Two Lovers in Gomorrah X (Weekly Links)

Movies I reviewed for the Herald this week:

Two Lovers. “Fierce concentration on a tiny piece of emotional turf.”

Gomorrah. “No warm-hearted godfathers blathering on about the proper amount of garlic in the marinara sauce.”

Ben X. “You might wonder whether anybody’s in charge at this school.”

Ballerina. “But what a surface.”

Also, an interview I did with actress-auteur Julia Sweeney is included this week on ArtZone in Studio; watch here for the story of Sweeney’s new film Letting Go of God, a one-woman show that manages to be completely bright, disarming, and convincing about what its title says.

Movie Diary 2/25/2009

Rudo y Cursi (Carlos Cuaron, 2008). Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna (and your mother, too) reunited in an aggressively wacky story of small-town brothers swept up in soccer glory. Includes Bernal’s Spanish-language music video of “I Want You to Want Me.”

Ballerina (Bertrand Normand, 2006). Documentary look at some of the dancers of the Kirov, including the remarkable Diana Vishneva, who would’ve been a silent film star in the 1920s. (full review 2/27)

Pandora’s Box (G.W. Pabst, 1929). It’s one damn thing after another for Louise Brooks in Pabst’s most famous film, which is kind of overrated but kind of amazing at the same time. This was my first time watching the Criterion version of the film — a disc of decidedly variable quality.