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The danger for the fetishist is that he/she becomes trapped in the cage of their own endless, reiterative desires. Wong Kar-Wai, in his deliciously kaleidoscopic film, 2046 teeters perilously on the brink of his own creative implosion. But like his hero Chow Mo-Wan (a dashing, brilliantined, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai), Wong succeeds in escaping the pull of his own irretrievable past. 2046 is a sort-of sequel to his lavish, langorous In the Mood for Love. Larger in cast, scope, and story, 2046 is also a haunted film: haunted by the success of In the Mood for Love and the heavy absence of Su Lizhen (Maggie Cheung Man Yuk who reappears here only in cameo), Chow Mo-Wan’s almost-lover from the first film.

Wong Kar-Wai is the rare contemporary director who evokes the glory days of International Art House cinema when the next Bergman or Godard film was reason for celebration . 2046 has been long-awaited by fans of WKW, as he’s known in shorthand, and the notoriously ‘improvisational’ Wong reworked the film up to the very last. Originally conceived as a science-fiction project completely separate from In the Mood for Love, Wong filmed both at the same time, and eventually the two films seemed to merge for him. The version of 2046 screened at last year’s Cannes festival arrived only three hours before its scheduled premier because of last minute edits. Wong has reworked it since, and only now does it exist in something close to definitive version.

As always, Wong’s fetish for nostalgia drives the narrative with powerful, hyper-romantic force. In 2046, Chow Mo-Wan returns from Singapore a changed man, a rakish womanizer with a Clark Gable, pencil-thin moustache, and twinkling, mischievous eyes. Looking up an old flame at the Oriental Hotel, he finds her missing, and tries to take her room, Room 2046 (the same hotel room number as the room he shared with Su Lizhen in In the Mood for Love). The landlord tells him its unavailable but gives Chow Room 2047 instead. Still a writer, Chow now writes lurid newspaper gossip and parties like a man trying hard to escape his past. Along the way, he shares a fling with the new neighbor in Room 2046, Bai Ling (Zhang Ziyi). She’s a fellow libertine on a downward spiral, and her eventual dissolution is a counterpoint to the redemption that Chow will find. Gong Li is a powerful presence as the mysterious black-gloved gambler known only as the Black Spider. But when he meets Jingwen, the hotel landlord’s lovelorn daughter (Hong Kong pop superstar, Faye Wong), he is inspired to work on a futuristic novel entitled 2047. The novel becomes Chow’s means of escape, a means of putting the legacy of Hotel Room 2046 behind him, the haunted past of a lost love that he cannot forget.

As in In the Mood for Love, wardrobe and set design are practically characters in their own right. Wong’s fetish for pattern and texture rule the day in his idealized version of Hong Kong circa 1967. And as before, Wong films his actors with care and attention, every styled, costume-designed square inch of them. They may be dying of heartbreak, but at least they’re dying in style. Lost love is everywhere in 2046, and longing and regret and heartache permeate every frame of the film. Labrythine and elusive, 2046 is cinematic opium, hazy and erotic and a profound pleasure for the senses.

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The Dirtiest Joke Ever Told:
Penn Jilette and Paul Provenza’s
The Aristocrats
Opens July 29, 2005

In this joke there’s the set up:
“Guy walks into an agent’s office…”
And the punch line:
“I call it 'The Aristocrats!'”

Reviewed by Ilise S. Carter

But it’s what comes in-between that’s really the stuff of showbiz legend. More than just a dirty joke, The Aristocrats is a foul-mouthed heirloom that’s been handed down from generation-to-generation of comics, since the days of vaudeville. It’s also the subject of Paul Provenza and Penn Jillette’s new documentary.

This secret fraternity handshake of the comedy world is, in point of fact, not a particularly funny or original joke. Nor is it a crowd favorite (actually, it’s never really supposed to be told on stage). Instead, the fun lies in ability of the teller to weave the longest, filthiest, most elaborate yarn his peers have ever heard. There are, however, no hard and fast rules on just how to do that either – the direction of the story is determined only by the twisted imagination of the raconteur. Some of the possibilities examined in the documentary include incest, bestiality, “Hitler in crotch-less panties,” and a host of other scenarios that the editorial policy of this publication prohibits even alluding to.

