Movie Reviews: American Cowslip, Deadgirl, In the Loop, Orphan
Also, Afghan Star, Shrink, Yoo-Hoo Mrs. Goldberg and more.
G-FORCE
This film wasn't screened in advance of our print deadline, but a review will appear here soon.
GO IN THE LOOP
This deliriously foul-mouthed political satire is set sometime between 2002 and the day after tomorrow; hard to say, given that the country with which U.S. and U.K. pols want to go to war is unnamed save for its location in, you know, the Middle East. The prime minister and president, likewise, go unnamed. But several of the British wonks and wankers at the dark heart of this rambunctious catastrophuk first appeared in writer-director Armando Iannucci’s BBC series The Thick of It, which debuted in the thick of Tony Blair’s reign as PM. So Iraq it is — satire from a safe distance. Which doesn’t diminish the impact or dull the point. Doc or mock, the response is the same: You are laughing at idiocy, whether it’s coming from a peace-loving, warmongering general played by Colin Powell or James Gandolfini. All In the Loop is missing is a sieg-heiling Peter Sellers in a wheelchair and James Carville in the war room. Zooming back and forth between London and D.C., In the Loop hasn’t any real plot — it plays like a rather brilliant Brit-com stretched over 100 minutes, a collection of anecdotes and incidents. The final scene, played beneath the closing credits, suggests that what seems like a monumental, world-altering decision to most is merely tedious paper-pushing to these pricks. All done during the course of business hours. (The Landmark; Playhouse 7) (Robert Wilonsky)
GO YOO-HOO, MRS. GOLDBERG
Did you know that goy god Steve McQueen got an early walk-on on a Jewish television sitcom? That’s just one of the tasty tidbits in Aviva Kempner’s celebratory but clear-eyed portrait of Gertrude Berg, the creator, writer and star of The Goldbergs, which, against the odds, grew into a huge hit on radio and television, from the stock market crash through the 1950s. Berg was a complicated, labile woman, whose own mother never recovered from the early death of Berg’s brother. Onscreen, she radiated a bosomy maternal warmth that brought to this unmistakably Jewish show — about the everyday joys and sorrows of a modernizing family — a universal-immigrant appeal and badly needed optimism during the Depression. Kempner, who also made The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg, blends footage from the show and Jewish New York with commentary from early fans, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Norman Lear, to show Berg as a canny, driven creature of her time. She knew how to adapt, but she also possessed grace under anti-Communist pressure. When the HUAC pushed the network to remove Berg’s co-star Philip Loeb, she resisted until resistance became futile. Which didn’t prevent Loeb from killing himself but saved the series until suburbanization killed off working-class comedy, and Lucille Ball — another kind of mother altogether — stepped into the breach. (Sunset 5; Town Center 5) (Ella Taylor)
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