jürgen fauth’s muckworld

We’re about to embark on a longish trip, so expect the emphasis on muckworld to shift to photos and tidbits from the road for a little while. While we’re packing our bags and staying on the line with our cell phone providers to work out the kinks in the international roaming plan, let me catch up with last week’s viewing:

Children of Men
The incredible long takes at the heart of this film look slightly less impressive on the small screen, but there can be no doubt that it’s one hell of a movie. Stories set in alternate realities often rely heavily on Joseph Campbell’s monomyth, probably because the familiar stations of the Hero’s Journey allow us to better absorb the unfamiliar world surrounding it. Children of Men is a particularly potent example, a fully realized dystopia in which hope is hard won indeed. In honor of Theo’s ongoing footwear problems, here’s Cavern, which features one of the truest lines you’ll ever find in a rock song: “Whatever you do / take care of your shoes.” Alfonso Cuaron, 2006. *****

Almost Famous
Cameron Crowe’s sweetly romanticized memories of his early days as rock critic are anything but dystopian, but William Miller’s adventures with Miss Penny Lane and Stillwater are yet another Hero’s Journey, with Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Lester Bangs taking over the Magician/Hermit role that Michael Caine plays in Children of Men. It’s one of those movies I find impossible to turn off, no matter how many times I’ve seen it. Cameron Crowe, 2000. *****

Camp
Poorly paced and predictably told, this movie about teenagers in a performing arts summer camp failed to engage us. Todd Graff, 2003. *

The Gymnast
Feel the fabric! Wolfe Video is releasing this festival favorite about two aging gymnasts who find love while they’re swinging from the rafters. As much as I want to like true independent films like this, you’re bound to be underwhelmed unless you’re particularly fascinated by the world of gay aerialists. Ned Farr, 2006. **

Follow My Voice
Portrait of a group of gay teenagers at the Harvey Milk School in New York who are the beneficiaries of a cover album of Hedwig songs. With Frank Black, the Polyphonic Spree, Ben Folds, Ben Kweller, Yoko Ono, Jonathan Richman and John Cameron Mitchell. Earnest and likable, if overlong. Katherine Linton, 2006. ***

2 Days in Paris
The less said about Julie Delpy’s dreadful directorial debut the better. Julie Delpy, 2007. *

Persepolis
The second book of Marjane Satrapi’s coming-of-age graphic novel memoir doesn’t quite have the impact of the first (which is set in Iran), but anybody who has ever suffered culture shock will find plenty to recognize and love. I’m very much looking forward to the movie. ****

In the Shadow of the Moon
The real wonder here isn’t the Apollo program or the digitally restored footage from the NASA vaults, but the spirited and witty memories of the septuagenarian astronauts telling their unique stories. I’ll have a review by the time this opens on September 7. David Sington, 2006. ***

Danny Boyle sends a group of astronauts–Cillian Murphy, Michelle Yeoh, and Rose Byrne among them–on a mission to deliver a giant nuke in order to restart our dying star and save mankind. Confined to a ship that instantly brings to mind 2001’s Discovery, they send video greetings to their families and tend to Silent Running oxygen gardens. But no matter how many millions of miles from home, when a distress signal arrives, it’s clear that we’re in some very familiar territory: lethal space walks, ticking countdowns, mysterious ghost ships, malfunctioning life support systems, a computer with a melodious voice denying urgent requests, tripped-out deep-space epiphanies. Nothing new under the sun.

At a post-screening Q&A at Tribeca Cinemas this week, Boyle (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later) made it clear that he is very much hip to the sci-fi classics. Like the crew of the Ikarus II hiding out behind their giant space umbrella, Sunshine labors in the shadow of Kubrick’s 2001 and Tarkovsky’s Solaris — and the books by Arthur C. Clarke and Stanislaw Lem they were based on — with some additional nods to Ridley Scott’s Alien. Perhaps it’s not even possible to send people into space without referring to these touchstone films, and yet, the question remains: why has it been decades since anybody managed to put a brand-new spin on the genre? Fox Searchlight respectfully asks critics to keep mum about the third-act revelations and reversals that work hard to keep Sunshine surprising, but really, there’s no need: if you’ve watched any sci-fi at all, you have seen it before.

Which is not to say Sunshine isn’t a handsomely crafted, engaging, even nerve-wrecking space adventure. The CGI sun, seen through the filtered glass of the ship’s observation deck or shooting over the edge of the heat shield, is a blast of glorious, almost supernatural light. Boyle also does an outstanding job at vividly rendering the astronauts’ extreme vulnerability to the elements. The burning heat of the stars, the razor cold of space, everything is orders of magnitude more threatening than on Earth. The plant life on board the ship in particular becomes more precious than ever. Surely, this heightened state of perception is one of the reasons we go to the movies in the first place. So what if Kubrick already said it all? Set the controls for the heart of the sun anyway. Sunshine will open in the US on July 20.

Sunshine. Danny Boyle, 2007. ***

Bonus videos: Pink Floyd at Pompeii, the trailer, and–just because he happened to turn up in the search–Bill Withers.