Basterds, the IRA and the real Mad Men

This week in theaters, Quentin's back, the Irish Troubles rear their head and Ben Stiller gets dumped.

Another monster release slate this week finds, amongst other things, interpretations of the Irish troubles, both real and imagined. Also, we meet the real life Mad Men, QT’s Basterds and the godfather of African-American indie film as a bearded ten-year-old boy.

Download this in audio form (MP3: 15:35 minutes, 14.3 MB)

Subscribe to the In Theaters podcast: [XML] [iTunes]

“Art & Copy”
Filmmaker Doug Pray (“Surfwise”) goes inside the advertising industry to uncover the creative minds behind such iconic slogans as “Got Milk?” and “Just Do It,” encountering a multitude of contrasting viewpoints, from those who feel they have whored themselves out in the name of commerce to those hopelessly addicted to the rush of satisfying the constantly changing needs of the modern world. Don Draper, eat your heart out.
Opens in New York.

“The Baader Meinhof Complex”
This year’s German nominee for the best foreign-language film Oscar, Uli Edel’s adaptation of journalist Stefan Aust’s chronicle of the terrorist group Red Army Faction blends history lessons with the thrills and kills of a hard-hitting drama. The film spans ten years in the life of Ulrike Meinhof (Martina Gedeck) as she joins up with violent political activists Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibtreu) and Gudrun Ensslin (Johanna Wokalek) on a campaign of urban warfare before getting captured and becoming heroes in the eyes of the ultra left wing. In German with subtitles.
Opens in New York; opens in Los Angeles on Aug. 28th.

“Casi Divas”
Following up her 2006 ensemble comedy “Efectos Secundarios,” Mexican writer/director Issa López offers up another multi-stranded laughfest of spirited ambition south of the border. Four bright-eyed, small-town would-be ingénues from scattered parts of Mexico audition for a big-shot producer (Julio Brancho), who’s holding a nationwide talent search for the star of his next film, unaware that notorious screen diva Eva Gallardo (Patricia Llaca) has earmarked that part for herself. In Spanish with subtitles.
Opens in limited release.

“Confessionsofa Ex-Doofus-ItchyFooted Mutha”
Confirming that he will continue to confound expectations until the day he dies, pioneering African-American artist, writer, musician and filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles concocts a boisterous, kaleidoscopic spin on his colorful life and times with this interpretive memoir. Playing himself, beard and all, at every stage of his life, from wide-eyed ten-year-old boy to the sprightly septuagenarian we know today, Van Peebles fashions an abstract, homemade portrait of his own shaggy dog story so far.
Opens in New York.

“Fifty Dead Men Walking”
In the annals of cinema, the paranoid path of the deep cover informant finding his reality muddied and his loyalties tested is well-trodden. Inspired by the memoir of real-life IRA infiltrator Martin McGartland, who survived capture and torture only to be forced into hiding (and who has since renounced this movie), Canadian helmer Kari Skogland’s drama offers a flashbacked account of the mission of the petty grifter (played by Jim Sturgess, a revelation by all accounts) to blag his way into the IRA network at the height of the “Troubles” on behalf of his manipulative handler (Ben Kingsley).
Opens in limited release.

“Five Minutes of Heaven”
One of the brightest talents to emerge from Germany’s recent cinematic renaissance, director Oliver Hirschbiegel (“The Experiment,” “Downfall”) might have stumbled awkwardly onto the international stage with his stagnant “Body Snatchers” remake “The Invasion,” but gets a second chance at wooing English-speaking audiences with a made-for-Brit-TV telling of a notorious sectarian slaying in 1975 Northern Ireland. Picking up a screenwriting award at Sundance for his cleverly woven tapestry of fact and fiction, scripter Guy Hibbert recounts the true-life murder of 19-year-old Catholic Jimmy Griffin, gunned down by 17-year-old UVF member Alistair Little, and imagines a meeting between a grown-up Little (Liam Neeson) and Griffin’s brother (James Nesbitt) for a documentary some 30 years later.
Opens in New York.

“Gospel Hill”
The directorial debut of “Do the Right Thing” actor Giancarlo Esposito, this elegant race-relations drama earns itself a small theatrical run despite having already gone to DVD this past February. Angela Bassett battles both political bullying veiled as progress and the shallow graved ghosts of the past as Sarah Malcolm, a lone voice in an African- American community under siege by developers as her husband John (Danny Glover) attempts to come to terms with the lynching of his brother years earlier, an unsolved murder that still haunts the town’s white sheriff (Tom Bower).
Opens in New York.

“The Headless Woman”
In the same vein as her previous pictures “La Ciénaga” and “The Holy Girl,” much-touted Argentine helmer Lucrecia Martel offers a stripped down, hyper-stylized exploration of guilt and all things familial in this character study of a bourgeois middle-aged dentist Vero (María Onetto). Following a hit-and-run she may or may not have perpetrated on the way to an illicit rendezvous with the husband of her cousin (Daniel Genoud), Vero drifts into a psychological nightmare, haunted by the guilt of a crime she can’t be sure she committed. In Spanish with subtitles.
Opens in New York.

Pages: 1 2