Exile on Main Street

I've gathered a couple of pretty entertaining anecdotes up here at Sundance, but given the umbrella that this blog is under, they would constitute telling tales out of school. I really think I need to consult that New York Times Ethicist guy about this. So for now I'll let you ponder the above title,and talk about a few films.

Expired, a romance-of-misfits starring Samantha Morton and Jason Patric as traffic-control officers, was an hour and fifty-three minutes of "close, but no cigar."

Rory Kennedy's Ghosts of Abu Ghraib is a concise, cogent and even-handed indictment of the chain of command that made the abuses at that famous prison not just possible but inevitable. It features a really great Donald-Rumsfeld-as-Richard-Widmark moment. (I went to terrific a dinner for the film where I met the filmmaker, her mom Ethel, Bob Vila and a few others, all of whom were incredibly personable. A classic Sundance moment, really.)

David Gordon Green's Snow Angels applies the director's impressionistic style (which is, as ever, grounded in an acutely perceived reality) to a complex narrative of small-town love and loss and horror. Strong stuff that mops up the floor with the likes of Little Children.

Slums of Beverly Hills director Tamara Jenkins is finally back with a new feature and it's a stunner. The tragi-comedy The Savages showcases pitch-perfect performance by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Laura Linney and Phillip Bosco. It also renders superfluous the in-the-works film version of The Corrections.

More soon...

Comments

[WP]

The Corrections really has only itself to blame, for dragging its feet so absurdly. As per imdb, it's now scheduled for completion in 2009.

[Maya]

Glenn: I like your description of Donald Rumsfeld as Richard Widmark, regarding when he has forgotten relevant information before a senate committee, I asssume?

[GK]

Thanks! Actually, it's more to do with the barely-concealed Tommy-Udo like glee with which Rumsfeld rats out an Abu Ghraib whistle-blower who was promised anonymity, ostentatiously "thanking" him at a Senate hearing. A chilling moment, which you can see when the picture airs on HBO February 22.