Playing with the big boys

by Bradley Iverson-Long & Kay Nguyen

B: Boy howdy. We’re like kids in a candy store this weekend, with all the available adolescent audiovisual opportunities. But, all work and no play make Jack a dull boy, so we’d better get on with the reviews, which will separate the men from the boys. But we’ll handle them with kid gloves and spare the rod and spoil the child. We’ll also go to clichefinder.com in search of more bad clichés concerning kids. Boys will be boys.

Peter Pan (PG)

K: Peter Pan is an old kid’s story about a guy who never seems to grow up. But, much as you can recite line by line what Wendy confesses with Peter Pan, you still need to go see this beautifully-crafted dreamy film.

B: Why?

K: The wonderful cast actually gives you a refreshed insight into the psychology of these well-worn characters. You get to see a mischievous Peter Pan (Jeremy Sumpter) handling his first kiss in the most innocent way and a precocious Wendy (Rachel Hurd-Wood) sailing through childhood fantasies of Never Never Land. Most impressive is Captain Hook’s character (Jason Isaacs) whose nuanced feelings defy conventional interpretation of the role. It’s a children’s movie, but these thoughtful and well-acted performances are definitely for a more mature and more perceptive audience. That said, I haven’t even mentioned the splendid visual extravagance that Peter Pan boasts. So I guess your Friday night is justifiably booked then.

B: Booked by the Dance Troupe, perhaps. While this production does look intriguingly steeped in fantasy, I can’t justify watching a story I’ve already seen so many times. After Disney, Mary Martin and Steven Spielberg have their crack at it, the book should be closed. This version supposedly sticks closely to J.M. Barrie’s original stories, but having music by Coldplay doesn’t strike me as authentic, although at least it’s British.

Être et Avoir

To Be and To Have

B: We all have that one teacher: that one teacher who unflinchingly cares about you or who breaks through and hooks us into learning. Or at least one who takes us sledding and makes us pancakes. This French documentary is the story of one such teacher.

To Be and To Have (named after two verbs that are hard to conjugate in any language) spends 100 minutes in the single classroom school in Auvergne where Georges Lopez teaches 12 kids more than just their French lesson. The film follows a “fly-on-the-wall” approach. Rather than emphasizing Lopez’s specific teaching methods, it focuses on his loving interaction with his pupils. He quells their arguments, helps them make pancakes, gives them a turtle to play with and comes off as a bespectacled and balding big softie, savoring the last few years of his career.

While Lopez is almost didactically never portrayed negatively, by the end of the film, the audience will treat the children just as saintly, especially the mischievously cherubic Jojo or the painfully shy Olivier, who is dreading the transition to middle school he will soon make. Looking at the class roster now, months after I’ve seen the film, I still feel for many of the children in To Be and To Have. Perhaps such contentment comes from having a Davis buddy, but this film, which never tries to do more than document the lives in the schoolhouse, will offer a refreshing breeze of pleasure to everyone who stops by Harris tomorrow night. Unless you’re going to see Brenda Weiler instead, but I’m not sure if she can compete with these cute cute kids.

Downtown 81

B: The following synopsis is from Downtown 81’s cleverly titled website, www.downtown81.com: “Downtown 81 [stars] the legendary American artist Jean Michel Basquiat (1960-1988.) Basquiat was a 19 year-old painter, graffiti artist, poet and musician when he played the lead in this film, which vividly depicts the explosive downtown New York art and music scene of 1980-81.

The film is a day in the life of a young artist who needs to raise money to reclaim the apartment from which he has been evicted. He wanders the downtown streets carrying a painting he hopes to sell, encountering friends, whose lives (and performances) we peek into. He finally manages to sell his painting to a wealthy female admirer, but he’s paid by check. Low on cash, he spends the evening wandering from club to club, looking for a beautiful girl he had met earlier, so he’ll have a place to spend the night.”

End quote. The trailer shows a lot of bands I’ve never heard of and is completely incomprehensible.

East is East (R)

K: Last year, the Indian film Monsoon Wedding gave us a glimpse into the typical parental conflict of the East: mommy and daddy get the say over whom we marry. This time, we make a geographical trek to neighboring Pakistan and transplant a typical Pakistani family into England: same script, different cast, we have East is East. Oh and you can always refer back to the Indian household in Bend It Like Beckham, in case you still don’t get what all the fuss is about.

Nowhere in Africa (R)

B: A powerful film that relies on the sweeping beauty and hostility of Kenyan landscapes and the most basic knowledge of World War II to tell the story of one German woman (Juliane Köhler, who starred in Aimée and Jaguar) and her family struggling to survive in the dark continent after fleeing the Nazis.