San Francisco Weekly June 27, 2012 : Page 17

FILM CAPSULES Capsule reviews of current film releases appear below. They are penned by Melissa Anderson, Michael Atkinson, F.X. Feeney, Michael Fox, Ed Gonzalez, Tim Grierson, Ernest Hardy, Aaron Hillis, Mark Holcomb, Eric Hynes, Dan Kois,Karina Longworth, Brian Miller, Adam Nayman, Jean Oppenheimer, Michelle Orange, Elena Oumano, Jesse Oxfeld, Nick Pinkerton, Nicolas Rapold, Gregg Rickman, Jim Ridley, Vadim Rizov, Nick Schager, Andrew Schenker, Ella Taylor, Luke Y. Thompson, Alison Willmore, Robert Wilonsky, and Chuck Wilson. For commentary and information on Bay Area repertory houses and other film and video events, see Film Showtimes listings after Ongoing. The print listings below rotate regularly, as space allows. Our complete film listings are available online. S = We recommend it. OPENING S The Connection Reviewed on page 16. S Corpo Celeste First-time writer-director Alice Rohrwachers minutely observed, emotionally complex Corpo Celeste would be a treat in any season, but it’s particularly refreshing amid the summer-movie bombast. An anti-spectacle in every way, the film focuses on 13-year-old Marta (Yle Vianello, a nonpro), who, with her mother (Anita Caprioli) and sisters, has returned to Southern Italy after spending most of her life in Switzerland. Marta, a shy, dreamy, but fiercely observant innocent, is shuffled into Catholic confirma-tion class as a means of integrating into her new surroundings. The experience does little to cushion her social awakening, let alone encourage a spiritual one: The local priest (Salvatore Cantalupo), a cynical careerist, pours all his effort into finagling a transfer, while the dry dogma of the church itself — no matter how popified for the kids — is cruelly oblivious to Marta’s inquisitiveness. As her uncle says and the adult parishioners’ rote faith attests, confirmation is something you go through and forget. The loss is theirs -— by Corpo Celeste ’s ambiguous climax, it seems possible that Marta is bonafide saint material. Rohrwacher almost overplays her metaphors (as when the father’s boyhood-village crucifix slides over a cliff en route to its new home), but her understated characterizations, cinema-tographer Hlne Louvart’s rapturous range, and especially Vianello’s eerie grace combine to make Corpo Celeste an ideal cinematic anti-dote to the summer doldrums. (M.H.) Magic Mike Reviewed on page 16. People Like Us People Like Us is a certifi-able adult drama built atop sturdy thematic supports, a rare enough item these days, though it’s telling that the movie was originally titled Welcome to People , after a self-help workbook within the film. Sam (Chris Pine), a career-obsessed New York wheeler-dealer, is reeled back to hometown L.A. upon the death of his father, who had a multi-platinum record as a ’70s music producer/AR man but was a flop as a dad. Once home, Sam is charged with executing his father’s estate, delivering a fat cash inheritance — money Sam desperately needs — to Frankie (Elizabeth Banks), the half-sister he never knew he had. Although he wins the trust of Frankie, an overextended bartender, and her son, Josh (Michael Hall D’Addario), Sam can’t bring himself to reveal his actual identity. (Considerable disbelief must be suspended to buy Sam’s agonizing delay, not much aided by an adequate-but-superfi-cial performance from country-club-golf-pro handsome Pine.) Alex Kurtzman, making his directorial debut, has previously worked with his People Like Us co-writer Roberto Orci on a bevy of blockbusters ( Transformers , Star Trek ) 5 Broken Cameras Startlingly intimate and and knows how to tickle a crowd, here grant-direct, this first-person doc by Emad Burnat ing D’Addario lots of world-weary little-old-and Guy Davidi requires multiple viewings for man wisecracks toward that end. Kurtzman anyone eager to work out how it could have and Orci deserve credit for defying cliché, rain-been shot with such precision and visual in-ing out the ultimate gratification of what might genuity under such plainly chaotic conditions. be another rom-com courtship between Pine