Christina Waters

A riddle in the key of repression - and destined to win a few Oscars.

“Director Michael Haneke believes that one generation’s moral decay is rarely eradicated, but lingers submerged in the collective unconscious until future events trigger its return. In a German village on the verge of World War I a series of random events ignites suspicion, violence and strange punishment. The ripening mood of paranoia and retaliation tears apart the village fabric, until the messes are covered up and control regained. As a forensic allegory of hypocrisy, longing, and disappointment, The White Ribbon owns a place in the short list of all-time unforgettable films.”

That’s how I began my review of The White Ribbon — you can read the entire piece in the current Santa Cruz Weekly. And no matter how many people try to scare you off, don’t miss this gorgeous and provocative film.

I’m so tired of people saying to me, “yes, but it’s in black and white,” as if describing some sort of physical deformity. (more…)

We learn many things from the new Sherlock Holmes film starring the very pretty Jude Law as Dr. Watson, and the always appealing Robert Downey Jr. as the eccentric fictional sleuth, Sherlock Holmes.

We learn for example that Madonna was right to ditch Guy Ritchie, a man whose directorial credentials reside in his ability to write big checks.

We learn that Robert Downey Jr. is easily the most watchable actor on the screen. Yet that isn’t enough. Even he—gasp—is beginning to rely on self-parody and schtick. He had to. There was neither script, nor story nor director available.

We learn, once and for all, that despite his visual appeal, Jude Law cannot act.

We learn that misogyny is afoot and evident in the casting of two woefully awkward and untrained ingenues to play the female bits in the new Sherlock Holmes flick. One is a poor girl so loaded with collagen that she can barely say her lines. The other is a terrific looking actress (I use the term with abandon here), Rachel McAdams, whom we are to believe is not only a cunning vixen, a brilliant sleuth in her own right but the once and only love interest of the great Holmes himself. Yet when McAdams opens her mouth, the entire facade crumbles. Her squeaky valley girl delivery makes a mockery of what might have been a delicious foil for the utterly chewable Downey…..to be continued….

The words on this promo poster say it all!

Proving that there are plenty of bad film ideas to go around, Denzel Washington hacks his way through post-apocalyptic America armed only with a machete, four or five semi-automatic weapons and a big, sacred book that is somehow going to salvage what remains of Mankind.

The Book of Eli, co-produced by Washington and “directed” by two guys billed as “The Hughes Brothers,” answers the burning question: “What ever happened to Jennifer ‘Fame’ Beals?” Well she turns up at the kept woman of Gary Oldman (who is so severely tic-ridden as to erase all memory of his former cinematic brilliance). Oldman is the honcho of a frontier town that resembles a cross between the cast party of Road Warrior and a Hells Angels convention.

Packs of very dirty men dressed in leather roam what’s left of the world after a nuclear something has destroyed (more…)

Billions, schmillions—Avatar is sheer self-indulgence touted as cutting-edge sci-tech.

But that’s not my big issue with this bloat of folkloric cheesiness wrapped in day-glo and eco-blather. And I don’t care how many billions are being shelled out for this film.

My main problem with Avatar lies with the moral implications of such big budget generic commercialism: Lack of courage.

Once upon a time, filmmakers had imaginations larger than their budgets. Often they had fresh stories to tell, and fueled by their imaginations they shaped these stories with words, images and directorial vision into cinematic gems. The greatest made work that endured, enchanted and enlightened.

Given the amount of advance hype, the ten years of his life director James Cameron (The Abyss, Aliens, The Titanic) gave to the project, and the amount of money it cost, there was good reason to get excited about the Big Holiday Movie that opened less than a month ago. Alas while Cameron took his sweet time tinkering with technology and special effects, film fashion passed him by. The hackneyed graphics, the psychedelic sensibility, the embarrassing ethnic stereotypes, the recycled underwater-meets-the-rainforest imagery, the sophomoric script and most of all the shocking lack of fantasy/sci-fi vision make this the howler of the decade.

Dances with Wolves meets The Lion King
Cameron is a sucker for simple tales of worlds colliding with some sort of trans-species lovefest as a result. He’s made that film before - and better. (more…)

This one goes out for all you gals out there who ever lost your head over a man with long hair and a guitar. Crazy Heart.

