March 27, 2009 - The Austin Chronicle

filmlistingsderomanticizing of the myth of the suave,Michael Corleone-style gangster icon, thefilm is overwhelmingly effective. But consideringthat what you’re seeing is, essentially,what’s actually happening in and aroundNaples right now, Gomorrah begins to feelmore like a weird, Jodorowsky-esque surrealistnightmare. It’s amoebic in its portrayalof the society-wrecking, viral natureof organized crime, and it has no room forsentimentality or even, in the end, hope.For sure, it’s a violent gangster movie; itdoesn’t glamorize the lifestyle one bit.(Saviano, who had a hand in the screenplay,has been under police protection sincehis book was published three years ago.)Shot in a flat, unobtrusive documentarystyle by cinematographer Marco Onorato,Gomorrah weaves together five separatestorylines, all of which, in turn, revolvearound a seedy, crumbling tenement onthe outskirts of Naples. There’s 13-yearold Totò (Abruzzese), an inherently goodkid sucked into the vortex of the Camorrawhen he does some low-level hoods asemiaccidental favor involving a misplacedhandgun. There are two Scarface-quotingteenage lamebrains, Marco (Macor) andCiro (Petrone), who scheme to steal acache of weaponry from some other localhoods, with predictably disastrous results.And then there are the weasely, haplessmoneyman Don Ciro (Imparato); his unctuous,casually evil boss, Franco (Servillo);and, finally, Pasquale (Cantalupo), a frazzledhaute-couture tailor who’s in a bind overhow to keep up with the protection moneyhe owes the Camorra. All the charactersare brilliantly delineated, the grimy plazasand parking garages equally, drably arresting.This film is gorgeous like a corpse,but there’s no rigor mortis yet; it moves tothe inexorable beat of 9mm slugs hittinghuman meat. Director Garrone’s unflinchingportrait of a very real hell on earth wonthe Grand Prix at the 2008 Cannes FilmFestival (plus a boatload of other awards),but this isn’t some pomo arthouse picturelooking to score points by subverting thegangster paradigm; it’s a killer film aboutkillers who idolize film but are unable orunwilling to parse the doom that always cropsup come Act III. “Gomorrah: See Naplesand die,” or, more accurately “Gormorrah:See Naples die.”– Marc Savlov★★★★ Dobie78 T H E A U S T I N C H R O N I C L E MARCH 27, 2009 a u s t i n c h r o n i c l e . c o mGomorrahD: Matteo Garrone; with Salvatore Abruzzese, Toni Servillo, Gianfelice Imparato, Maria Nazionale,Carmine Paternoster, Salvatore Cantalupo, Marco Macor, Ciro Petrone. (NR, 136 min., subtitled)Based on Roberto Saviano’s bestselling exposé about theItalian crime machine known as the Camorra, Gomorrah(pun intended) is riveting from its first frame to its last. As anewreviewsCROSSING OVER D: Wayne Kramer;Characters of various nationalities, allwith Harrison Ford, Ray Liotta, Ashley Judd, JimSturgess, Alice Eve, Cliff Curtis, Alice Braga, Summer Bishil,Justin Chon. (R, 113 min.)ensnared within the incongruous machineryof the American immigration system, arethe subjects of the interlocking stories ofCrossing Over. Framed as a multistrand narrativein the manner of Crash and Babel,Crossing Over also echoes those titles inthe way its pastiche of stories creates awell-intentioned social message. The objectiveof writer/director Kramer (The Cooler)is to show us what a mess the post-9/11U.S. immigration and naturalization processhas become. Somewhat patronizingly,Crossing Over shows us how our government’sunfeeling and easily inveigled systemsacrifices innocent human beings tothe letter of its laws while exempting othersthrough sheer dumb luck or willful chicanery.The individual stories seem tailoredtoward making points rather than creatingrealistic characters and situations. At thecenter of the drama is Ford’s Max Brogan,an Immigration and Customs Enforcementagent who’s having trouble sleeping at nightafter busting a Mexican seamstress in aCalifornia factory, whose son will be castto the streets after she is deported withouthim. But even before his insomnia kicksin, we discover he’s a softie when a fellowworker bellows: “Jesus Christ, Brogan!Everything is a goddamn humanitariancrisis with you!” Max’s partner, HamidBaraheri (Curtis), is of Iranian descent andhas issues with his soon-to-be-naturalizedtraditionalist father and his sexually defiantAmerican-born sister. In another storyline,Sturgess