The film is an account of five years in the life of and Banks and instead creating a movie that’s Burnat, a Palestinian farmer whose hometown overcast with incestuous dramatic irony. Ulti-of Bil’in is overtaken by Israeli settlements (a mately, however, People Like Us is infected euphemism for high-rise sprawl) just as his with the “life-affirming” pox; this means mak-youngest son, Gibreel, is born and his desire to ing a narrative priority of redeeming everyone make meaningful cinematic documents takes before adequately explaining them. (N.P.) Pink Ribbons, Inc. An exposé in the purest, root. A series of inexpensive cameras gets most pissed-off sense, director Léa Pool’s sacrificed as he and Davidi, an Israeli, brave Pink Ribbons, Inc. digs into the bizarre elision increasing violence and official indifference to of philanthropy, corporate sponsorship, and capture the widespread involvement of Bur-sanitized pseudo-activism that comprises nat’s friends and neighbors in the village’s re-the breast-cancer-awareness industry. The sistance movement. It’s impossible not to care hallmark of this “movement,” of course, is the about these people, which triggers alarms proliferation of pink doodads — everything over how thoroughly 5 Broken Cameras elic-from yogurt cups and teddy bears to cars and, its sympathy for Palestinians at the expense of incredibly, fast-food packaging — ostensibly an Israeli perspective. (The settlers come off as bringing attention to the disease but mostly cartoonishly thuggish, with their itchy fists and serving as promotional detritus for companies default cries of “I’ll sue you!”) But Burnat and eager to cash in and camouflage for a few Davidi aim less for journalistic balance than a with carcinogenic product lines. The clueless, deeply personal explication of resistance — PR-challenged Susan G. Komen Foundation, mortifying, invigorating, possibly futile, and whose flack offers an on-camera defense, probably the only dignified response under spearheads these efforts, which Pool and the circumstances. “It takes strength to turn experts such as Barbara Ehrenreich and Dr. something negative into something possible,” Samantha King (whose 2006 book inspired Burnat says of Bil’in’s struggle, and he could the film) methodically reveal to be, like the just as easily be talking about his and Davidi’s color itself, vomitously distracting and of mar-film. (M.H.) Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter The ginal utility. Pool doesn’t discount the efforts logical outer limit of the whole horror-as-of rank-and-file pinksters, but she doesn’t let metaphor thing, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire them off the hook, either; their commitment Hunter shoehorns the entire personal history in the wraparound scenes of marches, rallies, of the 16th president into mega-budget The and runs is undeniable, but they ultimately Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires come off as misguided chop-socky/grind house schlock, and adherents to a ginned-up casts the seditious South as a nation pseudo-religion. This is of slave-sucking undead. “History,” uncomfortable territory, narrates Abe (Benjamin Walker), but that’s precisely the “prefers nobility to brutality” — a fact point — above all, Pink redressed by Seth Grahame-Smith’s Ribbons, Inc. is an argu-screenplay, in which the Pride and ment for reintroducing Prejudice and Zombies author into the public discourse adapts his second cutesy-clever pulp-the uncertainty, fear, and historical mash-up. Young Mr. Lincoln complexity that cancer THI s C ode loses his mother — who actually sufferers and their loved to download the FRee died from drinking bad milk — to a ones know all too well. sf weekly vampire’s bite, takes up training un-(M.H.) iPhone/Android APP Ted Fans of Seth Mac-der hunter Henry Sturgess (Dominic for more films or visit Farlane’s Fox mainstay Cooper), and learns to search and de-sfweekly.com Family Guy who wish he stroy Nosferatu with his rail-splitter’s would run afoul of FCC silver-edged ax, finally setting his regulations every week might be pleased with sights