stranded Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Bride Wars
One minute, she's struggling with addiction and family drama in the winning Rachel Got Married. The next, Anne Hathaway was skyrocketing to the dredge, terrible marriage stereotyping, and wedding wars with Kate Hudson. Jeffrey M. Anderson said there's one worthy minute in the film, but the "rest of the time, for 88 out of its 89 minutes, it's a movie totally devoid of life." Also on Blu-ray. Skip it.

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The Uninvited
One would think that a film with David Strathairn and Elizabeth Banks would be worth a moment or two, especially since they're not running to the horror/thriller genre every day, but as Jette Kernion said in her review in February: the story is weak, Banks' lines are "stilted and almost laughable," and Strathairn's performance "made me want to go home and put on one of his better movies to forget about his nearly wooden character in this one." That's enough reason to Skip it. Also on Blu-ray.

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Martyrs
Movies that make Saw look like Sesame Street aren't the type I usually have in my queue, so I'll leave this entirely up to Scott Weinberg: "It may be one of the most ferocious horror films ever made -- but Martyrs is also quite effectively chilling and consistently disturbing ... frankly I think it's one of the most fascinating pieces of 'hardcore' horror cinema you'd ever want to see." Buy it ... if you have the guts.

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Nothing But the Truth
Another political drama in Rod Lurie's stable, Truth boasts the likes of Kate Beckinsale, Alan Alda, Vera Farmiga, Matt Dillon, taking the Valerie Plame case and morphing into an amped up drama with intrique based around missile strikes on Venezuela. Eric Snider said from TIFF: "Still, for all its strengths, Nothing But the Truth falls under the umbrella of good but not great." Rent it.

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Also out: Frost/Nixon: Complete Interviews, What Doesn't Kill You (also on Blu-ray), While She Was Out

(Gonzalo Arijon's "Stranded" opens in limited release this weekend, and so here's our Sundance review from last January.)



By James Rocchi

Often -- especially at Sundance -- a documentary works because it offers you a story you simply don't know; a political perspective, a personal struggle, a place in time. But occasionally, the most gripping documentaries are the ones where you knew the shape and sense of the tale beforehand, but lacked a finer understanding of its details and facts. Stranded: I've come from a plane that crashed on the mountains is one of those documentaries -- one where the boiled-down headlines and distant memories of a real event are not only expanded but explored, not merely presented as fact but shaped as art. In 1972, a Uruguayan rugby team took off on Flight 571 for a weekend in Chile, intending to mix a few games with a little sightseeing. They never made it; instead, the plane crashed in the Andes. 12 passengers and crew members among the 45 people on board died on impact or soon thereafter. Another 5 died before daybreak the second day. The remaining passengers -- young, scared, injured -- did what they could to survive. And then, after the tenth day, with the radio explaining that the air search for the plane was being called off, the remaining 25 did what they had to in order to survive.

Directed by Gonzalo Arijon, Stranded not only interviews the survivors of Flight 571 but also follows the survivors and their loved ones on a journey back to the crash site over 30 years later, and includes recreations of the flight and the struggles of the stranded youths. Stranded is neither sensational nor evasive about what the survivors did, and what they had to do as their meager food supplies ran out and they had to turn to the bodies of their fallen friends. In the current-day interviews, the survivors are careful and sensitive and judicious in discussing their experiences; at the same time, you can feel the sting of cold logic when one survivor explains how after word came that the air search was called off, "We, the Strauch cousins, prepared the meat ... "

'Tis the season for cinematic horrors, but a fright-seeker's options aren't limited to Saw V or High School Musical 3. The Indie Spotlight has the lowdown on a batch of limited-release films opening today that may also terrify or amuse you. Four of the five have gotten almost nothing but great reviews, too.

Here's what's new today: Fear(s) of the Dark, I've Loved You So Long, Let the Right One In, Roadside Romeo, and Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains. Those are some great titles, if nothing else. Here's the scoop on each of them.