plays musician Gavin Kossef, whotries to get a green card by overinflating theimportance of his Jewish faith. His wouldbegirlfriend, Claire Shepard (Eve), is anAustralian actress who is willing to tradesex for a green card, which works to theadvantage of dishonest immigration adjudicatorCole Frankel (Liotta). Cole, in turn,is married to an immigration lawyer whoseheart bleeds for an African child trappedin a government detention facility. Also inthe same lockup is adolescent TaslimaJahangir (Bishil, last seen in Towelhead),a Bangladeshi who is arrested by antiterroristforces when she reads aloud aschool assignment which expresses herunderstanding of the frustrations thatguided the actions of the 9/11 bombers.The movie practically grinds to a halt, however,with the story of Yong Kim (Chon), aKorean teenager caught up by peer pressurein a convenience-store robbery. Alsoin the store is ICE agent Hamid, who, afterkilling the other two robbers, delivers anunbelievably lengthy lecture to Yong aboutAmerican values while the teen holds hiscocked gun to an employee’s head. The latticeworkof social meaning that makes upCrossing Over is ultimately a flimsy structurethat pays lip service to liberal valueswhile only occasionally inventing anything ofdramatic significance. – Marjorie Baumgarten★★ ArborEK: THE POWER OF ONENot reviewed at press time. This Hindiremake of the Telugu film Athadu is anD: Sangeet Sivan; with Bobby Deol, Shriya Saran, NanaPatekar, Chunky Pandey. (NR, 158 min., subtitled)action film about a professional assassinwho is accused of killing a politician.– Marjorie BaumgartenTinseltown SouthTHE HAUNTING INCONNECTICUT D: Peter Cornwell; withVirginia Madsen, Kyle Gallner, Elias Koteas, Martin Donovan,Amanda Crew, Ty Wood, Sophi Knight. (PG-13, 103 min.)The Haunting in Connecticut opens witha title stating that what follows is “basedon a true story,” which is all well andgood and practically a mandate for thistype of haunted-house film. But what gallsme – and what will have other genre fansgnashing their teeth down to the sublingualtissue – is that Cornwell’s film, stylisticallyat least, is really “based” on snipsand snatches of Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond,Mario Bava’s Shock, Alejandro Amenábar’sThe Others, and, of course, The AmityvilleHorror. The film is based much more onthese film forerunners than it is based onany supernatural events alleged to haveoccurred in the real world. Technically, thefilm is adapted, loosely, from splatterpunkauthor Ray Garton’s book In a Dark Place:The Story of a True Haunting, but TheHaunting in Connecticut has the patchworkfeel of a director at odds with himself.Cornwell, who shot the immensely popularstop-motion short “Ward 13,” doesn’t geta lot of help from his screenwriters, AdamSimon (Carnosaur, Brain Dead) and TimMetcalfe (Revenge of the Nerds, Kalifornia).Their stilted dialogue and endless streamof expository yakking seem better suitedto one of the post-dubbed Euro-shockersmentioned above. As for the story, true ornot, Madsen and Donovan are ill-cast asSara and Peter Campbell, a fiercely boringupper-middle-class couple who neverthelessmake the potentially exciting decisionto move their family into a house thatformerly served as both a mortuary andnexus of eternal evil. (They don’t know thatgoing in, but still.) The move is predicatedon situating the family closer to a hospitalwhere son Matt (Gallner) is being treatedwith chemotherapy and experimental drugsfor an unspecified, rapidly metastasizingcancer. Living as he is in the borderlandbetween life and death, Matt is able to seevisions of the house’s tortured past, thoughit’s not long before the entire Campbell clanis surrounded by haints and horrors. Whoyou gonna call? Elias Koteas! (Duh.) Theveteran character actor (The Thin Red Line,Zodiac) appears here as a priest who, likethe increasingly horrified Matt, is also sufferingfrom a dearth of decent dialogue anda surplus of cancer. Koteas’ overearnestperformance almost makes The Hauntingin Connecticut worth a look, but ultimatelyeven the star of Cronenberg’s Crash can’tsalvage what is essentially a substandardrip-off of The Amityville Horror. – Marc Savlov★■Barton Creek Square, CM Cedar Park, HillCountry Galleria, CM Round Rock, SouthparkMeadows, Highland, Gateway, Lakeline,Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South, Westgate