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| Scully (Gillian Anderson) and Mulder (David Duchovny) are back in "The X-Files: I Want to Believe." Photo courtesy 20th Century Fox |
Reviews of films currently screened in Taos
By Rick Romancito
The X-Files: I Want to Believe
MPAA rating: PG-13 for violent and disturbing content and thematic material. Tempo grade: B-
The coincidence would have been phenomenal if only “The X-Files” creator Chris Carter wasn’t so determined not to repeat himself.
Wednesday (July 23), Apollo 14 astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell, 77, dropped a virtual bombshell while speaking with a British radio host. Offhandedly, Nick Margerrison of “Kerrang!” asked the moonwalker if he believed in life on other planets. What Margerrison got clearly knocked him for a loop. “I happen to have been privileged enough to be in on the fact that we’ve been visited on this planet and the UFO phenomena is real,” Mitchell said matter-of-factly.
Listening to it myself, skeptic that I am but still a huge “X-Files” nut, I felt a chill run up my spine.
My next thought, though, was about the huge opportunity that was missed with this movie. Here’s probably the most credible authority yet saying that space aliens are real. (NASA issued a statement saying it “does not track UFOs. Dr. Mitchell is a great American, but we do not share his opinion on this issue.”) You couldn’t buy that kind of promotional tie-in, and yet this movie studiously avoids the extraterrestrial connection as if all that was so yesterday.
One of the hallmarks of the 1993-2002 Fox Network TV series and previous feature film (“Fight the Future”) was not only its fine writing and high production values, but performances that rose above most other sci-fi type programs. Here, Carter’s focus is that same quality, but the story at hand is much more about the question of faith that also ran as an undercurrent to the show’s theme.
The title, incidentally, is taken from a poster in Mulder’s office depicting a UFO in flight.
The story concerns a series of visions that have led police to victims of an apparent serial killer, but the person having them is a disgraced pedophile priest, Father Joseph Crissman (Billy Connolly). Because of his experience with unexplained phenomena, assistant special agent in charge Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet) seeks out now-former agent Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) when one of their own turns up missing.
Mulder, looking at first like Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, is reluctant because he’s still wanted on certain charges, but mainly it’s because his former FBI partner and current love interest, Dr. Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), doesn’t want him to go back into the darkness.
The initial details about the case prove intriguing enough for Mulder to be curious, eventually begging for Scully’s help, but she is really not about to dive into some kind of nutbar weirdness right when she’s in the middle of a crisis of her own. It seems that a rare and fatal illness has befallen a young patient of hers at the Catholic-run hospital where she now works, and that an administrator is weighing a whether costly experimental treatment is appropriate or if the boy’s fate should be left in God’s hands. Scully also finds repellent the idea of having to deal with someone who used the authority of the cloth to gain the trust of young boys who wound up victims of his twisted urges.
As the case unravels, the relationship between Mulder and Scully is challenged on several levels, but Carter keeps a steady hand on the throttle, balancing the film’s dramatic tension while maintaining the inherent oddity of “The X-Files” raison d’être. Still, die-hard fans will be disappointed. In many ways this is like one of those TV episodes that helped bridge the emotional themes between Scully and Mulder before they got back to dealing with the machinations of an alien conspiracy.
For myself, the movie I want to see is the epic story having to do with their otherworldly offspring. The child, William, was starting to exhibit telekinetic powers even as a baby, due to possessing alien DNA as a result of Scully’s abduction while pregnant. He was described as being especially important to the fate of humankind and so was given up for adoption to protect him. Instead, we get a lot of good acting, a lot of build up, but a rather unsatisfying payoff at the end.
Still, it was fun to see Carter have a little fun by showing photos of President Bush and FBI founder J. Edgar Hoover while injecting a few bars of “The X-Files” signature theme. Yup, the truth is still out there, dude.
By the way, you can listen to the entire Edgar Mitchell interview at www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhNdxdveK7c.
“The X-Files: I Want to Believe” is showing at the Storyteller Cinema. Call (575) 758-9715 for show times or visit online www.transluxmovies.com.
