Osama (PG-13) (82 min.) A 2003 Golden Globe winner for best foreign film, Osama is the first release from Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. It is a compelling and quietly devastating achievement from a talented first-time filmmaker.
Afghan writer-director Siddiq Barmak drags the viewer almost unbearably close to the suffering of women and girls under Taliban rule. Though Osama is fictional, Barmak's spare, economical direction and his unpolished cast's impressively natural performances often make Osama look like a documentary.
Osama follows a young girl (Marina Golbahari) who lives in squalor with her widowed mother and grandmother. None of the women are allowed to work or even leave the house without male escort.
Since the family otherwise would starve, the mother (Zubaida Sahar) cuts her daughter's hair to pass her off as a boy. However, this only gets the child drafted into a Taliban training camp. A young street urchin (Aref Herati) introduces her to other boys as "Osama," to protect her, though the ruse could cost both their lives.
Barmak, who shot the film over the course of a year as resources became available, originally conceived a somewhat happy ending. Instead he concludes Osama realistically, the only appropriate choice, but it makes for a grim finale to a story that most viewers often will find hard to watch. Almost every one of Osama's 82 minutes is swollen with dread.
The almost complete lack of exposition, while largely an asset, also makes the end a bit confusing to viewers unfamiliar with the culture. Ultimately, though, Osama is a challenging and enlightening experience that resonates long after it ends. A-
- RICK GERSHMAN, Times Correspondent
Let's all go to the lobby
Intermission (R) (105 min.) Likely no one asked for a film that blends the ensemble romance of Love Actually with the disparate thematic and artistic styles of filmmakers Guy Ritchie and Robert Altman. Still, that's what writer Mark O'Rowe and director John Crowley attempt in this Irish import, their first feature.
The effectiveness of this ambitious concoction is debatable. Numerous viewers at a recent screening in Tampa said they enjoyed it. About a dozen others walked out in the first 30 minutes. Maybe they took the title too literally when it came on screen? But if they didn't like the first half, it's best they left well before the creepy plot turns that followed.
Count this reviewer mostly dissatisfied by this coarse mix of romance and malevolence, which is unfortunate because the film has an impressive energy and many strong performances. Irish-born Colin Farrell (S.W.A.T.) is the actor here most recognizable to U.S. viewers, if only because he seems to have a role in every drama or action film released. He steals every scene as Lehiff, a creepily charismatic hooligan. One of Intermission's most regrettable qualities is that this abusive villain is, at least in his evil purity, far more likable than the "good guys," almost none of whom you'd want to meet in an elevator.
That's certainly true of John (Cillian Murphy, 28 Days Later) the closest thing Intermission has to a protagonist. His breakup with girlfriend Deirdre (Gosford Park's Kelly Macdonald) sets the main plot line in motion.
John's deliberate role in events that will put Deirdre in serious danger makes the filmmakers' ultimate resolution of their relationship ring horribly false. Viewers who can shrug that off likely won't mind the film's near constant use of a four-letter word rare to even U.S. films, along with numerous other crudenesses
The filmmakers get it right in other parts: Intermission does have a wealth of funny bits and is touching at times. Crowley gets great turns by Shirley Henderson, as Deirdre's traumatized, mustachioed sister, and Colm Meaney as tough-but-insecure cop with dubious musical tastes. It's hard to care much for either, however, and so it's hard to care much for Intermission. C
- R.G.
Like, wow, what a space cadet
The American Astronaut (Not rated; probably PG) (91 min.) Note to filmmakers: Cult status is not manufactured. It is bequeathed. Making a film purely with the intention of gaining cult status on the midnight-movie market is kind of sad.
But if you're going to do it, at least do it a lot better than Astronaut, a low-budget, black-and-white 2001 release out of Sundance just now touching down at Tampa's Madstone Theater.
That's not to say Astronaut, a mind-bending vanity project from star-writer-director-composer Cory McAbee, is entirely without merit. It has some creative visuals (in a hey-look-what-I-learned-in-film-school kind of way) and some truly enjoyable music - performed, of course, by McAbee's San Francisco band, the Billy Nayer Show. (The band will be at Madstone on Saturday to introduce the film.)
But this musical mishmash of space cowboy eccentricity and ironic barroom stereotypes never lands anywhere with an iota of gravity. Its whimsical, nonsensical plot makes for an unappealing narrative that too often is tedious and unwatchable. It's absurdist, but rarely funny.
Give McAbee points for ambition if you want, his creation is inarguably one-of-a-kind. But it's a long way from art - at best it's artsy - and the howls it elicits aren't of laughter. It's a good thing that in space, no one can hear you scream. D
- R.G.
It's only teenage wasteland
The United States of Leland (R) (108 min.) - Kevin Spacey took a shine to Matthew Ryan Hoge's screenplay, probably because it's constructed as a teen's-eye version of American Beauty. Suburbia is nothing but sex, drugs, alienation, that sort of thing. Hoge even has his protagonist, a twitchy loner named Leland (Ryan Gosling) to narrate from the grave, as Spacey's character did in the Oscar-winning film.
Spacey, who shepherded the project as a producer, also appears briefly as Leland's absentee father. Like so many other aspects of this movie, Spacey's brief appearances eventually have nothing to do with resolving the tragic story, merely prolonging it. This is a redundantly downbeat movie. Detours into one character's heroin addiction, a childhood romance falling apart at graduation and at least three dysfunctional marriages constantly distract from the core drama.
Leland is the gentlest murder suspect imaginable, accused of killing a mentally challenged boy on a playground. We slowly learn that the victim was the brother of Becky (Jena Malone), a girl on whom Leland has a crush, who already has enough problems. Viewers who last through Hoge's static drama will likely laugh at the rationales for Leland's crime and his punishment off the screen.
Meanwhile, a juvenile detention center teacher (Don Cheadle) takes an interest in Leland, if only because he's a failed writer and the teen might make a good book. Cheadle delivers the film's only decent performance, but anyone would look better opposite Gosling, whose incessant tics and stammers leave him just a few pregnant pauses away from being Rain Boy. Like everything else in Hoge's film, Gosling is interesting, then repetitive, then annoying. D