Jeff Bridges has been nominated four times for an Oscar. But never won. In a way that’s the story of Bad Blake, a broken-down, still-defiant C&W singer who drinks, swears, smokes and drives his way through Crazy Heart, the Scott Cooper film starring Bridges.

Imagine if the Dude of Big Lebowski fame had talent and still burned for something he hadn’t quite gotten to. That would be close to the character Bridges burns into the screen in this gem of a performance.

Oh the film itself isn’t much, although it gives generously of burnished southwest scenery and foot-stompin’ country rock music. Not enough tension or plot to really give cinephiliacs something substantial to chew on. But I didn’t care. Bridges was quite enough to keep me in that seat. (more…)

And between those five-inch heels on Penelope Cruz’ feet and a kitchen table strewn with ripe tomatoes, Spanish cine-maestro Pedro Almodovar literally invents the color red.

The film is Broken Embraces, a virtuoso homage to great film masters past, as well as a ripping great mystery yarn that spans the genres from Almodovar’s early gender-morphing camp to indelible Liebestod.

In Almodovar’s hands, Cruz is visually addictive, to say the least. Think Hitchcock with exuberant sexuality. Now change Kim Novak’s grey suit into lipstick red, her platinum blonde hair to black and her placid English to sensuous Spanish. You have the picture. Almodovar’s latest film is a tightly-wound masterpiece, serving up a brilliant collage of film styles — even a film or two within a film — all to unfold the back-story of a mysterious tycoon obsessed with a sweet sultry call girl. Somehow they become involved with a film maker, and the obsessions multiply.
Super-saturated images are used (more…)

Authentic red velvet cupcakes - tender, moist and topped with an exuberant amount of butter-cream frosting, plus some colorful sugar ornaments. This really hit the spot last week, and for $2.25 a pop, might be one of the last culinary bargains in the known world. Those green Christmas tree cookies don’t look bad either….
Gayle’s.

What a pleasure it was to know Morton, a one-man poetry festival, charismatic raconteur and major mensch. I have been enjoying reading his wonderful memoir, full of so much lore about California bohemia and the vivacious arts and letters scene in Santa Cruz of the past three decades.

A passionate cinephile, Morton and I almost always disagreed about films - but we agreed about friendship, road trips and red wine. He cast a long and lasting shadow over our hearts - and everyone lucky enough to know him, will miss Morton. Probably permanently.

(You just know he’s scribbling away up there…..odes for the gods and other tricksters.)

Nora Ephron’s new film is just a trifle. A mere bon bon. An amuse bouche for baby boom nostalgics. But for providing the cinematic feast that is Meryl Streep playing Julia Child, Ephron deserves our unrestrained gratitude.

Streep is as joyous in her over-sized portrayal as the real Julia Child was in everything she did. Large, generous, and graced with a huge appetite for life’s sensory possibilities, the real Child was the savvy gastro-entrepreneuse who made “cuisine” a household word in post-war America. Streep, by all accounts our greatest living actress, not only retrieves the most Childesque mannerisms - the perpetually tossed head, the rolling eyes, the warbling chortle - she goes further. Not into an over-the-top impersonation. Dan Ackroyd already did that.

Mais non! Streep does something even better. She offers us Julia Child transfigured. Julia Child as we remember her, as the collective “we” created her — a robust, hulking, darling of a woman who brought joy, memorable recipes and most of all empowerment to several generations of hopeful gourmet cooks. Streep is blindingly accurate in portraying our cultural memory of this icon. Not Julia as she exactly was, but Julia exactly as we recall her. (more…)

What blockbuster author Dan Brown needs more than anything right now is a witness protection program. If English teachers, theological archaeologists and script doctors across the land ever found out where he lives, his life wouldn’t be worth the pixels Ron Howard’s new film is made of. In addition to a jowly Tom Hanks reprising his lifeless role as Harvard “symbologist” Robert Langdon, and semi-smoldering Ayelet Zurer as CERN nuclear physicist with a stripper’s name, Vittoria Vetra — both avoiding even a neutrino of sexual chemistry — Angels & Demons had to be Brown’s high school term paper about that merry band of Renaissance conspirators known as the Illuminati.

Langdon is summoned to Rome where hell’s a poppin’ in the form of a vial of anti-matter (cooked up at CERN) that has fallen into the wrong hands. The Church is in disarray, having just lost one pope and heading toward seclusion in the Sistine Chapel (nice photoshopping here) to vote (more…)