The Exiles
MPAA rating: Not rated. Tempo grade: C-
In the late 1950s, independent filmmaker Kent MacKenzie befriended a lot of urban Indians in the Los Angeles area. A contemporary of John Cassavetes, whose work ushered in the kind of raw reality-driven narrative that would favor the next decade, MacKenzie proposed to make a movie that told their little known story, one of booze, fighting, all-night 49s and broken dreams, characteristic of that era when everything could be a revelation.
And it was, to critical acclaim — only no one was interested in seeing it. But time heals all wounds as they say. Now, a restored version of this “lost” film is being released.
What revelation there is, though, is mostly in the eye of the beholder. To many non-Natives, it depicts something they assumed all along, that displaced Indians in big cities easily fell victim to alcohol and other temptations because they turned their backs on a culture epitomized by the 19th century photographs taken by Edward S. Curtis, many of which open this film. Robbed of the elements that made them Indians, these people are depicted as strangers in a strange land, unable to cope with modern life because the tools given them by their ancestors simply do not work here.
Natives, however, may differ on these points.
History is filled with instances in which indigenous people have weathered drastic changes with their essential Indianness intact. Like the tourists who come to Taos Pueblo and assume the Indians here have become assimilated because they don’t wear headdresses and live in teepees (an irrelevant stereotype), the truth isn’t necessarily visible on the surface. But that’s what MacKenzie chose to see. I’m sure that life was much more complex for Mary Donahue, Homer Nish, Clydean Parker, Tom Reynolds, Rico Rodriguez, Clifford Ray Sam, Eddie Sunrise, and Yvonne Williams, amateur actors recruited by MacKenzie to portray this impression.
Much of the press for this film refers to it as a “documentary,” which it certainly is not. With scenes obviously contrived and featuring overdubbed dialogue, it plays more like a scripted proto-reality show. Still, there is no mistaking the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants courage to make a film that manages to convey at least a hint of the shock of the new.
This film is being screened by Taos Film Society, Mondo Kultur North. Showtimes are 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday (Aug. 1-2) and at 6 p.m. Sunday (Aug. 3). Admission is $7. Call (575) 751-1994.
Step Brothers
MPAA rating: R for crude and sexual content, and pervasive language. Tempo grade: D
Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly play a couple of 40-something doofuses so pathetically lazy and self-centered, they cannot hold a job and continue to sponge off their parents while stranded in a perpetually adolescent state of mind. For this so-called comedy, audiences are subjected to scene after scene in which we see just how lazy, foul-mouthed, and selfish are Dale Doback (Reilly) and Brennan Huff (Farrell).
Their comfort zones are upended when Dale’s single dad, Robert (Richard Jenkins), falls in love with single mom Nancy (Mary Steenburgen), who is Brennan’s mother. Both are termed “enablers,” which is supposed to mean they never challenged their boys to do anything productive with their lives and have allowed them to live like 12-year-olds for the last three freakin’ decades or so. Personally, seeing how Brennan and Dale turned out, I was hoping there’s a good prosecutor out there who can find some way to have them arrested.
In the meantime, the boys immediately hate each other, while exhibiting exactly the same irritating personality traits. They even simultaneously sleepwalk, one leaving his mom’s purse in the fridge and the other stuffing the oven with couch pillows, this after leaving a path of destruction throughout the house.
Somehow Nancy was able to raise one son who became a successful adult businessman. But Derek (Adam Scott) is an overbearing jerk who has terrorized his wife (Kathryn Hahn) and two kids into quivering perfection. Needless to say, both boys hate him. Suddenly, they discover that there is common ground between them and they bond. But it’s too late. As soon as Nancy and Robert get married, it’s time for the boys to get jobs and hit the road, which, of course, they don’t like.
I won’t go on because it’s so predictably lame. The jokes are stale and the entire premise exists to thumb a nose in the faces of studio execs who quake in their Armani suits at the thought of one more fart joke from the Apatow factory. Surprise, Brennan and Dale cut the cheese too.
