Film Reviews

I AM A SEX ADDICT “Sorry I’m late. I had a little masturbatory episode.” Caveh Zahedi’s announcement to his girlfriend does not amuse her, but really, she shouldn’t be surprised, given that confessing his every burp and thought has been the abiding motif of Zahedi’s career as a diary-based experimental filmmaker (A Little Stiff, In the Bathtub of the World). A man with the bony body of a plucked chicken, Zahedi, this frequently amusing, often off-putting film reveals, has Woody Allen’s braniac-nerd knack for landing interesting women — as well as an addiction to hiring prostitutes. Pausing outside the chapel before his third marriage, the filmmaker, who is reportedly living hooker-free these days, looks into the camera and promises to honestly re-create his tangled romantic history, degradation and all. He’s honest to a fault, perhaps, having persuaded his actresses to strip naked and simulate oral sex while Zahedi, who admits onscreen to being a terrible actor, shouts in hopelessly immature ecstasy. This scene occurs again and again — addiction is repetition, after all — and while some may bail early, those who stay to the end are likely to dwell on Zahedi’s unwavering (some would say unrelenting) belief in his own artistry, as well as the film’s many funny, quotable lines, including the filmmaker’s pitch to his girlfriend that she should watch him have sex with a prostitute because “It would be healing for me.” (Fairfax) (Chuck Wilson)

LOOK BOTH WAYS It’s a cruel twist of film-releasing fate that Look Both Ways hits theaters so soon after its fellow Australian film Somersault. Both are the work of female filmmakers and are driven by the wayward emotions of their central female characters, and though the similarities mostly stop there, it’s still difficult not to compare the two — and Look Both Ways comes in second on all counts. The film’s writer-director, Sarah Watt, previously made a number of animated shorts, and her debut feature is peppered with brief animated interludes as a means of showing the internal life of Meryl (Justine Clarke), a painter stuck doing artwork for greeting cards. Meryl sees potential disaster around every corner, expecting a train to crash or a mugger to attack, and when she witnesses a man’s death on her way home from attending her father’s funeral, it seems her worst fears have been realized. Then she unexpectedly meets the newspaper photographer (William McInnes) assigned to shoot the scene of the man’s death, and romance blooms. The wonky pace for the entire film is determined by the flat tones of Clarke’s performance, in that she doesn’t much command the screen when she’s on and isn’t much missed when she’s off. Watt seems to want to say something about the role of fate and happenstance in creating connections between people, but she never quite brings the strands of her ideas together. Sometimes things do just happen, just as sometimes films don’t turn out to be quite as satisfying as we’d hoped. (Playhouse 7, Royal, Town Center 5) (Mark Olsen)

THE LOST CITY Compelling in fits and starts, actor-director Andy Garcia’s The Lost City possesses grand aspirations but troublesome execution. In 1958, Fico (Garcia) contentedly runs Havana’s chicest nightclub, while his father and brothers fiercely debate the removal of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista from power. Fico has no interest in revolution, but in classic epic-period-drama fashion, he gets sucked in anyway, thanks to a brother’s death and his attraction for a stunning woman (Inés Sastre) seduced by the rebels’ cause. The prototypical “passion project,” The Lost City is the result of Garcia’s 18-year struggle to raise financing for a deeply felt chronicling of Havana’s descent from “the Paris of the Caribbean” into a city smeared by communism and Castro. Using Fico’s transformation from carefree playboy to wised-up expatriate as the emotional focal point, Garcia (working from a screenplay by the late critic and novelist Guillermo Cabrera Infante) crams every genre into this tale of paradise lost: suspense thriller, action film, love story, family saga. (He even makes room for Bill Murray as some sort of ironic Shakespearean court jester.) Garcia deserves credit for his lack of self-indulgent flourishes, and for his sharp criticism of so-called freedom-fighting icons like Che Guevara. But the film’s crucial flaw is its failure to make Fico’s journey resonant — as the ineffectual center of this rambling story, the character is pushed to and fro by the swirling political intrigue around him, but never takes action or noticeably grows as a person. Apparently, Garcia spent so much time and energy bringing this film to the screen that he had none left for his own performance. (ArcLight; Westside Pavilion; Rialto; Town Center 5) (Tim Grierson)

REVOLOUTION: THE TRANS-FORMATION OF LOU BENEDETTIThe “Lou” in the middle of the title is a Nu Yawk boxer and stutterer who gets over his impediment by asking a kid to punch him in the head. You may draw inspiration from this; certain audiences, we’re told, have undergone “instantaneous transformation” after seeing the film. Once you “cathart the trauma” and “debug your brain,” as info at www.revoloutionthemovie.com encourages you to do, you can join the team and help both yourself and the fine folks at the Foundation for Conscious Humanity who brought you this potentially outlook-altering artwork. Be aware that RevoLOUtion is a remarkably well-made 75-minute inspiromercial. Director, star and co-writer Bret Carr (Passion of the Heist, Fahrenheit 6911) can act, and so can the rest of the cast, including Burt Young, who was somehow shanghaied into a walk-on to provide tangible linkage to the movie’s ever-present Rocky obsession. The characters are believable; the visuals glow. When the story ends, it seems kind of abrupt, until you realize that, of course, the tale will continue in your own life. Jane Fonda is quoted as saying, “You have to watch it!” And you can take that any way you want. (Sunset 5) (Greg Burk)