Deeply personal, fiercely political, whimsical and unpredictable in style, and direct in voice, writer-director Slava Tsukerman’s Perestroika resonates across personal, national, global, and even cosmic levels, all at once. After 17 years of self-imposed exile in America, renowned Jewish astrophysicist Sasha Greenburg returns to his hometown, Moscow, in 1992, the year that Perestroika (“restructuring”) is sending shock waves through the social, cultural, and political life of Russia. Perestroika has meant greater political freedom, but it’s a freedom without the infrastructure of purpose such that millions are flailing for opportunity. The young yearn for a vitality lacking in their cultural life, the elderly must live on measly pensions, the black market thrives, and vodka-rationing is causing widespread discontent in a nation rife with alcoholics.
Read it here…
Archive for March, 2009
Perestroika
March 20, 2009Sunshine Cleaning
March 20, 2009Director Catherine Jeffs lucked out when she scored Amy Adams and Emily Blunt to co-star in her mildly pleasing dramedy Sunshine Cleaning. As sisters struggling to overcome their mother’s suicide, the actors’ appeal and chemistry provide Jeffs’s film its essential spark. Once the high school popularity queen, Rose (Adams) slogs along as a cleaning lady, and carries on an affair with her now-married high school boyfriend (Steve Zahn), meanwhile losing her grip on her sweet but emotionally neglected son, Oscar (Jason Spevack). Her younger sister, Norah (Blunt), is no better off: Directionless, she can’t hold down a job, and lives at home with their father, Joe (Alan Arkin). The ghost of their dead mother haunts Rose and Norah, weighing them down with guilt, anger, and wreaking havoc on their self-esteems.
Read it here…
Tokyo!
March 9, 2009Tokyo! is a curious conundrum. The movie is a triptych of short films about the titular metropolis made by Michel Gondry, Leos Carax, and Joon-ho Bong, three non-Japanese filmmakers. Each tries to offer up personalized impressions of the Japanese capital, and that alone would suggest a worthwhile cinematic experience. But the films themselves lack the intimacy with Tokyo’s cultural nuances that we crave from a piece like this, trafficking instead in stereotypes and platitudes.
Read it here…
