Movies : May 2005

28 May 2005

Mad Hot Ballroom

Real people doing real things, a refreshing change. What we have here is the story of Dancing Classrooms 10 years into its project of bringing arts education to students in the public schools of New York City. Fifth graders are instructed in the moves of ballroom dancing and those who survive the audition at each individual participating school compete in borough play-offs and a grand competition in Manhattan. This particular documentary follows three schools (Washington Heights, Tribeca, Bensonhurst) through the winter of 2004. Concentrating on the classroom lessons and the competition, the film slights somewhat the other aspects of the instruction which involve the parents more (although some are seen) and the small repertoire of dance moves gets repetitious. But for someone who got his start in New York’s public school system (as I have already pointed out, in the very elementary school included in the film as the winner of the Grand Challenge for 2003) the hopeful look at a pivotal time evokes sympathetic memories.

106 minutes.

24 May 2005

Star Wars Episode III Revenge of the Sith

Rubbish! Let me see if I have this straight—the good guys are the ones that dissemble repeatedly? Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough, to take but one example. (When Alec Guiness reads a line like Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time… a long time with emphasis on the first long I might be forgiven thinking that was more than 15 years.) That’s a real helpful moral precept. Having seen this, watching the 1977 original is going to be painful: who can believe now that Kenobi and C3PO don’t know each other? As for the secret marriage: what, there are no tabloids operating in the seat of the Republic? Life in the background of these impossibly wealthy personages goes on regardless of the war given the air traffic through the skies. Now about these megafauna that don’t eliminate…

160 minutes.

22 May 2005

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

So what were they selling that was worth money? The ride was good (for the men and women at the top) while it lasted.

110 minutes.

18 May 2005

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

It’s a travesty, is what it is. Decades after the popularity of the radio episodes, novels, and television episodes comes this production bearing the same name, largely the same characters, experiencing mostly the same events… with a gratingly blatant assortment of American talent mixed in with the British kind and a pathetic excuse for a robot body undercutting the gravity of Alan Rickman’s voice as the perenially depressed android (watch the queue for the original design from the television series). Most of my favorite lines didn’t make it into the screenplay.

110 minutes.

Entries subject to editing at any time. Last edited on: 31-May-2007