at Hollywood High is this kind of behavior taken seriously. You can just hear the kids saying, “But Mom, it’s REALLY important.”

Ratings were up this year; proving turmoil and more nominees do make it more interesting. But the audience is fickle, and higher ratings might be a blip on the Neilsen graph. Here are some suggestions to make Oscar more telegenic. Produce an Oscar YouTube race where contestants vie for the amateur Oscar (voted by the Academy members). Interview Academy members waiting in Hollywood unemployment lines and hear how anger they are and how that effects how they will cast their vote. Organize and annual Academy versus Golden Globes softball game.

Once you leave high school for the real world, you’ve got to learn to compete or the next guy will get your job.

Title: Slums of Beverly Hills
Year: 1998
Director: Tamara Jenkins (The Savages)
Writer: Tamara Jenkins
Stars: Natasha Lyonne (American Pie), Alan Arkin (Little Miss Sunshine), Marisa Tomei (The Wrestler), Kevin Corrigan (Buffalo ’66)

The Story: A teenage girl in 1976 is hustled from place to place in Beverly Hills by her formerly-well-off father, who’s desperate to keep his family in upscale addresses that he can’t afford. They finally get access to money by taking in their mixed-up niece, who teaches the daughter some untraditional lessons about life and love.

Why It’s Great: It’s virtually impossible for women writer-directors to seize the bullhorn in the aggressive boys’ club that is independent filmmaking. This is partially because marketers don’t know what to do with a film unless it punches you in the gut. Smaller movies like this one too often go under the radar. This is the sort of laid-back, scruffy comedy that forces you back into an older rhythm of movie-watching. It gradually creates a believable and lovable world out of a hundred little right-on details, some that are unique to its kooky setting and some that are universal. In America, we like to pretend that the poor can get rich. That rarely works out, but everybody does have the right to pretend to be rich, provided they have a little bit of hustle, a willingness to borrow, and a whole lot of self-delusion. Entertainment doesn’t always have to sell fantasies of wish-fulfillment, it can also find comedy and drama in the wreckage that those unrealistic fantasies leaves behind.

Two more reasons over at Cockeyed Caravan.

Priceless (France 2006, 104 min, dir: Pierre Salvadori, cast: Audrey Tautou, Gad Elmaleh)

Audrey Tautou is not Audrey Hepburn. This much we knew in God is Great, I’m Not (2001), and Amelie (2001). But she is fetching, sexy, and appealing enough to float like a peach melba through films like Priceless. So much better than bombing completely in dogs like A Very Long Engagement (2004).

A barman and a female hustler (Audrey) meet on the French Riviera. She’s in pursuit of a rich man who will give her everything; he’s hunting for the same in a woman. Naturally they are not meant for each other, but then again, maybe they are. Director Pierre Salvadori is the “go to” guy in France for date night romance movies, but that doesn’t mean he’s a hack. On the contrary, he’s very good at what he does and in Priceless he struts his stuff. Where he earns his euros is in stoking the jealousy and desire of each character while they go about hustling their own private gravy train between the sheets.

Finally Audrey gives up her dream of money and runs away with her euro-centless (penniless) true love. Audrey is always best as the waif. Here she’s the kind who is so confused by what she thinks she wants that she almost looses her real love when he is right in front of her. It is so much better than watching her trying on all those big hats in Coco Before Chanel (2009). We are happier with Audrey in Priceless. Which is exactly the point. For the price of a movie ticket or a DVD you can have 104 minutes of joy.