..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..RJ Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

Tuya's Marriage, Chapter 27, et al
Plus Ratings Of This Week's DVDs

Tuya's Marriage (Three Stars)

Tuya's Marriage, a superb new Chinese movie set on the Mongolian plains, introduces an absolutely wonderful actress -- Yu Nan, whom we'll see next month in the Wachowski brothers' Speed Racer -- while immersing us in a landscape and a culture whose fragile place in the modern world breaks our hearts.

Director-writer Wang Qua'nan centers the tale on the brave, tough herdswoman Tuya (the incredible Yu Nan), and her struggles to provide for her family -- two small children and husband Bater (player by a Mongol non-professional, also called Bater) -- after a crippling injury makes her the clan's main pillar -- and another injury to Tuya then herself forces her to try to find another husband to care for them all. Among the candidates are her lifelong fans: reckless neighbor Sen'ge (played by another amateur, Sen'ge) and successful, flawed ex-classmate Baolier (Baolier).

It's a great story -- sad, funny and stirring -- with a great background: vast plains under a high Mongolian sky that leaves all these characters, even the heroic Tuya, dwarfed by natural majesty.

CHAPTER 27 (Three Stars)

Chapter 27, the new film about the three days in which John Lennon was stalked and murdered by Mark David Chapman, stirred up a slew of memories as I watched it -- some fond, some spooky.

When Lennon was killed, on December 8, 1980, I was in New York City, spending a day in the life at a Harlem apartment, with friends. I heard about his shooting by Chapman and the first thing I thought was C. I. A. It says something about the way the world had been blown off kilter in the '60s and '70s, and the way all our perceptions had been radicalized, that such a thought could occur so immediately and so strongly to me. I don't even remember being overly shocked by the assassination, just saddened and angered. In some insane way, the hit seemed logical, another sign of the times.

The earlier decades still cast their shadows. Jack and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, all fallen prey to assassins' bullets. Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones and Janis Joplin all dead of drugs and excess. It seemed inevitable that, some day, something bad and evil might happen to another politician or rock star -- and if any pop idol was going to be murdered, Lennon seemed one of the more likely. He was the anti-war "Give Peace a Chance" guru, politico without portfolio, writer of Revolution Imagine and Happiness is a Warm Gun, deportation target for years of the G. O. P. establishment.

Down he went at the Dakota, at Chapman's hands, and you got the lightning notion that one more conspiracy theory would roll right at us down the paranoia freeway.

But that isn't quite what happened. Lennon, apparently, really was dispatched by a mad loner with no corporate or government ties: in this case, a chubby little misfit from Hawaii named Mark David Chapman, who dug Beatles music and J. D Salinger's widely loved '50s-'60s cult novel A Catcher in the Rye -- and who hung around the Dakota for three days, seemingly trying to get Lennon to autograph his vinyl copy of Lennon's and Yoko Ono's spectacular new comeback album, "Double Fantasy."

Those three days are the focus and Chapman is the central figure -- you wouldn't want to call him a hero, a villain, or even an anti-hero -- of Jarrett (J. P.) Schaefer's strangely poetic Chapter 27, which takes its title from what would have been the next chapter of Catcher in the Rye, the chapter that the reclusive Salinger didn't write (there are only 26) but which Chapman wrote in blood on the sidewalk.

It's a pretty good movie, though I got impatient during the first half. Schaefer, making his writer-directorial debut, has both visual and dramatic knacks. And Jared Leto really catches madness in a bottle as Chapman. Leto has put on 60 Raging Bull pounds to chunk himself up, and his face has that soft, hidden, childlike look that the real Chapman radiated. The movie plays him as an ultimate loser, and even suggests that a better sex life might have swerved him away from murder -- and it plays an oddball trick by casting actor Mark Lindsay Chapman as John Lennon (in almost a walk-on, or die-on).

