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13 TZAMETI Like the recent Australian Western “The Proposition,” “13 Tzameti” only comes alive when its characters are shooting each other. Fortunately for the audience’s chances of staying awake, a Russian roulette sequence takes up about a third of its running time. But unlike the gory “Proposition,” “13 Tzameti” is relatively bloodless, even if its violence is far from painless. “13 Tzameti” is the kind of film that gets called a triumph of style over substance, but it doesn’t even have that much style going for it. Directed by Gela Babluani. Cinema Village. (Steve Erickson)
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THE BRIDESMAID Claude Chabrol’s new film “The Bridesmaid” is a realistic thriller that contemplates what could happen if the one you love madly is actually mad. Chabrol, in his fifth decade of filmmaking, is often compared to Hitchcock. But in a Hitchcock film the evil is often explained and there’s a clear victim. Chabrol’s horror is subtler. In “The Bridesmaid,” evil is a feature of everyday life, the nature of which only becomes apparent gradually, inevitably forcing characters into the role of accomplice or victim. Angelika Film Center. (Seth Bookey)
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CONVERSATIONS WITH OTHER WOMEN “Conversations with Other Women” is the absorbing story of an attached Man (Aaron Eckhart) and a married Woman (Helena Bonham-Carter) who flirt at a wedding and retire to her hotel room that same night. The plot may be deceptively simple, but director Hans Canosa films this relationship drama with two cameras at once, shooting each of the characters independently, and projecting the images side by side on the screen. The audience can watch the actions and reactions of the Man and the Woman as they respond to each other’s dialogue, or the dramatic moments that comprise this talky film. This unorthodox structure, however, adds a layer of realism to the proceedings, and enables Canosa to generate truer emotions. Landmark Sunshine. (Gary M. Kramer)
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The Descent Well before the 2004 election made the blue state/red state divide a media cliché, it was explored metaphorically in films like John Boorman’s “Deliverance,” Tobe Hooper’s “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” and Wes Craven’s “The Hills Have Eyes.” The horror genre has spent the past 35 years depicting urbanites’ nightmares about the great outdoors and its denizens. “The Descent,” set in Appalachia but shot in the U.K., continues this thread, putting a female twist on the male fears of “Deliverance”—all six of its characters are women. Even by a horror fan’s standards, watching “The Descent” is a masochistic experience. The film itself provides a vicarious immersion in claustrophobia and disorientation. The fact that the cast is all female suggests feminist intent but “The Descent” is no ode to female bonding. At its most ambitious, it leans towards a blood-soaked exploration of women’s power dynamics and resentments. Regal Union Square, AMC Empire 25. (Steve Erickson)
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GABRIELLE Adapted from Joseph Conrad’s short story “The Return,” the plot of “Gabrielle” is extremely simple. It takes place over 36 hours, depicting the life of Jean. His social life is based around elaborate dinner parties, made possible by a stable of servants. His complacency crumbles when he reads a letter from his wife Gabrielle. She tells him that she has left him for another man. As Conrad’s title suggests, she comes back to Jean, but the couple must reinvent their relationship in order for it to have any chance of succeeding. “Gabrielle” explores a marriage without even the promise of physical pleasure. IFC Center. (Steve Erickson)
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HALF NELSON In a mostly black working-class corner of Brooklyn, history teacher Dan Dunne (Ryan Gosling), a baby-faced white hipster, does his best to flout the received curriculum and impart critical precepts to a class of improbably docile eighth graders. He is outwardly righteous but privately beset by demons. Dunne takes special interest in Drey (Shareeka Epps), a student who stands apart with thoughtful, coiled reserve. Doubling as girls’ basketball coach, he’s caught by Drey after a match one evening in the stall of a locker-room toilet, sucking on a well-used crack pipe and sliding into a bummer trip on being exposed. Contrary to rumors of obsolescence, Norman Mailer’s white negro is alive, well, and firmly ensconced in the 112. Angelika, Cobble Hill, BAM Rose Cinemas. (Ioannis Mookas)
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HEADING SOUTH How many times have we heard and only half-believed that money can’t buy happiness? After 105 minutes of beach time with Charlotte Rampling and her friends, there is not doubt that being poor and decent is better than rolling in money with strings attached. Ellen (Rampling), Brenda (Karen Young), and Sue (Louise Portal) are North Americans of a certain age who have come to Baby Doc Duvalier’s Haiti for sun and fun. They install themselves in a rustic resort by the sea, spending lazy days on the beach sun-bathing, chatting, drinking concoctions with little umbrellas stuck in them, and frolicking with the local men. Angelika. (Sam Oglesby)
