Edward's Westpark 8

(1:10 PM), (4:20 PM), 7:30 PM, 10:00 PM

One of the most beguiling of the stories knotted up in Salman Rushdie's 1981 novel Midnight's Children concerns a lovelorn doctor, his beautiful patient, and that timeless exemplar of old-world prudishness: a sheet with a hole in it. That... More »

One of the most beguiling of the stories knotted up in Salman Rushdie's 1981 novel Midnight's Children concerns a lovelorn doctor, his beautiful patient, and that timeless exemplar of old-world prudishness: a sheet with a hole in it. That courtship sings onscreen, too, in Deepa Mehta's adaptation of a novel stubbornly resistant to adaptation. Still, so lavish and unwieldy is the book that a film of it can't help but feel like a helpless reduction, like a bucket of water passed off as an ocean. Or, more to the point: Watching this is like seeing the highlights of Midnight's Children, one at a time, through a hole in a sheet. The doctor, Aadam (Rajat Kapoor), is the grandfather of Saleem (Satya Bhabha), the novel's narrator, a man "handcuffed to history"-- Saleem is born at the stroke of midnight the day India achieved its independence, and his life doubles the experience of his homeland. In Rushdie's novel, Saleem has hundreds of pages to chart the twining, allusive history of him, his country, and the hundreds of other children born on that midnight, all of whom seem to have superpowers and hold meetings in each others' dreams. Also, Saleem has a magic nose and is switched at birth with another baby, a boy who doomed to a life of poverty and resentment while Saleem is given the advantage of wealth. The movie, meanwhile, has just two and a half hours to cram all this in. When you're trying to allegorize some 40 years' worth of history through the experience of a super-snooted child of destiny, is it essential to open with the erotic meet-cute of his grandparents? « Less

(12:40 PM), (3:40 PM), 6:40 PM, 9:45 PM

This fact-based, girl-group empowerment story never quite soars, but has its easy pleasures, and it's likely to become one of those movies everyone sees, maybe more than once. The wonderful Irish actor Chris O'Dowd, who played the laid-back... More »

This fact-based, girl-group empowerment story never quite soars, but has its easy pleasures, and it's likely to become one of those movies everyone sees, maybe more than once. The wonderful Irish actor Chris O'Dowd, who played the laid-back highway patrolman in Bridesmaids (2011), stars as Dave Lovelace, a musician living out of his car who stumbles upon a gifted girl group in rural Australia circa 1968. The four young women are Aboriginals, and as such are shunned and abused by white neighbors they've known all their lives. When Julie (Jessica Mauboy), the one with the really great voice, sees an advertisement seeking acts to perform for American troops in Vietnam, she convinces the others (Deborah Mailman, Shari Sebbens, and Miranda Tapsell) to audition. After Dave encourages the girls to switch their repertoire from Merle Haggard to Otis Redding tunes, the girls soon find themselves performing in Saigon and the war zone beyond. First-time director Wayne Blair and screenwriters Keith Thompson and Tony Briggs, adapting Briggs' stage play, don't shy away from the era's social complexities, but they keep their eye on the ball, which in this case is the sweet pull of soul tune harmony. Why resist? « Less

(1:50 PM), (4:40 PM), 7:40 PM, 10:05 PM

In Renoir, a languorous look at the last days of the storied painter, we get a view of the artist at odds with a blue-haired lady's notion of her favorite impressionist. It's a pivotal moment of Renoir family history, with father and son both... More »

In Renoir, a languorous look at the last days of the storied painter, we get a view of the artist at odds with a blue-haired lady's notion of her favorite impressionist. It's a pivotal moment of Renoir family history, with father and son both taking creative and sexual inspiration from a shared love object: Pierre-Auguste's last model-muse. Future filmmaker Jean Renoir (a vulnerable Vincent Rottier) is the middle son, recovering from a WWI wound at the family farm at Cagnes-sur-Mer in 1915. Renoir père (affectingly played by Michel Bouquet) is 74, painfully hobbled by arthritis, and grieving the recent death of his wife. Christa Theret plays Andrée, the vibrant, pretty-in-petulance model who revives his creative, if not other, juices; a startling scene reveals he wishes otherwise. Yet the film's real star is the color orange-gold with a touch of russet, making an early appearance as the hair-and-clothing-matched Andrée bicycles in the sunlight to her modeling gig. Renoir's setpiece shows the artist working on a canvas, with Mark Ping Bing Lee's camera gliding to models in soft focus, a kind of live action impressionism and a new take on the familiar Bathers. Wisely, director Gilles Bourdos keeps the pace slow, what with all the tensions beneath the surface: Oedipal conflict, career choices, even class struggle. The ambitious Andrée, aka the future Catherine Hessling of Renoir's silent films, tells Jean she won't marry a "plate painter," but a film director might do. « Less

