Ray Pride

Idiosyncratic, urgent, often lyrical voices have been coming out of Argentinean filmmaking in the past decade, all concerned to some degree with cracking the urban self-image and bourgeoisie façade of that country. To name only a few, there's the late Fabien Bielinsky ("Nine Queens," "The Aura," now playing); bold young naïf Lisandro Alonso ("La Libertad," 2001); "Los Muertos," 2004, opening in January at Facets); Lucrecia Martel ("La Ciénaga," 2001; "The Holy Girl," 2004); Celina Murga ("Ana y los otros," 2003) and Daniel Burman. The Jewish Buenos Aires-based writer-director's "Lost Embrace" (2004) heralded a fresh perspective with a pleasingly literary mingling of comedy, sex and yearning, the sort of cannily measured mix of time, place and conflict, set in a recognizable contemporary city, that makes a certain familiar question even more irrelevant: "Why don't people make movies like Woody Allen used to?" Burman's "Family Law" (Derecho de familia) finds the 33-year-old exploring the relationships of fathers and sons for a third time, and the semi-autobiographical dramatic conflict between a young man entering the trade of his colorful father and what legacy he will leave his young son is mostly sunny. Understatement is Burman's forte: he's very good at it. 102m.

"Family Law" opens Friday at the Music Box.

(2006-12-22)

Also by Ray Pride

HOLIDAY MOVIE PREVIEW
"How would you like your face smashed in?" was the bold slogan of a memorable English anti-drunk-driving public-service ad. With the 2006 holiday-and-awards mashup of a movie season, getting your face smashed in, as with the agreeably by-the-numbers pugilistic poundings of "Rocky Balboa," would be getting off easy
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The Materiel World
Politics have always been the province of documentary-makers, but the recorded view of the world we're in is uncommonly serious-minded in 2006. In the real world, people die. Every day. Soldiers are at risk around the globe. And, as Al Gore suggests in "An Inconvenient Truth," the effects of global warming might just kill us all, and we have only ten years to prevent it
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Tip of the Week
A WASP Godfather, "The Good Shepherd," directed with restraint by Robert De Niro from Eric Roth's brilliant screenplay about the origins of modern spycraft, has a patience and command that accrues to a devastating conclusion
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Black & White and Red All Over
In "Casablanca," did Ilsa like it from behind? In "The Third Man," what corny-porny pictures did Holly Martins masturbate to? When would Bogart have called another man a "cunt" or a "cocksucker"? Could the director of "Schizopolis" and "Full Frontal" have fit into the "genius of the system" that enabled the careers of directors like Michael Curtiz? Those are questions that rattle around in the head while watching Steven Soderbergh's latest adroit atomization of form (if not function), "The Good German"
(2006-12-19)

The Prisoner of Narrative
(2006-12-19)

Tip of the Week
(2006-12-12)

Sentence Life
(2006-12-05)

Gone Green Again
(2006-12-05)

Tip of the Week
(2006-12-05)

One Long Movie
(2006-11-28)

Tip of the Week
(2006-11-28)

School of Cock
(2006-11-20)

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