Chapter 27 feels kind of creepy during the first half, especially during the romantic scenes where Leto's Chapman shuffles and flirts with fellow Lennon watcher Jude (Lindsay Lohan in a nice job). But as the traps start springing toward the end -- and, as we get more of Judah Friedlander's top-of-the line performance as furry freak brother paparazzi Paul, Chapter 27 becomes really gripping. Schaefer has the paranoia of the early '80s down pat, and his style has a funny lyricism that curls sweetly around Leto's intricately introverted performance -- his suggestion of a religious fanatic awash in self-pity disguised as a pop groupie. Why did he kill Lennon? Perhaps, the movie suggests, because he thought John was one of the endless phonies denounced by Catcher narrator Holden Caulfield. (Was that character really named for '40s movie cuties William Holden and Joan Caulfield?) Perhaps because he was killable.

Part of the problem with movies or books about the assassinations above, is that they always to a degree, leave you angry, uncertain, wondering what the hell really did happen -- and never really satisfied with any certainty the filmmakers are peddling. (Case Closed my ass, Gerald Posner.) Schaefer took his script from Jack Jones' 1992 interview book with Chapman Let Me Take You Down (the title is from Lennon's dazed anthem "Strawberry Fields Forever") and it has a genuinely unsettlingly we are there quality.

I liked it, but I think the movie needs more Lennon -- not as impersonated by the other Mark Chapman, but Lennon in more clips, more songs, more mementos of his life and art. Gun-packing Mark shouldn't be the solo star here, even if that's what he wanted. Whenever we do see Lennon's image in this film, it just breaks you up: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chapter 27 (Three stars)
Directed and written by Jarrett Schaefer; with Jared Leto, Lindsay Lohan, Judah Friedlander, Mark Lindsay Chapman.

STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE (Three stars)

What would Lennon have had to say about Abu Ghraib, I wonder? Errol Morris' documentary, about the prison where the American 372nd military police company went nuts while questioning prisoners, replays one of the most embarrassing and idiotic episodes of the Iraq war. Straight from the mouths of five of the seven m.p.s convicted of Abu Ghraib crimes (including snap shot star Lynndie England), one of the men who prepared the case, and a general, Janice Karpinski, who was disgraced by it (and is burning mad), we learn some of the reasons why a group of young soldiers started humiliating Iraqi prisoners, stripping them, putting them on dog leashes, and turning them into butts of crude, sadistic schoolboy humor. We learn worse, too.

This is not the calm, measured indictment that we've seen in movies like No End in Sight. Instead, like much of Morris' work, it's a cool, deadpan look at freakish, off-the-edge American behavior, told with an irony so swallowed-up, it's almost unrecognizable. One of the movie's grace notes, indeed, is sympathy for these kids who took the fall, while the war's prime movers, Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and the rest, didn't. Yet.

THE VISITOR (Two and a half stars)

Tom McCarthy's sophomore film after his likable, much-praised The Station Agent begins very well, with Richard Jenkins pumping in quiet reality as taciturn college Economics professor Walter Vale. Taking a conference break in Manhattan. Walter accidentally becomes entangled with the troubles of an illegal immigrant couple squatting on his premises: likable Syrian djembe (drum) playing musician, Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and his suspicious Senegalese girlfriend Zainab (Danai Gurira).

As matters grow knottier, and the post-9/11 dilemmas worse, Tarek's self-sacrificing and very attractive Palestinian mother Mouna (played by the stunning Hiam Abbass) shows up; the gruff prof becomes believably, if unsurprisingly humanized. It's nice seeing that ever-reliable, ever-glowering star character actor Jenkins in such a substantial role. But (and I'm in the minority here, since the movie is a critical hit), I thought The Visitor lost its rhythm when Tarek was arrested. The last act and final resolution are preachy and predictable -- even if the last scene makes for a terrific poster. Why….? Well, maybe you'll see what I mean.
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88 MINUTES (Two stars)

Well-done but preposterous, this real-time thriller from director Jon Avnet, puts Al Pacino in a noirish D. O. A. kind of fix, as a star forensic psychiatrist, who, just as an egotistical serial killer he nailed is due to be executed, finds himself harassed by a string of copycat murders and cell phone calls, starting with the one that tells him he has only 88 minutes to live.