on head vampire Adam (Rufus Sewell), Ted , the story of a 35-year-old man and his who lives in the ripe antebellum splendor of foul-talking teddy bear. Plushies, too, might a Simon Legree. Shot by the estimable Caleb be turned on by the pot-smoking, whore-Deschanel and projected in wholly unneces-banging CGI toy ursus of the title, voiced by sary 3-D, Vampire Hunter ’s bleached palette MacFarlane, making his feature-directing makes it the ugliest major-studio release this debut, which he co-scripted with Family Guy year, though it needs be said that Kazakh direc-writers Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild. Other tor Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted) approaches specialized demographics — namely, anyone the material with a degree of Eurotrash insou-over 15 who can’t claim membership in ciance that is probably necessary to approach either of the above groups — might sit in the it at all and crisply handles set pieces involving theater in stony silence. Ted ’s overextended, a horse stampede and a runaway munitions desultory 104 minutes — which include a train. Possible resulting “fun” is only slightly kidnapping, a car chase, a set piece propelled mitigated by contemplation of the wearisome by Tiffany’s “I Think We’re Alone Now” video, decadence of American popular culture. (N.P.) Brave “I’d rather die than be like you,” the barely and a Norah Jones concert — also operate adolescent heroine of Pixar’s 13th feature roars on the premise that audiences can’t resist to her mother, perhaps the most radical line having their baser instincts appealed to over ever uttered in a Disney production — and and over again, especially when the filthy one that highlights just how different Brave ’s talk, gay panic, and racist jokes pour forth heroine’s predicament is from those of her from as dissonant a figure as a stuffed animal. recent screen sistren. Where fellow bow-But does the bear really look that dissimilar and-arrow expert Katniss Everdeen from The to — or function that much differently from Hunger Games and the titular princess of — Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Jason Segel, or Snow White and the Huntsman are each any other round-bellied bad influence from one point in love triangles, Merida, resolutely movies made under the sign of Apatow dur-asexual, is nonetheless entangled in the ing the past five years? Like its buddy-movie most complicated love-and hate-filled dyad predecessors, Ted has a soft, squishy ending, of all: that between a teenage daughter and one meant to vindicate the girlfriend (Mila her mother. With her flame-colored ringlets, Kunis) who insists John grow up, even if the Merida looks like a wee Rebekah Brooks, film has so little use for her — or any female maybe a pint-size Florence Welch, but despite who doesn’t want to spread her legs for Ted. these resemblances, she remains an original: (M.A.) To Rome with Love Reviewed on page 16. B rave , set in the Scottish Highlands in the 10th ONGOING “IT’S THE BEST SPIDER-MAN YET. A BRILLIANT REIMAGINING sfweekly.com | Contents | Letters | suCka Free City | night+Day OF AN FRANCHISE. I CAN’T WAIT TO MARLOW STERN EPIC | Books | Scan Film SEE IT AGAIN.” | eat | MusiC | SF Weekly J une 27-J uly 3, 2012 COLUMBIA PICTURES PRESENTS A MARVEL ENTERTAINMENT/LAURA ZISKIN/AVI ARAD/MATT TOLMACH PRODUCTION “THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN™” ANDREW GARFIELD EMMA STONE RHYS MUSIC IFANS DENIS LEARY CAMPBELL SCOTT I RRFAN KHAN WITH MARTIN SHEEN AND SALLY FIELD BY JAMES HORNER EXECUTIVE BASED ON THE STORY PRODUCERS STAN LEE KEVIN FEIGE MICHAEL GRILLO MARVEL COMIC BOOK BY STAN LEE AND STEVE DITKO BY JAMES VANDERBILT SCREENPLAY PRODUCED BY JAMES VANDERBILT AND ALVIN SARGENT AND STEVE KLOVES BY LAURA ZISKIN AVI ARAD MATT TOLMACH DIRECTED BY MARC WEBB Be the first to Be amazed! special midnight shows monday , july 2 starts tuesday , july 3 in theaters in , checK local listings for theaters and showtimes , 3d and 2d 17 2 col. (3.65") x 11" = 22" wed 6/27

Film Capsules

The Amazing Spider-Man
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