While the shock value is great and plentiful, that isn’t what makes this homespun little film so fun to watch. It’s the “behind the scenes” quality that makes it worth sitting through infinite versions of the very same joke. Shot with handheld cameras and edited on a Mac, Jillette and Provenza have given The Aristocrats a home movie feeling. This atmosphere gives viewers the sense that they are literally being let in on an inside joke by bringing the audience into a world that was previously only accessible to those privileged enough to sit in on the after-hours sessions that take place in the backrooms of comedy clubs and casinos.

The film includes interviews with over a hundred professional comics, writers, magicians, and entertainers, comprising several generations and a wide range of styles. Some of the most outrageous versions actually come from comedians who’ve made their fortune providing wholesome family entertainment (e.g., Bob Sagat even manages a mention of his former co-stars, the Olsen Twins, in his tale), while other veterans are surprisingly modest (such as Phyllis Diller, who insists she actually fainted from shock the first time she heard the joke.) In addition, there are reminiscences about legendary tellings (“…an hour and a half and then he messed up the punch line!”) and the most inappropriate times it was told (at a post-9/11 Friars’ Club Roast of Hugh Hefner) and other such delightful oddities surrounding the long and sordid history of The Aristocrats. Which, in the end, is really the funniest part of the whole joke.

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Mark Milgard’s
Dandelion
Opens October 7, 2005

Starring: Taryn Manning (Danny Voss); Arliss Howard (Luke Mullich); Mare Winningham (Layla Mullich); Vincent Kartheiser (Mason Mullich); Blake Heron (Eddie); Shawn Reaves (Arlie); Michelle Forbes (Mrs. Voss); Marshall Bell (Uncle Bobby); Robert Blanche (Sheriff Wayne Teft).

Reviewed by Wendy R. Williams

The grass is both blowing-in-the-wind and smoking-in-the-pickup in Dandelion, a slow slide into the existential angst of small town life. Dandelion is set in the same world as the Warren Beatty/Natalie Wood classic, Splendor in the Grass. Here we go again, submerged in a world of disaffected teenagers (but this time they have drugs) who are overwhelmed by lust (but this time they actually do it). It’s small town life at its best! The back of a pick-up truck, some beer, some drugs and a iver - it’s the recipe for disaster being played out in small towns all over America.

The film tells a story of loss and redemption. But the emphasis seems to be more on how the actors look as they emote, rather than on actually telling a story. Sometimes I just wanted to shout at the screen, “Get a grip. Isn’t there a junior college or a gym anywhere in a fifty mile radius?” But then I normally want to tell Romeo and Juliet the same thing.

So go see Dandelion for no other reason than it is absolutely beautiful. The film brought cinematographer Tim Orr an Independent Spirit Award nomination for his breathtaking visuals of an awesome Western landscape (and he certainly deserves it).


The film has a haunting score and a smokin’ cast of hot young actors, all of whom look like they walked out of a Ralph Lauren jeans ad. Arliss Howard and Mare Winningham give beautifully subtle performances. Taryn Manning and Vincent Kartheiser look yummy and have great chemistry.

Dandelion is directed by Mark Milgard, from a screenplay by Milgard, Robb Williamson and R. D. Murphy. The producer is Molly Mayeux.

http://www.dandelionthemovie.com

 

 

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Tennyson Bardwell's
DORIAN BLUES
Release Date: September 23rd

Reviewed by Frank J. Avella

Like the amazing Junebug, Dorian Blues is a jewel in the 2005 indie crown. It’s a refreshingly offbeat, surprisingly original, quirky coming out story...of sorts...

Impressively directed by Tennyson Bardwell, DB chronicles the travails of a gay teen living a small New York town. His sexual orientation realization forces Dorian (Michael McMillian) to admit his secret to members of his oddball family, including his conservative father who throws him out, prompting his move to New York City. The story unfold as a series of funny, poignant and honest vignettes.

Dorian Blues is filled with rich rewarding performances beginning with McMillian as the tortured title character. Lea Coco, in particular, is an absolute find as Dorian’s protective brother Nicky. Coco can be compellingly comedic yet intensely dramatic in the same moment.

The script may be a bit too precious at times, but it is filled with wonderful, magical moments including a hilarious scene where Nicky takes his brother to see a female stripper so he can lose his virginity. The way Dorian ends up bonding with her is priceless. The stripper is played by the gifted, scene-stealing Ryan Kelly (who recently graced the off-Broadway stage in Joy).

This truly charming gem needs to find an audience. It would be a shame if it got lost in the all-too-predictable-coming-out-queer-flick clutter when it’s so much more!

