Cinematical

Cinematical goes to Cannes, so when it comes time for the fall festivals, we mostly ignore the movies we've already covered there. But since I didn't go to Cannes, the many holdovers from that festival are new to me, and a big part of the fun. (Less fun: complaining about being conflicted out of a movie only to be met with "oh, I saw that at Cannes." Thanks, jackass.)

One such holdover is the Dardenne brothers' very good Lorna's Silence, an(other) study of guilt and self-deception. The Dardennes' approach can be charitably termed "narrative economy," or less charitably "a pathological refusal to let important events happen on screen." For that reason, Lorna's Silence plays like a mystery, except that the mystery is what the hell is going on, with the filmmakers dropping tidbits of information at their leisure. It's an unusual way of generating suspense – a bit tyrannical, but also a recognition that real life generally does not contain expository dialogue. Though the film contains plenty of conventional what-happens-next suspense as well, its nature makes virtually any plot description a spoiler. If you like the Dardennes, or are just interested in the current art film vanguard, don't read much about Lorna's Silence but just go see it. Sony Pictures Classics will release it in North America.

Paris 36 tries to do a dozen different things, and does none of them well. But even that description may not be harsh enough, because it makes the film sound ambitious. It's not. Director Christophe Barratier, whose The Chorus was a quality rendition of an age-old formula, doesn't even pretend to give much thought to any of the disparate elements he assembles here. This is one of those middlebrow period-piece comedies that mistakes frenzy for energy and spotless soundstage gloss for visual style. It may play well with certain audiences for whom "arthouse" is synonymous with "no explosions," but there's really nothing to see here.

Well, in theory there's a lot to see, including but not limited to the following: a would-be portrait of the French Popular Front in the 1930's; the story of a bunch of unemployed workers banding together to put on a show and save a historic theater; the tragedy of an old workhorse (Gérard Jugnot) who loses custody of his accordion prodigy son to his cheating wife when the theater first closes down; a romance between a communist rabblerouser (and stagehand, and actor!) and a singing ingénue (Nora Arnezeder) taken under the wing of a fascist loan shark (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu); the spiritual rebirth of an old orchestra conductor who has spent the last 20 years alone with his radio; a no-talent comic (Kad Merad) who sinks to performing for the Nazis after being booed off stage by everyone else, though he is of course much too lovable to actually be an anti-Semite.

Under no circumstances is Ji-woon Kim's The Good, the Bad, the Weird a great movie, but I found myself genuinely impressed with it. The pitch – "Korean comic spaghetti western" – sounded like the sort of ultra-hip, insubstantial, self-consciously campy Asian actioner I've grown tired of; I kept flashing back to Riyuhei Kitamura's much-hyped but totally useless Versus, an acquired taste I haven't acquired. I needn't have worried. Though Kim's western pastiche may be insubstantial, it's anything but a drag. It's masterfully directed, legitimately funny, and legitimately fun, thoroughly enjoyable even at an excessive 129 minutes.

Though you may think you're here to see how Kim (whom you may remember from his terrific horror entry A Tale of Two Sisters) plays with the western genre, you're really here for the action sequences. There are two spectacular ones: the rollicking train robbery that opens the film, and a later all-stops-out chase scene involving several gangs of bandits and the Japanese army. These aren't the sort of scenes that bring you to the edge of your seat, but rather the sort that put a steady, delighted grin on your face. Unapologetically goofy, absurdly attenuated, brilliantly paced, and backed by a rousing musical score, they alone make the film worth sitting through.

A few stray thoughts from the end of the festival, hopefully of general interest. I still have one more review in the pipeline, which should come tomorrow afternoon.

- I am even more gung-ho about Slumdog Millionaire than Kim. It sort of ruined the last day and a half of the festival, because I've been unable to think about much else. I want to see it at least a dozen more times, immediately.

