AFI Fest, A to W

*CRITIC’S PICK*  MODUS OPERANDI (USA) “A film that could only be made in Milwaukee, where life is CHEAP!” screams the tag line, and a faux-retro introductory sequence right out of Grindhouse, plus the stunt-casting of Danny “Machete” Trejo and unlikely Wisconsin celeb Mark Borchardt (American Movie) as guest villains might lead you to suspect this is just another ’70s slasher-movie tribute. Yet there’s more going on in director Frankie Latina’s debut feature. The plot is strictly boilerplate: An alcoholic CIA agent (Randy Russell) takes on a mission that will ultimately enable him to find his wife’s killer. But plot is almost beside the point. Latina is paying tribute to the ’70s here but in a bizarre, formalist way: One scene might play like a retro spy spoof, the next like a British gangster flick, another like an experimental Warhol piece, and yet another like Italian neorealism, with the attendant changes in film stocks and color schemes such shifts imply. It’s never boring, as Latina throws enough random nudity and hilariously odd scenic juxtapositions at the audience to keep them amused, titillated and vaguely following the semblance of a narrative. Expect it to appear on Quentin Tarantino’s Best of ’09 list. (Mann Chinese 6, Sat., Oct. 31, 12:15 a.m.) (LYT)

GO  MOSCOW (Brazil) The play’s the thing — but not the only thing — that intrigues in director Eduardo Coutinho’s documentary about a Brazilian theater company mounting a revival of Chekhov’s Three Sisters. Rather than a straightforward portrait of the actors or a behind-the-scenes look at the rehearsal process, Moscow deftly merges the two strategies, blurring the line between the performers and their characters. (An intimate encounter between lovers, presented in two different stagings, is the most provocative stunt of its kind since Mulholland Drive’s audition scene.) Coutinho effortlessly manages what a thousand pretentious off-off-Broadway productions can’t — to contemporize a century-old classic while retaining its power and mystery. (Mann Chinese 6, Wed., Nov. 4, 10 p.m.) (Tim Grierson)

Red Riding

Trash Humpers

Related Content

• Amour and More: How to See the Golden Globes' Five Foreign Film Nominees in Five Days
  January 3, 2013
• Classic Rock Is a Cancer on Our Society
  January 9, 2013
• Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Hollywood Bowl - 10/17/12
  October 18, 2012
• The Best Concerts To See in L.A. This Week: Oct. 15-18
  October 15, 2012
• Neil Young and Crazy Horse -- Outside Lands Festival -- 8/10/12
  August 11, 2012

More About

• Albert Barnes
• Michael Haneke
• Neil Young
• Benito Mussolini
• Corneliu Porumboiu

GO  MOTHER (South Korea) As he previously did for the police procedural (Memories of Murder) and the monster movie (The Host), South Korea’s sublimely talented Bong Joon-ho here takes another venerable pulp genre — the wronged-man thriller — and enthusiastically stands it on its head. When a mentally disabled man is accused of murdering a schoolgirl, his middle-aged mum (Kim Hye-ja) takes it upon herself to clear his name — a goal, it readily becomes clear, she will stop at nothing to achieve. Bong’s currents of dazzling style are enough to keep any movie humming along, but his real coup comes in the casting of veteran film and TV star Kim, an icon of maternal warmth for Korean audiences, who here has a blast giving life to a fearsome protector whom perhaps only another mother could love. (Grauman’s Chinese, Sat., Oct. 31, 7 p.m.) (SF)

NEIL YOUNG TRUNK SHOW (USA) The second in Jonathan Demme’s promised trilogy of Neil Young performance documentaries is a tough sell. Consider this: A live rendition of a single song, “No Hidden Path,” consumes more than a quarter of this 82-minute concert film of Young’s 2008 tour. That’s a lot of time spent on one track, especially considering it’s not “Cortez the Killer” or “Like A Hurricane” (though a performance of the latter is included). Recorded in Toronto, the film offers little in the way of behind-the-scenes action, unless you consider a doctor dealing with Young’s hang nail to be high drama. Yes, there is a bigger backdrop: Young survived an aneurysm a few years back, and, facing his own mortality, felt the natural urge to document his years. But that issue fueled Demme’s first Young film, Heart of Gold. Here, we get the genius songwriter soloing like he has all the time in the world, and then some. Hopefully he does. It’s just important to use that time wisely. (Grauman’s Chinese, Wed., Nov. 4, 10:30 p.m.) (Randall Roberts)

GO  NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT PERSIAN CATS (Iran) If Andy Hardy–era Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland were reborn as young Iranian musicians trying to pull together a band in order to meet a deadline to perform abroad, the result might be No One Knows About Persian Cats. That’s far from a diss. This charming, funny film filters serious concerns (government censorship; immigration) through a comedic filter in order to make worthy political points. Highlights are the numerous musical performances — ranging from soulful alt-rock to heavy metal — during which montages of everyday people unfold, offering glimpses of an Iran far more dynamic and complex than the nightly news would have us believe. (Mann Chinese 6, Mon., Nov. 2, 10 p.m.) (EH)

*CRITIC’S PICK*  NORTHLESS (Mexico/Spain) A warmly human and complex corrective to the screaming anti-immigration extremists on cable news, this remarkably assured debut feature from Mexican writer-director Rigoberto Perezcano views a Oaxacan farmer’s attempts to cross over as a case of hopes deferred, sometimes sweetly, often tensely. The movie opens with a stirring, wordless sequence of waiting, walking and panting that brings Andres (Harold Torres) just over the border before he’s captured and dumped off in Tijuana, where he starts helping out at a grocery store within rock-throwing distance of the fence. Tough but fair shopkeeper Ela (Alice Leguna) and her friend Asensio (Luis Cardenas) spark to Andres’ situation, while melancholy worker Cata (Sonia Couoh) eyes him warily. They all eventually form a bond, however, that reveals how the allure of a poor country’s wealthier neighbor fractures relationships at the same time it offers the promise of new ones. With a mostly unadorned, documentarylike (but beautifully photographed) style that allows for the dignity of broken souls to rise above a harsh environment, Perezcano nudges his talented actors toward moments of quietly powerful clarity, without histrionics or predictably fated ends. What’s left is a sobering, charming and ultimately moving depiction of the geographical and emotional spaces that exist between places left behind and the ones we’re in a hurry to get to. (Mann Chinese 6, Mon., Nov. 2, 10 p.m.) (RA)