Kitchen Stories (Not rated) (92 min.) - Nothing much really happens in Kitchen Stories, a wonderfully dry, smartly directed offbeat charmer from Norwegian filmmaker Bent Hamer. That's a compliment: Hamer artfully imbues his deceptively simple tale with subdued comedy and slightly subversive social commentary.
What are the kitchen habits of single men in Norway? That's the question posed in the late 1940s by the Home Research Institute. The Swedish governmental agency sends a team of researchers, driving matching black cars and shiny silver trailers, to its neighboring country to find out (the screenplay was inspired by a similar real-life study involving housewives).
Buttoned-down scientist Folke (Tomas Norstrom), the movie's designated straight man, is assigned to the reluctant Isak (Joachim Calmeyer), a grizzled bachelor who smokes a pipe, eats chocolate bars, sets rat traps and occasionally checks on a beloved dying horse and a room full of black pepper.
The sad-faced Folke perches on the adult equivalent of a child's high chair, watching over the kitchen and taking detailed notes on his subject's activities. Isak, meanwhile, secretly observes his accidental roommate from a hole drilled into his cramped trailer. The two men, in turn, are observed by a supercilious project manager (Reine Brynolfsson), who's overseen by the mostly absent, hard-partying boss of the institute.
Breaking the rules of the research project, Folke and Isak gradually begin exchanging niceties, and soon enough they're talking, dining together and sharing birthday cake. The budding friendship doesn't sit well with Grant (Bjorn Floberg), Isak's neighbor and sort-of pal, yet another secret watcher, who attempts to exact a frightening revenge.
Hamer maintains an appealing comic tone, while raising pointed questions about governmental-societal assumptions about behavior, emotional intimacy, male companionship and making one's own happiness. B-plus
- PHILIP BOOTH, Times correspondent
Independent film showcase
Tambay Film and Video Festival Channelside Cinemas in Tampa hosts the fourth annual showcase of independent projects from around the world, Friday through Sunday. More than 80 film and video projects, with running times from two minutes to two hours, will be shown with awards presented to juried winners at 8:30 p.m. April 25.
Tickets are available online (www.tambayfilmfest.com) at the Channelside Cinemas box office and by calling (813) 964-9781. Day passes are available for Friday ($15), Saturday and Sunday ($20 each day). Single-program tickets are $7.50. Filmmaking seminars are free to the public. A complete schedule of films and events is available on the festival's Web site.
Listed among the feature films in competition are The Box (Sunday 1:45 p.m.), a virus thriller directed by Safety Harbor resident Pete Bauer, and A Joyce Story (Friday 9:30 p.m.), set in an Irish pub by Tampa filmmaker Pete Guzzo. Other entries come from as far as Australia (Lenny Cahill Shoots Through, Saturday 7 p.m.) and as close as Lakeland (Risk, Friday 6 p.m.) and Sweet Oranges (Saturday 10 p.m.).
Documentaries include Debra Hussong's Human Shield (Friday 9:15 p.m.), focused on an antiwar effort in Iraq, and Beatle Maniacs (Saturday 11 a.m.), a lesson in pop idolatry by Homosassa filmmaker Erich McMann.
Five animated films are in competition, including two, Pencilman and its sequel, Pencilman Meets Pencilgirl, by Tampa artist Sean Sanczel. Both will be shown Saturday as part of a 6 p.m. short film collection.
Student films, most of them less than 30 minutes, are sprinkled throughout the three-day schedule. For more information, visit the festival's Web site.
- STEVE PERSALL, Times film critic
Blasts from the past
The Weather Underground (Not rated, probably R) (92 min.) - If the war in Iraq is indeed a quagmire like Vietnam, this Academy Award-nominated documentary may be a preview of what's coming at home. It only took four years of empty optimism about victory in Southeast Asia from hawkish politicians for some antiwar doves to grow very sharp talons.
From the radical Students for a Democratic Society sprang a faction calling itself the Weathermen, after a Bob Dylan lyric. These weren't peaceful protesters but urban guerrillas waging war against the U.S. government, setting off relatively small bombs at the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol and constantly eluding the FBI. Their agenda to extort peace from politicians gradually eroded, mainly through self-indulgence in drugs, group sex and criminal thrills. But for six years the Weathermen - later called the Weather Underground when they went on the lam - were likely among the faces Lyndon Johnson saw before he fell asleep at night.
Directors Sam Green and Bill Siegel tracked down surviving members such as Bernadette Dorhn and Mark Rudd, catching up with them in middle-aged lives that are markedly mainstream considering their youth. Some haven't given up the fight. Although the filmmakers' interrogation isn't as probing as the circumstances demand, the archival footage of stateside protests is extraordinary. It's almost a relief to see the Weathermen implode with jealousies and, in one bombing case, tragic incompetence.
At the same time, The Weather Underground details events that sparked such inflammatory resistance: questionable FBI tactics in pursuing the Black Panthers, by whom the Weathermen practically begged to be accepted; and the violent suppression of free speech and assembly at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The unasked question is whether the Weathermen's activities helped or harmed the antiwar movement, painting all doves with a broad, violent paintbrush. Neither nostalgic nor condemning, Green and Siegel nevertheless offer blasts from the past that echo louder with each casualty report from Iraq. B-plus