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Fernando Meirelles'
The Constant Gardener
Opening August 31, 2005

Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz, Danny Huston, Archie Panjabi,
Bill Nighy

Reviewed by Frank J. Avella

The trailer for The Constant Gardener filled me with fear. John le Carre’ is an amazing writer, but when was the last time one of his novel’s was adapted into a great film? (I am personally partial to The Little Drummer Girl) This particular trailer was filled with the visual cross-cutting cacophony we’ve learned to expect from the annoying summer action-flick. Had Ralph Fiennes sold out? Did Fernando Meirelles ‘go Hollywood’? Didn’t The Mummy Part 13 teach Rachel Weisz anything?

I breathed a tremendous sign of relief as the first few frames of The Constant Gardener flickered and by the time the credits rolled, I was blown away by how against-the-typical-Hollywood-grain-great this film actually was.

The gifted Fernando Meirelles (City of God), along with crackerjack screenwriter Jeffrey Caine and their fantastic cast and crew have completely reinvented the summer action-thriller mostly by giving it a healthy dose of two things it hasn’t contained since the seventies: realism and intelligence. Imagine a smart film that provides action and suspense. Now imagine that film is actually about something... something important. And imagine the scares coming from the realities of the unjust world we live in. That’s right-- no comic book villains, no overblown effects, no gimmicky twist ending and no one in tights!

Set (and exquisitely shot) in Northern Kenya, The Constant Gardener unfolds after the brutal murder of Tessa Quayle (Weisz), wife of British diplomat Justin Quayle (Fiennes). The death is made to look like a crime of passion and the usually indifferent Justin begins stumbling upon evidence to the contrary. So begins his startling and terrifying journey as he discovers taboo truths about the pharmaceutical industry in Africa and the British High Commission’s involvement. Along the the road to his dangerous enlightenment, he also finds out more about his wife than he ever knew when she was alive.

At the heart of The Constant Gardener is the most refreshingly unconventional love story since Lost in Translation. Through flashbacks, we gain keen insight into the lives of Justin and Tessa. Their meeting and subsequent marriage is one of physical attraction-meets-convenience. It isn’t until after Tessa’s murder that Justin falls deeply in love with her.

Ralph Fiennes, in a remarkably brave, daring and painfully romantic performance, proves he’s the leading man for the new millennium. This is a richly nuanced turn that may deservedly bring him his third Academy Award nomination.

Rachel Weisz emblazes the screen with Tessa, brilliantly conveying the woman’s passions --political and otherwise, yet enabling the audience to glimpse her gentler side as well.

There are stellar supporting performances by Danny Huston & Pete Postlethwaite as well as a brief but dynamic turn by the ubiquitous Bill Nighy who has film’s funniest line.

One of the unsung stars of The Constant Gardner is Kenya. Thanks to Meirelles and his production team the audience spends a few hours in an astonishingly beautiful country that the west seems to have abandoned to famine and disease.

Never a polemic, the film does voice a very urgent message about the power the pharmaceutical industry has over most of the world. It’s a terrifying reality we should all be aware of. Kudos to Mereilles for bringing home the message with such diligence and artistry and simultaneously crafting a riveting, genre-blasting piece of cinema.

The perfect summer movie is finally here!

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Lutz Hachmeister & Michael Kloft
THE Goebbels Experiment
Opens August 12, 2005
Quad Cinema

Reviewed by Frank J. Avella

No one person living in the 20th Century mastered and manipulated propaganda for the most evil of purposes with the greatest of success than Joseph Goebbels.

One of Hitler’s inner circle flunkies, Goebbels devoted his life to showing the world the power of the Nazi party. Yet, out of the spotlight, Goebbels led a complex, manic-depressive inner life.

This paradoxic figure is explored in The Goebbels Experiment, a gripping new documentary by Lutz Hachmeister & Michael Kloft. The film probes personal passages from a diary Goebbels kept from 1924 until right before his death in the bunker in 1945 and features rare newsreel footage and film clips from the period. All this material makes for a frightening, fascinating portrait.

Movies that probe the mind of a psycho are always interesting, like that train wreck you MUST stop and study. But here we also get a depiction of a people on the cusp of facilitating one of the worst atrocities mankind has ever known. And Goebbels himself seems aware of his own growing place in history.