- I need to say something about With a Little Help from Myself, François Dupeyron's follow-up to the arthouse hit Monsieur Ibrahim. It's a respectable, low-key drama set in a French housing project, featuring a justly-acclaimed performance by Félicité Wouassi as a woman working to keep her head above water and her family together despite a seemingly infinite number of obstacles. It gets a bit too cute at points -- there's a subplot regarding the protagonist's sex-starved neighbor that is the epitome of "neither here nor there" -- but it's mostly the sort of solid, unpretentious film I greet with open arms at festivals. There's enough buzz about Wouassi that if you live in a city, you'll surely see it at a theater near you sooner rather than later.

The most exciting news from Labor Day weekend at the box-office -- traditionally a slow period -- is that America seems to have caught on to the scam that Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer have been running for... what is it now? Almost three years? (I'm not counting the Scary Movie franchise, which always retained some redeeming value despite their idiocy.) Anyway, their latest travesty, Disaster Movie, opened to $6.9 million over four days, just over a third of the (nearly identical to each other) first three-day weekends for Date Movie, Epic Movie and Meet the Spartans. Could that be the end of that?

Not that any of Disaster Movie's competitors did spectacularly better. The strongest of them -- the poorly-reviewed sci-fi flick Babylon A.D. -- only managed second place and a $12 million four-day. Don Cheadle's Traitor came in fifth with $10 million, which I actually think is robust for an barely-marketed film opening on just over 2,000 screens. College crashed and burned, landing outside the top 10 with $2.6 million. The best explanation is that there simply wasn't any reason to see it.

The holdovers did well. Mamma Mia!, now in its seventh weekend of release, continues to lurk in the bottom half of the top 10; its take actually grew compared to last weekend, even if you use the 3-day numbers. It's up to $133 million. The Dark Knight barely lost steam, going from fourth place to third and breaking the $500 million threshold. Vicky Cristina Barcelona also continues to do very well on under 700 screens. And of course, Tropic Thunder managed a third weekend atop the charts, leapfrogging past Pineapple Express.

The full estimates after the jump.

Flash of Genius is a conventional crowdpleaser but not, I'm pleased to report, a shameless one. Chronicling the true story of a college professor's fight to reclaim his invention – the intermittent windshield wiper – from the car company that stole it, the film does many of the things you'd expect, but it may also surprise you. Don't let its Telluride placement fool you: this is a staunchly mainstream, unchallenging film, the sort of underdog-vs.-corporate-behemoth story you've seen time and again. But it's a decent rendition, hitting the right notes without insulting our intelligence.

Now, the intermittent windshield wiper is not exactly the light bulb. If you're not familiar with the term, the wiper is "intermittent" in the sense that it can pause between wipes – a problem that apparently puzzled engineers at all the major car companies until Kearns cracked it the late 60s. But part of what's nifty about the film is its ability to create suspense and curiosity around something so seemingly mundane. Kearns' first demo of his device to Ford is exciting in a very goofy way, but exciting nonetheless.

1. People are willing to get out of bed at seven in the morning to watch a movie about people starving themselves to death. I don't care how much people paid to be here: it is simply amazing that the 8:30 am showing of Hunger (which Kim reviewed at Cannes) -- one of the most intensely unpleasant films I've ever seen, with a program description that did that aspect of it justice -- was a near-sellout at Telluride's largest venue. By the time I got to the theater at 8 am on a rainy Sunday morning, I was 259th in line. Everyone keeps saying that what "makes Telluride special" is the enthusiasm and undying cinephilia of the audience (most of whom come back year after year), and nothing epitomizes that attitude better than this morning's Hunger queue.

