MI5 officer Mac (Clive Owen) offers a tough deal to IRA operative Collette (Andrea Riseborough) in SHADOW DANCER
SHADOW DANCER (James Marsh, 2012)
Landmark Sunshine Cinema
143 East Houston St. between First & Second Aves.
Opens Friday, May 31
212-330-8182
www.magpictures.com
www.landmarktheatres.com
Set during the waning days of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, James Marsh’s Shadow Dancer is a taut, tense, if sometimes plodding thriller about loyalty and family. In 1973, young Collette McVeigh (Maria Laird) sends her baby brother, Sean (Ben Smyth), to do an errand she was asked to take care of, and she is filled with guilt when the boy is caught in the crossfire of an IRA shootout and killed. Twenty years later, Collette (Andrea Riseborough) is an IRA operative in the midst of placing a bomb in a train station. But after abandoning the plan, she is taken into custody, with MI5 agent Mac (Clive Owen) offering her a nearly impossible choice: spy on her IRA compatriots, including her two brothers, Gerry (Aidan Gillen) and Connor (Domhnall Gleeson), and get a new life with her son, Mark (Cathal Maguire), or face twenty-five years in prison. As IRA leader Kevin Mulville (David Wilmot) keeps a close watch on Collette, suspicious of her every action, her mother (Bríd Brennan) tries to keep the family together. Adapted by Tom Bradby from his novel, Shadow Dancer is highlighted by a strong central performance by Riseborough (W.E., Oblivion), who plays the trapped Collette with a mysterious intensity as she rarely does the obvious thing. Owen never really lets go as Mac, keeping the character too single-minded and direct, while a blond Gillian Anderson doesn’t have all that much to do as his boss, Kate Fletcher. But the film overcomes these minor flaws, as Marsh combines his history as both a fiction filmmaker (Red Riding Trilogy, The King) and a documentarian (Man on Wire, Project Nim) to tell a gripping tale that may be set in the dangerous world of 1990s Northern Ireland but is really, at its heart, about the seemingly unbreakable bond between mother and child.
When Bill Stone first began making Triumph of the Wall: My Life as a Work in Progress, he was hoping for a meditative documentary on the nature of expectation, exploring commitment, contemplation, and connection in both life and work, both his and his subject’s. However, he ends up with something far different, and try as he might, he just can’t get it on track. Stone follows the travails of Chris Overing, a jack of all trades who has accepted a job building a one-thousand-foot dry-stone wall for an unseen client. Overing has never done anything quite like this before, and that becomes readily apparent as what he thought would be a two-month process turns into years. During that time, Stone sticks with his subject, attempting to get him to wax poetic about what he is experiencing, maybe talk about perfection, procrastination, and the possibility of ever seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Unfortunately, Overing doesn’t have a whole lot to say, and the vast majority of what he does say is not very philosophical. But Stone soldiers on, traveling to Scotland to talk to some professional stonemasons, and he even brings in a pair of artist friends to help work on the wall, desperate for colorful stories and more exciting human interaction. But as the frustration keeps mounting, the director stretches too far as he awkwardly, if very honestly, tries to make sense of it all. (For a much better treatise on wall building, check out Paul Auster’s 1990 novel The Music of Chance, which features a character named Stone.) At the start, Overing, Stone, and the film are filled with promise; even the director’s name makes the whole thing feel like it was meant to be. But alas, the various story lines, like so many of the stones, never quite fit together. Triumph of the Wall opens May 31 at the Quad, with Stone, Overing, and producer Fred Bohbot participating in Q&As following the 7:00 shows on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night.