“Cinemafile” reviews are based upon opening weekend screenings. All screenings listed take place at the Storyteller Cinema unless otherwise noted. Check current listings for possible schedule changes.
MPAA rating: PG-13 for violent and disturbing content and thematic material. Tempo grade: B-
The coincidence would have been phenomenal if only “The X-Files” creator Chris Carter wasn’t so determined not to repeat himself.
Wednesday (July 23), Apollo 14 astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell, 77, dropped a virtual bombshell while speaking with a British radio host. Offhandedly, Nick Margerrison of “Kerrang!” asked the moonwalker if he believed in life on other planets. What Margerrison got clearly knocked him for a loop. “I happen to have been privileged enough to be in on the fact that we’ve been visited on this planet and the UFO phenomena is real,” Mitchell said matter-of-factly.
Listening to it myself, skeptic that I am but still a huge “X-Files” nut, I felt a chill run up my spine.
My next thought, though, was about the huge opportunity that was missed with this movie. Here’s probably the most credible authority yet saying that space aliens are real. (NASA issued a statement saying it “does not track UFOs. Dr. Mitchell is a great American, but we do not share his opinion on this issue.”) You couldn’t buy that kind of promotional tie-in, and yet this movie studiously avoids the extraterrestrial connection as if all that was so yesterday.
One of the hallmarks of the 1993-2002 Fox Network TV series and previous feature film (“Fight the Future”) was not only its fine writing and high production values, but performances that rose above most other sci-fi type programs. Here, Carter’s focus is that same quality, but the story at hand is much more about the question of faith that also ran as an undercurrent to the show’s theme.
The title, incidentally, is taken from a poster in Mulder’s office depicting a UFO in flight.
The story concerns a series of visions that have led police to victims of an apparent serial killer, but the person having them is a disgraced pedophile priest, Father Joseph Crissman (Billy Connolly). Because of his experience with unexplained phenomena, assistant special agent in charge Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet) seeks out now-former agent Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) when one of their own turns up missing.
Mulder, looking at first like Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, is reluctant because he’s still wanted on certain charges, but mainly it’s because his former FBI partner and current love interest, Dr. Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), doesn’t want him to go back into the darkness.
The initial details about the case prove intriguing enough for Mulder to be curious, eventually begging for Scully’s help, but she is really not about to dive into some kind of nutbar weirdness right when she’s in the middle of a crisis of her own. It seems that a rare and fatal illness has befallen a young patient of hers at the Catholic-run hospital where she now works, and that an administrator is weighing a whether costly experimental treatment is appropriate or if the boy’s fate should be left in God’s hands. Scully also finds repellent the idea of having to deal with someone who used the authority of the cloth to gain the trust of young boys who wound up victims of his twisted urges.
As the case unravels, the relationship between Mulder and Scully is challenged on several levels, but Carter keeps a steady hand on the throttle, balancing the film’s dramatic tension while maintaining the inherent oddity of “The X-Files” raison d’être. Still, die-hard fans will be disappointed. In many ways this is like one of those TV episodes that helped bridge the emotional themes between Scully and Mulder before they got back to dealing with the machinations of an alien conspiracy.
For myself, the movie I want to see is the epic story having to do with their otherworldly offspring. The child, William, was starting to exhibit telekinetic powers even as a baby, due to possessing alien DNA as a result of Scully’s abduction while pregnant. He was described as being especially important to the fate of humankind and so was given up for adoption to protect him. Instead, we get a lot of good acting, a lot of build up, but a rather unsatisfying payoff at the end.
Still, it was fun to see Carter have a little fun by showing photos of President Bush and FBI founder J. Edgar Hoover while injecting a few bars of “The X-Files” signature theme. Yup, the truth is still out there, dude.
By the way, you can listen to the entire Edgar Mitchell interview at www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhNdxdveK7c.
“The X-Files: I Want to Believe” is showing at the Storyteller Cinema. Call (575) 758-9715 for show times or visit online www.transluxmovies.com.