Poor, young, suicidal Goebbels apparently felt “lost in the universe” and quite paranoid about everything and everyone around him. This anxiety would follow him throughout his life, although the public Goebbels appeared confident and assured. As he excelled in his position Goebbels arrogantly discussed his detractors by proudly proclaiming: “we frighten them.” The war years propelled Goebbels’ propaganda machine to it’s most horrifying zenith, but his grisly fate (and that of his family) proved inevitable.

One of the more unusual aspects of Goebbels personality explored is his fascination with films. He felt that what Germany lacked and desperately needed was talented Aryan actors the world would embrace.

In one of the many examples of his duplicitous personality, the film shows images of him happily shmoozing Leni Riefenstahl while the voice-over diary entry exclaims, “There is no way I can work with a lunatic like her.”

Expertly narrated by Kenneth Branagh, The Goebbels Experiment is an intriguing and chilling historical study as well as a timely warning about the terrifying place a controlled media can lead a needy and desperate people.

Quad Cinema 34 West 13th Street

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Photo Giles Keyte

Lexi Alexanders's
Hooligans
Opens September 9, 2005

Reviewed by Evan Sung at the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival

From Hobbits to Hooligans, Elijah Wood finds himself a new fellowship in the sometimes brutal, consistently fascinating first time feature by director Lexi Alexander. Hooligans premiered in the US at Austin’s SXSW festival, where it garnered the award for Best Narrative Feature, and now makes an encore appearance at the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival. Set in the tightly-knit milieu of impassioned and just as tightly-wound loyal followers of local soccer…ahem…football teams in England known as Hooligans, the film gives viewers a largely honest insight into the conflicted psychology and the destructive effects of such tightly bound, clannish alliances.

Elijah Wood plays Matt Buckley, a gifted, bookish Harvard journalism student wrongly expelled two months before graduation. When the cocaine belonging to his roommate, the wealthy and smug son of a Senator, is found in Matt’s affairs, Matt buckles under the pressure and political influence of his roommate and takes the fall. Matt leaves Harvard for London, to seek refuge with his sister Shannon (Claire Forlani) and her husband Steve and reevaluate his future. Almost immediately, Matt falls in with Steve’s younger brother Pete, the fast-talking alpha dog of the Green Street Elite, one of West Ham United Football’s toughest firms. Just before Pete introduces Matt to the rest of his pals, he warns Matt that “firms” – the name for these organized hooligan gangs – hate two things above all, Americans and journalists. Matt passes himself off as a history student, but in spite of his Yank roots, finds an easy acceptance among the other GSE. Only Bovver, Pete’s right hand in the GSE (played with inscrutable scuzziness by Leo Gregory), finds Matt’s presence in the group an intolerable offense. As Matt becomes closer to Pete and his band of merry, violent hooligans, he learns about fraternity, sticking up for one’s self and one’s friends, and its spiraling, escalating consequences.

Alexander opens the film subtly, striking just the right chord of dread, of impending cataclysm. In an empty tube station, a lone passenger waits for the next train when a gently crescendoing chorus of voices floats up from the vacant stairwell. The rising voices are enough to suggest a carousing band of drunken boors, and it’s not a far leap to imagine ourselves as that lone passenger trapped on that tube platform along with them. Our thoughts spin out the worst of possibilities. Where Hooligans is most successful is in playing with our preconceptions of the world of hooligans, at times challenging them, at other times showing us that we haven’t even begun to imagine the reality.
Elijah Wood seems, at first, an incongruous choice for a hardened hooligan, with his delicate, sometimes feminine demeanor. And when Pete decides suddenly that instead of beating the living shit out of Matt he’ll take him under his wing, its hard not to guffaw at the implausibility. But to Wood’s credit, the disbelief lasts only a moment, and when Matt takes his first real punch to the face, his beatific smile of release and liberation is funny and credible.

Yes, there are moments that don’t ring quite true. Why, for example, does Pete have perfect teeth? (English AND a hooligan? By all rights, he shouldn’t have any at all.) And the story of Matt and Shannon’s emotionally absent father seems clichéd. But the quasi-documentary realism with which hooliganism is treated makes up for these minor infractions. And Charlie Hunnam’s fireball performance as Pete is both engaging and tragic, and truly takes us into the emotional world of these men. Alexander also skillfully manages to involve the viewer while never sanctioning or sensationalizing the violence depicted. The film, ultimately, is thought-provoking, magnetic and repelling, in its sympathetic authenticity.

Hooligans will be released in the UK and Europe in August. At press time, the film was still searching for its US distributor, but judging from the critical and audience response both at Tribeca and SXSW, it won’t be long before the hooligans are invading your local cinema.

