The Band's Visit

The Band's Visit (Eran Kolirin, 2008) - C

So deliberately understated that it's almost an affectation. Lots of pained silences and awkwardness played for laughs, pushing hard on how out-of-place these Egyptians feel in Israel's version of Podunk, Ohio, though of course the Israelis have all the same problems as the Arabs and maybe they can all help each other because we're all human, etc. Draws the obvious parallels (uptight colonel's son committed suicide because dad was too hard on him; cue scene where the colonel shares a tender, understanding moment with the wild, insubordinate young recruit whom he had previously threatened with firing) and never fails to make metaphors explicit (the speech about how the clarinet player's unfinished concerto = life is really rather shameless), but there's no real insight; everything's surface-level and aggressively wistful. Miscalculates weirdly in spots -- Khaled is supposed to be charming, but he's actually creepy; the scene where he coaches a hapless Israeli kid on how to flirt is more performance art than narrative cinema -- and can't even create a sense of place: it places so much emphasis on what a downscale suburban hellhole Bet Hatikvah is, but gives us no feel for it whatsoever. Couple of strong performances, and the clean, spare compositions look nice (especially in the first half-hour), but this is a pretty bland, stereotypically "arthouse" piece of business.

Storyville

Storyville (Mark Frost, 1992) - C+

Came to this due to Twin Peaks-related loyalty to Mark Frost, and for a while dug it as a Twin Peaks fan: Frost learned a lot from David Lynch, giving his version of New Orleans an airtight and totally singular sense of place, and sustaining a tone of subtle, something-is-wrong-but-it's-not-clear-what creepiness (the ambient noise and constant whooshing of ceiling fans on the soundtrack helps). When a mysterious Asian woman lures an old-money political candidate into a darkened Aikido studio for some steamy hot tub sex, I was gleefully on board. When the plot got going and the movie turned into a sub-Grisham courtroom melodrama, complete with a climactic shoot-out, I jumped off. Fun for setting and mood, but any number of movies have done this sort of dark-family-secrets-down-south thing better.