Ray Pride

After a number of years in a number of wildernesses, Tennessee wild-boy Harmony Korine is 35 and back with his clear-eyed third directorial venture, "Mister Lonely." While Korine's first two features, "Gummo" and "Julien Donkey-Boy," trafficked in transgression as well as occasional images of startling beauty and surprising absurdity, "Mister Lonely" seeks a statelier plane, with widescreen framings and lingering takes that sup at landscape and faces. Diego Luna plays Paris' loneliest Michael Jackson impersonator; one day he meets a Marilyn Monroe (Samantha Morton) who invites him to a commune in the Scottish highlands where she lives with her husband, Charlie Chaplin (Denis Lavant), the Three Stooges, Sammy Davis, Jr., The Queen (Anita Pallenberg), a Tourettic Abe Lincoln (Richard Strange) and Little Red Riding Hood (Korine's wife, Rachel Simon). Most striking may be James Fox's "dirty Pope," whose features I could watch for days. A parallel narrative, linked only thematically, finds a priest in Central America teaching nuns how to fly, jumping from his supply plane. Several of the images from this strand, one involving a bicycle and another at film's end, are simply thrilling, and less studied than the book-ended extreme-slow-motion images of Luna on a tiny stunt motorcycle. Many will take "Mister Lonely" as another Korine ode to post-adolescent male self-pity, but he finds tenderness, beauty and painted eggs that sing along the way. Lost auteur Leos Carax is on hand as Luna's therapist; designer and film philanthropist Agnes b. produced. Marcel Zyskind's cinematography is swell. Music by Jason Spaceman and the Sun City Girls. 112m. Anamorphic 2.40 widescreen.

"Mister Lonely" opens Friday at the Music Box. Korine is scheduled to appear Friday and 7pm and 9:45pm and Saturday at the 2pm show..

(2008-05-27)

Also by Ray Pride

Dog Days
Johnny Ratones is humping my leg with quiet urgency as I simmer on the porch swing waiting for Sally to come from the kitchen with the smokes she'd stowed just above the freezer with the taped-down tearsheet of Johnny's Cash's extended digit. Even in the worst neighborhoods, sitting on the back porch on summer can be the most romantic escape. I miss having my own back porch, I think, as lightning lights, thunder cracks. The filthy black Lab hopes to bite into my thigh as I shake off his embracing forelegs.
(2008-05-20)

Tip of the Week
The astonishing, coruscating contours of Eustache's inquiry into the relations of men and women in post-1968 Paris are indelible and demand to be seen on the large screen
(2008-05-20)

Image That
There are good things and indifferent things throughout this enterprise by the two richest directors who ever lived—are they really worth several billion dollars each?—but most of the best (and worst) moments work from surprise, which reviews have already splashed across the media consciousness. If you want to be surprised, be warned that this piece has spoilers
(2008-05-20)

Chitty-chitty Slam-bang
In their first directorial effort since ending "The Matrix" trilogy—"V for Vendetta" was shepherded by their longtime second James McTeigue—the Chicago-born Wachowski brothers dig deep into the traditions and stylistics of anime and their own cultural toy box to create a bold yet somehow hermetic movie with fantastically intricate design and technique that somehow seems not to fall into any known demographic
(2008-05-13)

Tip of the Week
(2008-05-13)

Heavy Meta
(2008-05-06)

Tip of the Week
(2008-05-06)

How Do Photographs Mean?
(2008-04-29)

Tip of the Week
(2008-04-29)

Something Happened
(2008-04-22)

Tip of the Week
(2008-04-22)

Mad Hot Sickroom
(2008-04-15)

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