2. Anyone who fights to save the whales is automatically a hero, no matter his means. Just as it was remarkable to see people line up at the crack of dawn to watch an indescribably painful art film, it was disappointing to see a Telluride audience give an uncritical standing ovation to "eco-pirate" Paul Watson following a screening of Pirate of the Sea, the mediocre, one-sided documentary profiling him. Watson, a Greenpeace dissident who goes out on a boat and tries to sink or sabotage whaling or seal-hunting operations, may well be a hero, but there's no way you could fairly come to that conclusion after watching the hagiographic documentary, which takes Watson's word as gospel, and refuses to explore the troubling implications of his often violent efforts. Another documentary about Watson, called At the Edge of the World, will play Toronto; here's to hoping it's a bit more considered and thoughtful.

Director Ole Christian Madsen began his career as an adherent to Dogme 95, the famous minimalist filmmaking movement began by fellow Danes Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg. I haven't seen Madsen's previous two non-Dogme films, Nordkraft and Prague, but the remarkable, ultra-stylized Flame & Citron is about as far from the Dogme aesthetic as you can get and still have a movie. Perhaps not coincidentally, it's also one of the most exciting films I've ever seen at Telluride: bold, brave and one of a kind.

Flame & Citron tells the story of two heroes of the Danish resistance to the Nazi occupation, but it is far from your typical World War II period piece. Instead, it plays like some unholy, brilliant marriage between spy noir and comic book movie. Filled to the brim with assassination plots, double-crosses, larger-than-life villains, and big, dramatic gestures, this is not for viewers who like their movies timid and sedate. And under that grand façade, the film grapples with tough moral questions regarding war, occupation, survival, and ideology.

"Flame" and "Citron" are the code names for two Danish assassins who brazenly go after high-profile Danish turncoats and, increasingly, the occupying Germans themselves. ("Do they know what I look like?" asks Flame when he learns of a hefty bounty on his head. The response: "They know you're a redhead.") For them, the necessity of their work is an article of faith: the only moral response to occupation is to kill off the occupiers – and those who assist them – one by one. They take orders from an ornery police solicitor who claims to be in communication with the British. He hands them a name and a photograph, and off they go.

American Violet opens in the kitchen of a Texas housing project, as a mother makes breakfast for her children. She pours water into a tea kettle; serves eggs; hurries the kids along – a lovely, peaceful scene. Then the film cuts abruptly to police preparing for a raid: they load their weapons (I believe the first shot is of a gun), put on armor, and pile en masse into trucks. The moment we move from the kitchen table to the police staging area, the soundtrack changes too, from a languid, piano-tinged theme to a percussive arrangement that screams evil.

This approach is representative of much of the movie, which is a strident, aggressive polemic against racism in the justice system, as well as the story of a courageous woman who risked much to sue an all-powerful District Attorney. It is straightforward, unambiguous, and often frankly partisan, hitting its talking points hard without ever really peering under the surface. The tale it tells is reasonably compelling, and as a legal thriller the film more or less works. But much of it is obvious and ham-fisted – the sort of Serious Drama you might expect to see on basic cable. Adventurous moviegoers won't find much of interest here.

I haven't quite processed the notion of a Poltergeist remake just yet -- it still seems more conceptual than actual to me. Yet the fact that they've picked a pair of screenwriters, and that the late Heather O'Rourke has condemned the remake from the grave, tell me that it's about as actual as it gets. Now Bloody-Disgusting has started a rumor that Vadim Perelman -- quasi-arthouse director of House of Sand and Fog and The Life Before Her Eyes -- is in "heavy talks" to direct the new movie. That would be a heck of a contrast to the screenwriters of Boogeyman.

I'm as down on this project as everyone else -- the original film is a moment in time that ought not be disturbed -- but I like the idea of Perelman, mostly because I like the notion of otherwise "respectable" directors trying their hand at genre films. His brooding, portentous style might be a good fit for Poltergeist, I guess. And maybe this will wind up like the doomed adaptation of The Talisman, to which Perelman was attached for a while (and which he seems far better suited to), never making it past the development stage.

Anyway, I emphasize that I'm commenting on a rumor, not relaying hard news. Make of it what you will.