Nylon - October 2008 - (Page 117) ASHES OF TIME REDUX Jilted long ago by the woman he loved, Ouyang Feng (Leslie Cheung) is despondent and bitter. He lives alone in the desert and “specializes in solving problems”—hiring swordsmen for clients who are seeking retribution. A childhood friend, Huang Yaoshi (Tony Leung Ka Fai), arrives for his yearly visit bringing a jug of wine, a gift from a mysterious woman (Maggie Cheung), that will make the drinker forget his past. Ouyang isn’t interested, but then Huang promptly leaves and he is forced to contemplate his reasons for self-imposed exile. The story is a meditation on memory, and each character bears the weight of it with varying degrees of protest and fate. The film is set in five parts, each of which corresponds to a season of the Chinese almanac (which divides the year into 24 terms). As the seasons pass, the wisdom of friends, clients, and swordsmen challenge Ouyang’s indifference. Pieced together and brilliantly restored from negatives of director Wong Kar Wai’s 1994 original, Ashes of Time Redux is meant to be the definitive version of the film. Based on the martial arts novel The Eagle-Shooting Heroes by Louis Cha, the film is more prequel than adaptation, and longtime Kar Wai collaborator Christopher Doyle provides the dreamlike cinematography. Vividly colorful with fantastical fight choreography and a Yo-Yo Ma soundtrack, Redux is wuxia grandeur at its finest. LAURA HAYNER GOOD DICK In the unfortunately titled Good Dick, an L.A. video store clerk (Jason Ritter) falls for a lonely woman (writer/director Marianna Palka) who comes to him for her daily DVD porn fix. A homeless ex-junkie himself, and perhaps recognizing that the woman shares his addictive personality, he seizes the opportunity to shine some love into her shuttered life, stalking and and gradually wooing her until they come to a platonic sleeping arrangement. With understanding and careful persistence he eases the sexually dysfunctional woman away from the crippling events of her childhood. Palka, in her filmmaking debut, tempers the downer subject matter with subtle dark humor, humanizing awkwardness, rather than just being quirky for sake of it. Ritter impresses as the intrusive loverboy, and Palka’s performance parallels her strong writing and directorial choices. Here, at last, is a low-budget film that feels unconstrained by its financial limitations, boasting fine acting, a strong script and clever cinematography. Regrettably, the misleading title does the movie no favors and may prevent casual viewers from seeing this gem, but regardless, Palka has a brilliant future ahead. REBECCA RODRIGUEZ religulous Religulous, Bill Maher’s viciously funny documentary about religious absurdity, announces itself with the hard-punching political satirist behind HBO’s Real Time speaking from the spot in Israel where believers in the apocalypse expect the ultimate rumble between good and evil to go down. This movie, it’s clear, will be no gentleman’s debate: It will be a brawl, a bludgeoning. But if you’re on Maher’s side, it’s going to be fun. If you’re not, you won’t be convinced to switch. There are moments when Maher shows empathy— “Not having faith is a luxury,” he says, discussing the comfort religion offers the unfortunate—and occasionally, he attempts to understand. Mostly, though, this is a supremely mismatched fight. Watching Maher’s incisive intellect pitted against a Muslim rapper or a Christ impersonator at The Holy Land Experience is as wince-inducing as it is hilarious—but it’s never unfair. Maher’s questions are real. He simply fires them so precisely that rebuttals from even more able adversaries—a rabbi, a Vatican Observatory astronomer—only reinforce his points. Whether juxtaposing images of rock stars with religious leaders or dubbing the Egyptian myth of Horus over depictions of the Christ story, the director, Larry Charles (Borat, 2006) is as able as his star. But when Religulous attempts an earnest “anti-religionist” call to arms—images of violence and intolerance underscore Maher’s assertion that “religion must die for mankind to live”—it doesn’t quite connect. The shift in tone is too drastic. There’s so much furious fun in this film; a little more time easing the audience into the seriousness at the end might have let Religulous wield its force as expertly as it does its wit. JOSH WEIL BATTLE IN SEATTLE For months leading up to November 30th, 1999 the city of Seattle, Washington, prepared to host the World Trade Organization’s Ministerial conference, touted as the venue for a new round of global trade negotiations. On that day in 1999, an estimated 40,000 protestors congregated in the streets, prepared to stop it. The ensuing clash of opposing interests quickly turned an initially peaceful protest into a series of full-scale riots. Stuart Townsend’s directorial debut, the docudrama Battle in Seattle, walks viewers from the morning of November 30th, or N-30 as it came to be known, through the five days of chaos that followed. Jay (Martin Henderson), Django (Andre Benjamin), and Lou (Michelle Rodriguez) are protestors with pivotal roles in organizing the demonstrations. Dale (Woody Harrelson) is a riot cop and husband of pregnant shop girl, Ella (Charlize Theron). The characters are woven together over the course of the conference, with their stories punctuated by powerful footage from the actual protests, further propeling Townsend’s already arresting screenplay. While dramatic, political films based on relatively recent events are often hard to pull off, Townsend’s does all it could hope to by delivering a compelling story that educates its viewer and inspires them to explore the subject further. MR It takes a lot for anyone in Ballast to utter a word. Filmed on location in the Mississippi Delta, this film is led by its bleak, endless scenery. The actors, Michael J. Smith Sr. (Lawrence), JimMyron Ross (James), and Tarra Riggs (Marlee) are all Mississippi natives who play characters who are thrust together when Lawrence’s twin brother, who is also Marlee’s estranged love and the father of drug-addled James, commits suicide and bequeaths his home and share of the family business (a convenience store) to Marlee. Young James (Ross was 12 years old at the time of filming), gives viewers a tour of the town on his dirt bike, getting into trouble with drug dealers and hanging out in abandoned houses and the obscure places that he hides his drugs. The narrative slowly emerges as it becomes clear that Lawrence and Marlee will have to put their storied past behind them if they want to survive financially and create a more optimistic future for James. Aside from the cinematography, the beauty of this film lies in the thoughtful way that crucial details of the story are revealed. The dialogue is sparse, and in every instance that characters actually exchange words, it’s as if a piece of paper is being neatly unfolded. Ballast, the debut film of director Lance Hammer, is perfect in its minimalism and sheds an honest light on the struggles a human will endure when the life of another is at stake. MALLORY RICE ballast
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