I'd have to say this plot makes no sense at all. Pacino though gives another of his blazing over the top Heat-style performance, handsomely abetted by Alicia Witt, Leelee Sobieski, Amy Brenneman and Deborah Kara Unger. But time (tick tock) runs out on writer Gary Scott Thompson's story contrivances pretty early on -- even if his real-time gimmick lessens the number of times you have to check your watch.

DEAL (Two stars)

Burt Reynolds plays Tommy Vinson, an aging poker ex-champ, who crashed at the tables and has been retired for three decades, but who thinks he can tutor a young phenom to straight flush greatness. Bret Harrison deals us Alex Stillman the phenom, a cocky Yalie whose mathematical genius far outstrips his ability to read players and spot bluffs, and who doesn't listen to Tommy as much as he should.

It will surprise no one who has seen The Cincinnati Kid, The Color of Money, and the dozens of other movies from which this one derives, that these two wind up battling each other in the final round of the TV broadcast championships of the World Poker Tour. Nor will you be amazed much by Tommy's steadfast wife (Maria Mason) and Alex's hooker ladylove (Shannon Elizabeth) -- or even the would-be shocker ending. This is a drab, business-as-usual movie that wastes stacks of chips and a good cast.

Gil Cates, Jr. directs and co-writes. By the way, I think Reynolds would have nailed this part more by playing it with gray hair -- and maybe switching to black for Tommy's World Poker Tour comeback.
-

MW on DVD

NEW PICK OF THE WEEK

Cloverfield (Three and a half stars)
U.S.; Matt Reeves, 2008 (Paramount)

CLASSIC CO-PICKS OF THE WEEK

Merrill's Marauders (Three and a half stars)
U.S.; Samuel Fuller (Warners)

She Done Him Wrong (Three and a half stars)
U.S.; Lowell Sherman, 1933 (Universal)

BOX SET PICK OF THE WEEK

Silent Ozu (Three Family Comedies) (Overall rating: Four stars)
Includes: Tokyo Chorus (Japan; Yasujiro Ozu, 1931) (Three and a half stars); I Was Born, But… (Ozu, 1932) (Four stars); Passing Fancy (Ozu, 1933) (Four stars) (All films in Japanese, with English subtitles.)

OTHER RECENT RELEASES

DOMESTIC
The Savages (Three stars)
U.S.; Tamara Jenkins, 2007 (Fox)

Charlie Wilson's War (Three stars)
U. S.; Mike Nichols, 2007 (Universal)

INTERNATIONAL

Fireworks Wednesday (Three and a half stars)
Iran; Asqhar Farhadi, 2006 (Facets)

The Book of the Dead (Three and a half stars)
Japan; Kihachiro Yakamoto, 2005 (Kimstim/Kino)

Germany, Pale Mother (Three and a half stars)
West Germany; Helma Sanders-Brahm, 1980 (Facets)

CLASSIC

Death of a Cyclist (Three and a half stars)
Spain; Juan Antonio Bardem, 1955 (Criterion)

Midnight (Three and a half stars)
U.S.; Mitchell Leisen, 1939 (Universal)

Easy Living (Three and a half stars)
U.S.; Leisen, 1937 (Universal)

The Magic of Melies (Three stars)
France; Georges Melies, circa 1900 (Kino)

The Shop Around the Corner/Auntie Mame (Three and a half stars)
Shop: (Four stars) U.S.; Ernst Lubitsch, 1940

Mame: (Three stars) U.S.; Morton DaCosta, 1958

- Michael Wilmington
April 24, 2008

April 17: My Blueberry Nights
April 10: Shine A Light, Plus Young @ Heart, Smart People, and The Forbidden Kingdom

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