SpinningIntoButter Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Gran Torino
In his last acting stint, Clint Eastwood dances behind and in front of the camera playing a racist Korean War vet who faces his prejudices after a Hmong teen tries to steal his beloved Gran Torino. James Rocchi said: "Gran Torino is, bluntly, a pretty good film -- sleek and brawny like the title car, but a little clumsy on the corners and with no small amount of knock in its dramatic engine." Rent it on DVD or Blu-ray.

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The International
When you mix Run Lola Run helmer Tom Tykwer and Clive Owen, you get The International -- an action thriller where Owen plays an Interpol agent itching to battle corruption in the world's largest banks. In his review, William Goss said: "Throughout, The International is a thankfully, skillfully mature effort by Tykwer to produce a proper thriller for adults, that of a man on a mission, and one lent little extra resonance in our cash-strapped times." Buy it on DVD or Blu-ray.

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Crossing Over
Not all Harrison Ford films get slapped on the big screen with a bang. There's the multi-story immigration drama Crossing Over. But it's not exactly a little-known gem, according to Jeffrey M. Anderson: "Crossing Over is a bad movie ... about as airless and preachy as movies come." Skip it.

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Also Out: Fired Up, Nobel Son, Strike, Guns

And now: the Indie Spotlight. In which you are alerted to the smaller, under-the-radar films opening in limited release this weekend. They usually start in New York and Los Angeles, but be patient. They'll turn up at your local art house or on Netflix sooner or later.

Here's what opens outside the multiplexes today:

• Goodbye Solo (pictured), from Iranian-American wunderkind Ramin Bahrani (Man Push Cart), is about a young Senegalese taxi driver in North Carolina who befriends a cranky old coot. It has drawn universal acclaim -- literally, as 100% of the reviews at Rotten Tomatoes so far are positive. Cinematical's Kim Voynar reviewed it at Toronto last year and called it "a level of filmmaking that inspires without overwhelming, impresses without overreaching." Playing in NYC and Chicago.

• Spinning into Butter is a drama about race relations and political correctness on a college campus. Starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Beau Bridges, and Miranda Richardson, it's based on an acclaimed play but isn't getting much praise as a movie: only 27% of critics at Rotten Tomatoes have liked it. Playing in New York, D.C., and Cambridge, Mass.

• American Swing is a documentary about Plato's Retreat, a famous New York sex club of the 1970s and '80s, back before AIDS came along and spoiled all the fun of casual unprotected sex with multiple anonymous partners. The reviews so far are about evenly mixed, with four in favor and six against at Rotten Tomatoes. Even those who liked it seem to acknowledge it's not terribly deep, though the subject matter might be inherently interesting to some. Playing at Quad Cinema in New York City.

It's not every day that you hear that a Sarah Jessica Parker movie is going to open a conference -- unless, perhaps, that conference is on shoes and tacky outfits, or some sort of comedy-con. Yet the world premiere of her new film is going to open the upcoming National Conference on Race, Reparation and Reconciliation that is taking place on September 14 in Atlanta. The event was created by Clarence Jones, who used to be an adviser for Martin Luther King, Jr. He told Variety that he saw her new film, Spinning into Butter, two months ago and it had actually been an impetus to organize the conference (along with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the firing of Don Imus).

What could be so inspiring about a Parker film? Well, it's not what you'd expect her to be in. The indie film, adapted from a play by Rebecca Gilman, stars the Sex and the City star as a dean at a New England college. When a hate crime happens on campus, she is forced to examine her own feelings on the topic while maintaining her work's politically correct policies. (Sounds a little like Crash to me, but with less violence.)

Jones says about the movie: "There's a frankness in the movie that I've never seen before about race, which is the 800-pound gorilla in the national living room, and we're never going to get past that until we deal with the issue of slavery and reparations in a way that's both reasonable and meaningful." For those of us not attending the conference -- expected to be attended by the likes of John Edwards and Jesse Jackson -- Whitsett Hill is hoping to get theatrical distribution set in the next few weeks. Personally, I'd love to see the girl who just wants to have fun in something different, so I can't wait to see what she's done with the role. How about you?