Ray Pride

Brother, can you spare a part? "Chop Shop," Ramin Bahrani's second New York-set feature, after the impressive, observant "Man Push Cart" (2005), has a whiff of "The Bicycle Thieves" but also of dark-oiled brimstone in the story of a Alejandro (Alejandro Polanco), a 12-year-old boy who beds down in a huge junkyard in the Willet's Point industrial neighborhood on the outskirts of Queens and gets work in hopes of improving the life of himself and his 16-year-old sister. Alejandro hustles and shills and learns a trade. Touching, lovingly detailed and often moving despite brutal conditions, "Chop Shop" rises above the convenience that the children are accepted in the midst of the thriving squalor. Still, Bahrani's glimpse of the lowest rungs of American capital makes for a chilling parable. It's at least twelve billion times better than any movie called "Bear Stearns" could ever be. Bahrani's semi-documentary style is a quietly thrilling exploration of the limits of vérité. And the final shot? Yes. 84m.

"Chop Shop" opens Friday at the Music Box.

(2008-03-18)

Also by Ray Pride

And the Band Played On
It's half-trot, half-run up parade-blocked, people-choked Broadway in Columbia, Missouri in Leap Day's springy dusk a couple hours west of St. Louis or east of Kansas City along I-70, the grand march opening the fifth edition of the fantastically smart, town-transforming True/False documentary film festival, led for the second time by the event's semi-official punk circus marching band, Chicago's Mucca Pazza
(2008-03-11)

Now and When
In an unnamed city in 1949, Harry (Chris Cooper) is a businessman hidden behind large horn rims; long-married to his wife Pat (Patricia Clarkson), he becomes convinced that the only way his wife can be happy is that he not confess his affair with younger, blonder Kay (Rachel McAdams) but instead murder Pat to put her mind at ease
(2008-03-11)

Tip of the Week
Like "Elephant," Gus van Sant's masterful "Paranoid Park" phases in and out of linear time, capturing flux and flow and the blank fear of life not yet understood in a clear-eyed boy's hardly expressive face
(2008-03-11)

A month of art from old Europe
The eleventh annual European Union Film Festival starts Friday.
(2008-03-05)

Tip of the Week
(2008-03-05)

Tip of the Week
(2008-02-26)

The Audacity of Anime
(2008-02-26)

The Hollywood Issue
(2008-02-19)

Furry Friends
(2008-02-19)

Utopian Tourette's
(2008-02-19)

Tip of the Week
(2008-02-19)

Tip of the Week
(2008-02-12)

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