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QUEENS The overstuffed Spanish ensemble comedy “Queens,” about five meddlesome mothers attending a group wedding of gay men, should have been renamed “Divas,” as everyone in this energetic but messy comedy is over-emotive and self-important. While the multiple storylines and characters are interconnected, “Queens” actually makes things slightly more difficult by employing a fractured narrative structure that shifts back and forth in time to tell and retell certain storylines from multiple perspectives. Director and co-writer Manuel Gómez Pereira seems to have worked hard to make a story about five women and six men as complicated, and unfunny, as possible. Angelika (Gary M. Kramer)
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THE QUIET I didn’t think it was possible, but “The Quiet” beats Michael Cuesta’s “Twelve and Holding” for the coveted crown of 2006’s most smug assault on American suburbia. Screenwriters Abdi Nazemian and Micah Schraft have written two made-for-ABC Family Channel movies. In “The Quiet,” their worldview simply inverts the network’s. This is an anti-sitcom as banally anti-bourgeois as “Leave It To Beaver” and “The Cosby Show” were blandly bourgeois. Their script would only have worked if a director really embraced its sleaziness, but every single film that has tread this territory—even “American Beauty”—aspires to Indie edginess or an arty patina. If only our generation’s Russ Meyer had arrived! Regal Union Square, Brooklyn Heights, AMC Empire 25. (Steve Erickson)
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Quinceañera The outstanding film “Quinceañera” portrays the bond forged between Magdalena (Emily Rios, a pregnant 14-year-old, and her gay cousin Carlos (Jesse Garcia) in Echo Park, Los Angeles. This may be an odd choice of subject matter for filmmakers and partners Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland whose last film “The Fluffer,” was an insider look at porno-filmmaking, but there are, in fact, thematic similarities between this new film and that. In both dramas, the main characters were trying to assert—or come to terms with—their identities. It is only through their unexpected and unsuccessful interactions with others that they ultimately realize who they truly are. Landmark Sunshine, Clearview Chelsea, Brooklyn Heights. (Gary Kramer)
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A SCANNER DARKLY Arrayed in junkie chic and heaped with expectations, Richard Linklater’s animated treatment of Philip K. Dick’s 1977 novel “A Scanner Darkly” plays like a heartbreak tango scored to the doomsday strains of a post-democratic American twilight. Culled from the late author’s own tour through the ’60s drug demimonde, “A Scanner Darkly” envisions an America “seven years from now.” Mass acquiescence to martial law is lubricated by rampant addiction to the insidious Substance D (for “Death”), a psychotropic that induces paranoid stupor, unquenchable dependency, and with prolonged use, engulfing psychosis. Landmark Sunshine. (Ioannis Mookas)
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SUPERMAN RETURNS “Even though you’ve been raised as a human being,” Jor-El tells his son, “you’re not one of them. They can be great people—they wish to be—they only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all—their capacity for good—I have sent them you, my only son.” Were such allusions not enough, a further exchange between Superman and Lois Lane’s young son and scenes where a suffering Superman assumes the pose of crucifixion suggest that the film can be viewed through many lenses other than lavender. The film’s composer and editor John Ottman emphasizes that the movie is a love story. “It’s about a man who feels like an outsider trying to find out how he fits into the world. The love story, not the suspense element with Lex Luthor, is what kept me going emotionally as a composer. I sank my teeth into the emotional love triangle that’s the main drive of this movie.” AMC Loews E-Walk 13. (Jason Serinus)
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Who Killed the Electric Car? As its title suggests, “Who Killed the Electric Car?” is a whodunit. Delving into the electric car’s short life as a commodity, it raises a host of other issues, particularly regarding the effectiveness of marketing and the ease of manipulating America’s “free market.” It’s also extremely optimistic. Lurking beneath its eco-outrage is a vision of car culture free from pollution and dependence on foreign oil. “Who Killed the Electric Car?” celebrates the battery-powered vehicles’ speed and sleek design. CC Village East Cinemas. (Steve Erickson)
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