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Tim Kirkman’s
Loggerheads
Open New York and Los Angeles
Open Nationwide in November

Starring: Tess Harper (Elizabeth); Bonnie Hunt (Grace); Michael Kelly (George); Michael Learned (Sheridan); Kip Pardue (Mark); Ann Pierce (Ruth); Chris Sarandon (Robert); Valerie Watkins (Lola); and Robin Weigert (Rachel)

Reviewed by Armistead Johnson

I must confess right from the start that I missed my scheduled screening of Loggerheads on the Tuesday before it opened. To my credit however, I went to the very first showing of the film on opening day at the Sunshine cinema in the East Village, and as the credits on the film rolled, I had to say that this is a film I was more than happy to have paid to see and will more than likely pay to rent upon its DVD release.

Inspired by true events, Loggerheads tells the story of an adoption “triad”—birth mother, child, and adoptive parents—each in three interwoven stories in the days leading up to Mother’s Day weekend, and each in one of the three distinctive geographical regions of North Carolina.

You’ve got Grace, played by Bonnie Hunt, who is haunted by questions about the baby she gave up at his birth. You’ve got Mark (Kip Pardue), a young drifter fascinated by the lifecycle of the loggerhead turtles, and you’ve got Elizabeth (Tess Harper) an adoptive mother forced to examine The Bible’s prescribed faith versus the faith of her maternal instincts.

I know what you’re probably thinking: “Isn’t this just one Meredith Baxter Berney shy of a LIFETIME movie?” But no…

Loggerheads is a beautiful script accented by subtle and beautifully coordinated performances.

Set with the “Bill Clinton into George W. Bush” presidency as its haunting backdrop, Loggerheads reeks of regret, and each character in the triad must face their regrets head on before they are consumed by them.

Please go see this film.

Now playing in New York and LA, Loggerheads opens nationwide in early November.

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Erik Van Looy's
The Memory Of A Killer
In Flemish and French with English subtitles.
Open Nationwide

Starring: Jan Decleir; Koen De Bouw; Werner De Smedt.

Reviewed by Christina M. Hinke

In the Belgium film, The Memory of a Killer, the lead character has a problem. Angelo Ledda (Jan Decleir) is a hired assassin who forgets who he’s knocked-off, who is on his hit list and even what his room number is. The sixty-something year old suffers Alzheimer’s disease and writes numbers, names and tasks on his forearm.

Though the memory loss angle may be evocative of Christopher Nolan’s Memento, it works well to create sympathy for the hired hit man. The story transports the viewer inside Ledda’s mind, feeling his torment as his memory fades. But what really keeps the audience glued to their seats is Erik Van Looy’s directorial approach. He uses jumpy camera techniques to create pulse-quickening effects during the fast moving action scenes, but then he slows down the action to a cool pace, letting the story evolve into a stylish crime thriller.


Adapted for the screen from a detective novel by Jef Geeraerts, the story begins in 1995 Belgium when detectives Vincke (Koen De Bouw) and Verstuyft (Werner De Smedt) of the Antwerp police department investigate a series of murders in which all fingers point to a political big wig. Assassin Angelo Ledda breaks his contract when he discovers that one of his targets is a twelve-year old girl. Ledda then decides to leak clues to the cops about the web of people behind the shootings (just in case he forgets the facts himself), but he also stays two steps ahead of the law and kills off each perpetrator - one by one.

The lead actors are all well-known, good-looking European film stars. De Bouw’s dark and moody portrayal of Vincke is dead-on. The curly redhead De Smedt adds a much needed touch of humor to the otherwise serious action thriller. Decleir is captivating as Ledda; his demeanor can flip instantly from gentlemanly to that of a deadly killer, showing a brute strength that is both shocking and exciting. That Ledda is losing his memory makes this character even more compelling. His ultra-hip sunglasses complete his cool-killer persona. I would like to see a Decleir-Tarantino collaboration as Decleir also has the ability to bring to life the twisted and complex characters that are a Tarantino standard.

In scenes when Ledda’s memory flickers, the screen flashes with brightly colored images of past or present (I’m not sure which) making it difficult to comprehend what is actually going on. I suppose it is to let the audience know that his Alzheimer’s symptoms are kicking in.

Otherwise, this action suspense thriller is a “must see” for all you thrill seekers out there. The Memory Of A Killer won five Belgian Oscars and it could certainly find acclaim in the eyes of American viewers with its Hollywood-style fast-moving action and superb acting.

