Trouble the Water
Those wondering whether Hurricane Katrina was really such a big deal have one more terrific documentary to set them straight. Providing a personal focus to complement the epic sweep of Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke, directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessin make generous use of videos shot by their subjects — New Orleans Ninth Ward residents Kim and Scott Roberts — before, during, and after the disaster. The artless footage suggests a real-world Cloverfield, but the people are resourceful and worth caring about. They and their videos prevail over the indifference of nature and our government.
Related:
Review: Sweetgrass, Review: Clash of the Titans, Jewishfilm.2010, More 
- Review: Sweetgrass
One of the most enigmatic close-ups I’ve seen on screen this year is of a sheep. It stares into the camera at the beginning of Ilisa Barbash & Lucien Castaing-Taylor’s documentary about a round-up of the critters in Montana’s Beartooth Mountains, ruminating thoughtfully, as enigmatic as the Mona Lisa.
- Review: Clash of the Titans
It takes a lot of movie magic to reduce some 3000 years of mythology to piffle. After watching this farrago produced by state-of-the-art 3-D and CGI, I’m all for the return of the oral tradition.
- Jewishfilm.2010
They aren’t the most auspicious of couplings: an Arab and Jewish girl in Nazi-occupied Tunis in 1942; a butcher and his apprentice in Haredi Jerusalem; the survivor of a terrorist bombing and a stranger who might be a guardian angel.
- Review: City Island
In this harmless indie comedy, Vince Rizzo (Andy Garcia) is a macho patriarch with two mouthy kids and acting aspirations he conceals from his wife (Julianna Margulies) for fear of sullying his manly image.
- Review: The Last Song
Bestselling novelist Nicholas Sparks ( The Notebook , Dear John ) and effervescent ’tween queen Miley Cyrus hook up for one of Sparks’s patented tearjerkers.
- Review: Vincere
If veteran Italian filmmaker Marco Bellocchio’s wild and woolly version can be believed, before he became the Fascist clown “Il Duce,” Benito Mussolini (Filippo Timi) was a hunk.
- Reality bites again
At the tail end of February, for the second consecutive year, I (barely) escaped a late-winter hurricane to enter a Midwestern oasis of grass-fed beef, cheap cigarettes, Johnny Depp impersonators, and some of the finest documentaries you might just see this year.
- Ghosts of upstate New York
An alumnus of both True/False ’09 and last fall’s Camden International Film Festival, Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher’s evocative October Country screens at SPACE Gallery on April 8, as the first installment of an occasional CIFF Selects series, which seeks to expand the Midcoast film festival’s reach into Portland.
- Review: The Warlords
Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro, stars of Zhang Yimou’s superlative House of Flying Daggers , reunite, joined by Jet Li (from Zhang’s Hero ), in Peter Chan’s handsomely mounted historical epic.
- Review: The Runaways
The mid 1970s was a time of tight pants and even tighter radio playlists.
- Review: Lbs.
With obesity now a pop-culture as well as a medical issue, Lbs. offers insight — as well as laughs and heartstring tugging — into the struggles of a food addict.
- Less
Topics:
Features
, Movies, Mike Leigh, Dale Denton, More
, Movies, Mike Leigh, Dale Denton, PARANOID PARK, ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD, MY WINNIPEG, PINEAPPLE EXPRESS, Tia Lessin, Carl Deal, Happy-Go-Lucky, Less