A director of extremes, Terry Gilliam has made big-budget disasters and low-budget gems, overhyped tripe and underhyped masterpieces. The former Python’s 2005 take on the Brothers Grimm is, unfortunately, another dreadful excursion, a cold, distant reimagining of Will and Jake Grimm, who gave the world myriad fairy tales that are still beloved (and still rather frightening) today. (And this one had its share of problems with the studio again — this time with Bob and Harvey Weinstein.) Will (Matt Damon) and Jacob (Heath Ledger), the brothers Grimm, here are portrayed as con artists who travel French-occupied Germany pretending to slaughter made-up ghosts and goblins for money. But they’re soon captured by French general Delatombe (a disappointing Jonathan Pryce) and his right-hand man, the inexplicably Italian commander Cavaldi (a ridiculously overacting Peter Stormare). They are ordered to solve the real mystery of the disappearance of a group of young girls from the small village of Marbaden — or else they will be killed themselves. Screenwriter Ehren Kruger, who previously gave us such winners as Reindeer Games (John Frankenheimer, 2000) and The Ring Two (Hideo Nakata, 2005), fills the movie with references to Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Rapunzel, the Frog Prince, and Cinderella, but that doesn’t help save the film’s own lack of believable, endearing characters. You won’t care about anyone or anything that happens in Gilliam’s two-hour mess, which looks as if it was hacked to bits in the editing room like your mother’s chopped liver. The Brothers Grimm is screening in a 35mm print at 12:20 am on May 31 & June 1 as part of the IFC Center’s Waverly Midnights series “Terry Gilliam,” which continues through July 20 with such better Gilliam fare as Jabberwocky, The Fisher King, and Brazil.
We were huge fans of Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, so it was with much disappointment that we watched his 2002 TV show, Firefly, come and go so quickly. But the diehard fans, known as Browncoats, wanted more than the Fox network gave them, so Whedon delivered this exciting feature-length film for Universal, reuniting the cast, including Nathan Fillion as Mal, Gina Torres as Zoe, Alan Tudyk as Wash, Morena Baccarin as Inara, Adam Baldwin as Jayne, Jewel Staite as Kaylee, Sean Maher as Simon, Summer Glau as River, and Ron Glass (yes, the guy from Barney Miller) as Shepherd. The bad guy this time around is known simply as the Operative (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a cold-blooded killing machine out to destroy River, who has very dangerous special powers that the Alliance wants silenced. Also getting in the crew’s way are the Reavers, vile creatures who prefer to eat their prey alive. While the Browncoats should be thrilled with the film, so should newbies to this world, as Whedon has managed to make Serenity an involving stand-alone space Western that sci-fi fans can enjoy without knowing anything about Firefly. But after you see this thoroughly enjoyable flick, you’re likely to rush to catch up on everything you missed. Serenity is screening at BAM on May 30 at 9:50, preceded at 7:00 by Whedon’s new movie, a modern take on the Bard’s Much Ado About Nothing, as part of the BAMCinématek program “An Evening with Joss Whedon,” with Whedon taking part in a Q&A following the first film and introducing the second; although both events are sold out, there will be a standby line for any tickets that might become available.
At a huge gang meeting in the Bronx (actually shot in Riverside Park), the Warriors are wrongly accused of having killed Cyrus (Roger Hill), an outspoken leader trying to band all the warring factions together to form one huge force that can take over the New York City borough by borough. The Warriors then must make it back to their home turf, Coney Island, with every gang in New York lying in wait for them to pass through their territory. This iconic New York City gang movie is based on Sol Yurick’s novel, which in turn is loosely based on Xenophon’s Anabasis, which told of the ancient Greeks’ retreat from Persia. Michael Beck stars as Swan, who becomes the de-facto leader of the Warriors after Cleon (Dorsey Wright) gets taken down early. Battling Swan for control is Ajax (Sex and the City’s James Remar) and tough-talking Mercy (Too Close for Comfort’s Deborah Van Valkenburgh). Serving as a Greek chorus is Lynne (Law & Order) Thigpen as a radio DJ, and, yes, that young woman out too late in Central Park is eventual Oscar winner Mercedes Ruehl. Among the cartoony gangs of New York who try to stop the Warriors are the roller-skating Punks, the pathetic Orphans, the militaristic Gramercy Riffs, the all-girl Lizzies, the ragtag Rogues, and the inimitable Baseball Furies. Another main character is the New York City subway system itself. There’s nothing quite like The Warriors; be sure to come out and play at these Memorial Day weekend midnight screenings.