Sony Pictures Classics. R. 120 minutes. Rated R.

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Stephen Vittoria’s
One Bright Shining Moment:
The Forgotten Summer of George McGovern
Opened September 16, 2005
Quad Cinema

Reviewed by Wendy R. Williams

Stephen Vittoria has created a true “blast from the past” in his documentary film about Senator George McGovern, the 1972 Democratic nominee for President. Yes, Senator McGovern, the candidate who captured the hearts and minds of young America and then went on to be defeated by Richard Nixon of Watergate fame.

The film asks the question, “What would America be like today if McGovern had won?” Well, we certainly would have never had to live through Watergate but would have been sent off on such a different Y in the road that we would not today be embroiled in Iraq?

The film covers McGovern’s campaign but it also covers the history of the war in Vietnam and the radicalization of the public in response to that senseless loss of life. It is all there: the music; the film footage from the war and the conventions; Gloria Steinem; Dick Gregory; Gore Vidal; Gloria Steinem; Warren Beatty; and Howard Zinn. It is a must see for anyone who believes that the political process can make a change for the better and for all students of history. The film is narrated by Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman.

See: http://www.firstrunfeatures.com/cs_onebrightshiningmoment.html and be sure to read my interview with Senator McGovern in the September 2005 issue of www.newyorkcool.com.

,
Quad Cinema 34 West 13th Street NY, NY www.quadcinema.com

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John Madden's
Proof
Opens September 16, 2005
Sony Lincoln Square
City Cinemas 1,2,3
Loews 19th Street East
The Angelika Film Center

Starring: Gwyneth Paltrow; Anthony Hopkins; Jake Gyllenhaal; Hope Davis; Gary Houston; Anne Wittman; Daniel Hatkoff; John Keefe; Colin Stinton; Leigh Zimmerman.

Damning Proof

Reviewed by Adam Ritter

Of genius and madness, there is said to be only a fine line of separation, and this is a main theme explored in Proof opening nationwide September 16th, 2005.

Based on David Auburn's play of the same name, Proof is the story of Catherine (moodily portrayed by Gwyneth Paltrow), daughter to noted mathematician Robert (a blustery Anthony Hopkins) whose great achievements, though long past, are legendary to paste-eaters everywhere.

In the waning years of his life, Robert desperately wants one final, sterling achievement, a proof. That is to say, he labors to cobble together a mathematical formula, the verity of which has been demonstrated to be accurate. Robert wrote several monumental proofs before he was twenty-three, the threshold at which a phantom curtain imposes its will, marking the decline of a person's creative productivity. To accomplish the impossible, Robert needs a coherence and sanity that have long eluded him.

Indeed, from the moment we meet him, you just know that Robert is a graphomaniacal schizophrenic. The Lucasian Chair rests safely.

For five years past, Catherine put life on hold to care for her ailing father, who each day slipped further into the abyss of mental impairment despite promising moments of lucidity. When he is gone, we reflect on and are awash in familial interludes from that time together. This allows you to share in the disorientation of the characters in a style reminiscent of the genre heavyweight, Memento.

As Catherine celebrates her twenty-seventh birthday, she is torn apart by grief for her father, anger over alone having watched him deteriorate and fear for what she may have inherited; his condition. But which part? Genius or madness? Or are the two so intertwined as to be indistinguishable?

Complicating matters are the arrival of Claire (Hope Davis), Catherine's list-writing super-efficient sibling who takes a business approach to all of life's details from shampoo ingredients to slow painful deaths. There is also Hal (Jake Gyllenhaal), a promising former student of their father. Hal has rigorously devoted himself to dual objectives; searching through mountains of Robert's notebooks in search of one lost proof, and romancing a vulnerable Catherine, for whom he has long held a torch. Alas, which is his true motivation?

There are some contortions along the way which invigorate the storyline in unexpected ways. Clever scene progression leaves mysteries to linger, though you will be in a constant state of arranging puzzle pieces.

Despite the shroud, Proof examines some genuinely thought-provoking ideas all the while anchored by a precision-timing devotion to the Kubler-Ross grief cycle. Hints of theatricality bleed through in aloof and demonstrative performances, a dendritic echo of the film's origin.

Of achievement, Catherine advises Hal, "It's not about big ideas. It's work. You have to chip away." Agreed. Sometimes though, instead of a chisel, you're wistful for a jack hammer.