Let the Right One In
What it is: Twelve-year-old boy develops a crush on a girl who might be a vampire. It's Twilight, but with the genders reversed, and in Swedish.
What they're saying: Raves all around the board, including Cinematical's Scott Weinberg. At Rotten Tomatoes, the acclaim is almost universal. (Owen Gleiberman: Welcome to Contraryville, population 1.) Everybody I know who has seen it says it's something special -- scary, twisted, witty, and even sweet.
Where it's playing: New York City (Angelika Film Center), Los Angeles (Laemmle Sunset 5, Laemmle Playhouse 7, Edwards University Town Center in Irvine).
More info: The official site has a list of upcoming playdates in other cities. Let's make this one a hit, people!

I've Loved You So Long
What it is: A French drama about a woman released from prison after 15 years who must try to reconnect with her sister and her sister's family. (Does the title make anyone else think of Full Metal Jacket? "Me love you long time!")
What they're saying: Cinematical gushed effusively when the film played at Telluride, calling it a "masterpiece." The Rotten Tomatoes score is overwhelmingly positive (90% at the moment), and the buzz is that Kristin Scott Thomas is a lock for an Oscar nomination and a solid bet for a win.
Where it's playing: New York City (Lincoln Plaza, Angelika Film Center), Los Angeles (Laemmle Town Center 5, Laemmle Playhouse 7, Laemmle Royal, Regency South Coast Village in Costa Mesa).
More info: Sony Classics' official site.

For the third year in a row, Sundance is partnering up with the Brooklyn Academy of Music to present the "Sundance Institute at BAM" series, where flicks from this year's film festival will play for New York audiences May 29-June 8. It's just like going to Sundance, only without the snow and ice. Oh, and Brooklyn is actually big enough to handle large crowds. So maybe it's nothing like going to Sundance, except for the movies.

The movies -- 22 features and 36 shorts -- include several must-see titles, some of which have not played anywhere yet except for Sundance. Hot-buzz documentary American Teen (pictured) is on the schedule (complete with a prom-themed BAM party!), as is the soldier drama American Son. Anvil! The Story of Anvil was one of the most popular films at this year's fest, and the heavy metal band featured in it will perform live at BAM. There's the Chuck Palahniuk adaptation Choke, Stacy Peralta's L.A. gang doc Made in America, the South American cannibalism doc Stranded, and award-winning documentaries Trouble the Water and Man on Wire. If you've been paying attention to the indie/film-fest scene this year, you've probably heard of some of these, so it's pretty cool that the Sundance/BAM partnership will give wider audiences a chance to see them.

Tickets for the "Sundance Institute at BAM" series go on sale to BAM members on April 21, and the general public on April 26. Neither Sundance nor BAM has the complete info on its website yet, but here's the BAM page to keep your eye on.

It is a very disconcerting thing to wake up at 8 a.m., and an hour later to be watching a documentary about cannibalism, but that is how yesterday began for me.

The documentary Stranded recounts the famous story of the Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the mountains of Chile in 1972, forcing some survivors to resort to drastic measures to stay alive. It is a reasonably good documentary, and obviously the story -- told here, for the first time, by the survivors themselves -- is compelling. But at over two hours, the film feels too long. I realize what a jerk I sound like making that complaint when I am watching a movie about people who avoided starvation in the frozen mountains by eating their dead friends, but there you go. They were up there for 72 days; I'm stuck in the screening room for 125 minutes and I'm whining.

But here's the thing! The film guide says the movie is 113 minutes, and let me tell you, there is nothing worse for a Sundance-goer than a movie that turns out to be longer than advertised. You plan your schedule very carefully, and sometimes you decide against a particular title specifically because the running time does not suit your needs. When it goes longer than expected, we get antsy and fidgety and frustrated.

On the other hand, when a movie comes up shorter than the film guide said it would be, it is a miraculous and joyful event. We dance merrily out of the screening room on those occasions. I'm sure I've given a few films better grades than they deserved solely for that reason.