(4:00 PM), 7:10 PM

A charming display of auto-critique, In the House is a cocktail of one part Shadow of a Doubt, one part Rear Window, and two parts Jacques Derrida: It's not so much a thriller as a playful deconstruction thereof, allowing characters to comment on... More »

A charming display of auto-critique, In the House is a cocktail of one part Shadow of a Doubt, one part Rear Window, and two parts Jacques Derrida: It's not so much a thriller as a playful deconstruction thereof, allowing characters to comment on their own roles in the narrative. Most of the commentary comes from Germain (Fabrice Luchini), who teaches literature at a suburban French high school, where his students might be characterized as barely sentient. But one, Claude (Ernst Umhauer), has a gift for storytelling. Claude's writings detail his increasingly creepy involvement with his friend Rapha's (Bastien Ughetto) family. Claude spies on Rapha's gorgeous mom (Emmanuelle Seigner) and as his behavior approaches stalking, Germain thrills at Claude’s account of all this, urging him to proceed with his story-- and, by proxy, his behavior toward Rapha's family. "It lacks a conflict," Germain tells Claude, sounding like an exasperated filmmaker. In the House creates something far more original than the same old heart-pounding. Germain's meta-narrative commentary ensures an alienating effect, and therein lies the refreshing uniqueness: Since Hitchcock's films are perpetually analyzed by film theorists, why not provide the space for such analysis within a thriller itself? As the narrative gamesmanship ramps up—Germain becomes the audience’s surrogate and advocate, demanding more conflict; Claude begins to criticize Germain's criticism from within the stories themselves-- In the House investigates a far tougher riddle than what makes Claude tick-- it's trying to figure out why, exactly, voyeurism and mystery delight us so. In the process, it delights. « Less

(1:30 PM), 9:50 PM

CC-Closed Captions (1:40 PM), (4:30 PM), 7:20 PM, 10:00 PM

It's time, apparently, for the aging ghosts of '60s radicalism to once again take stock of their sins and compromises. Once it gets its walkers moving, Robert Redford's The Company You Keep nearly plays like a green-granola-lefty counterpart to... More »

It's time, apparently, for the aging ghosts of '60s radicalism to once again take stock of their sins and compromises. Once it gets its walkers moving, Robert Redford's The Company You Keep nearly plays like a green-granola-lefty counterpart to The Expendables, a Hollywood Elderhostel reunion crowded with septuagenarian icons looking back on the righteousness and failures of the Nixon–'Nam era with rheumy retirees' eyeballs. The story, from Neil Gordon's novel about the contemporary fate of a few surviving Weather Underground fugitives, all but blows a trumpet for how rad rad used to be. First Susan Sarandon's Vermont housewife, her kids all grown up, throws in the secret-identity towel and surrenders herself to the FBI; from there, the dominoes tumble, leading cub reporter Shia LaBeouf to uncover the similarly fake ID of Redford's upstate lawyer, sending this suede-faced ex-Weatherman running. The FBI closes in, LaBeouf's annoying snoop pesters every single other character motivated only by his journalistic creed, and withering guest-stars (Julie Christie, Sam Elliott, Richard Jenkins, a phlegm-plagued Nick Nolte) emerge to crinkle and wheeze about the good old days of bank robberies and protests. Redford’s noble Methuselah isn't just self-preserving-- he's got an unseasonably preadolescent daughter to worry about, and a case for his own redemption to make. It's little surprise that The Company You Keep turns out to be politically chicken-hearted—the progressive cant we hear sounds idiotic, and political principles are seen as pathetic challenges to the demands of family and law and order. Redford succeeds only in defanging the idea of resistance altogether. Far from engaged, the film surrenders in an arthritic faint. « Less

CC/DVS-Closed Captions & Descriptive Video Service (1:00 PM), (4:10 PM), 7:00 PM, 9:45 PM

(12:50 PM), (3:50 PM), 6:50 PM, 9:55 PM

(1:30 PM), (4:10 PM), 7:00 PM, 9:40 PM