The Exiles
MPAA rating: Not rated. Tempo grade: C-
In the late 1950s, independent filmmaker Kent MacKenzie befriended a lot of urban Indians in the Los Angeles area. A contemporary of John Cassavetes, whose work ushered in the kind of raw reality-driven narrative that would favor the next decade, MacKenzie proposed to make a movie that told their little known story, one of booze, fighting, all-night 49s and broken dreams, characteristic of that era when everything could be a revelation.
And it was, to critical acclaim — only no one was interested in seeing it. But time heals all wounds as they say. Now, a restored version of this “lost” film is being released.
What revelation there is, though, is mostly in the eye of the beholder. To many non-Natives, it depicts something they assumed all along, that displaced Indians in big cities easily fell victim to alcohol and other temptations because they turned their backs on a culture epitomized by the 19th century photographs taken by Edward S. Curtis, many of which open this film. Robbed of the elements that made them Indians, these people are depicted as strangers in a strange land, unable to cope with modern life because the tools given them by their ancestors simply do not work here.
Natives, however, may differ on these points.
History is filled with instances in which indigenous people have weathered drastic changes with their essential Indianness intact. Like the tourists who come to Taos Pueblo and assume the Indians here have become assimilated because they don’t wear headdresses and live in teepees (an irrelevant stereotype), the truth isn’t necessarily visible on the surface. But that’s what MacKenzie chose to see. I’m sure that life was much more complex for Mary Donahue, Homer Nish, Clydean Parker, Tom Reynolds, Rico Rodriguez, Clifford Ray Sam, Eddie Sunrise, and Yvonne Williams, amateur actors recruited by MacKenzie to portray this impression.
Much of the press for this film refers to it as a “documentary,” which it certainly is not. With scenes obviously contrived and featuring overdubbed dialogue, it plays more like a scripted proto-reality show. Still, there is no mistaking the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants courage to make a film that manages to convey at least a hint of the shock of the new.
This film is being screened by Taos Film Society, Mondo Kultur North. Showtimes are 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday (Aug. 1-2) and at 6 p.m. Sunday (Aug. 3). Admission is $7. Call (575) 751-1994.
Step Brothers
MPAA rating: R for crude and sexual content, and pervasive language. Tempo grade: D
Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly play a couple of 40-something doofuses so pathetically lazy and self-centered, they cannot hold a job and continue to sponge off their parents while stranded in a perpetually adolescent state of mind. For this so-called comedy, audiences are subjected to scene after scene in which we see just how lazy, foul-mouthed, and selfish are Dale Doback (Reilly) and Brennan Huff (Farrell).
Their comfort zones are upended when Dale’s single dad, Robert (Richard Jenkins), falls in love with single mom Nancy (Mary Steenburgen), who is Brennan’s mother. Both are termed “enablers,” which is supposed to mean they never challenged their boys to do anything productive with their lives and have allowed them to live like 12-year-olds for the last three freakin’ decades or so. Personally, seeing how Brennan and Dale turned out, I was hoping there’s a good prosecutor out there who can find some way to have them arrested.
In the meantime, the boys immediately hate each other, while exhibiting exactly the same irritating personality traits. They even simultaneously sleepwalk, one leaving his mom’s purse in the fridge and the other stuffing the oven with couch pillows, this after leaving a path of destruction throughout the house.
Somehow Nancy was able to raise one son who became a successful adult businessman. But Derek (Adam Scott) is an overbearing jerk who has terrorized his wife (Kathryn Hahn) and two kids into quivering perfection. Needless to say, both boys hate him. Suddenly, they discover that there is common ground between them and they bond. But it’s too late. As soon as Nancy and Robert get married, it’s time for the boys to get jobs and hit the road, which, of course, they don’t like.
I won’t go on because it’s so predictably lame. The jokes are stale and the entire premise exists to thumb a nose in the faces of studio execs who quake in their Armani suits at the thought of one more fart joke from the Apatow factory. Surprise, Brennan and Dale cut the cheese too.
“Cinemafile” reviews are based upon opening weekend screenings. All screenings listed take place at the Storyteller Cinema unless otherwise noted. Check current listings for possible schedule changes.
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