Artist: Cold War Kids. Album: Robbers & Cowards.
Artist: Psapp. Album: The Only Thing I Ever Wanted.
Artist: Brendan Benson. Album: What I'm Looking For.
Artist: India.Arie. Album: Testimony: Vol. 1 Life & Relationship.
The audience I saw this purported political thriller with was in nonstop stitches once the extent of the movie's inept narrative gimmick became fully apparent. (Without giving too much away, let's just say it borrows liberally from the conceits of both Groundhog Day and Dave. It's worth pointing out that those films were intentionally and successfully comedic; Vantage Point falls into a different, campier category.) In the hands of a more skilled technician—say Ridley Scott, Paul Greengrass, Phillip Noyce; Brian De Palma on a good day—this series of preposterous shenanigans and ill-used A-list acting talent just might have been credibly executed despite its facile and ultimately nonsensical interpretation of geopolitics; but in television director Pete Travis' hands it's literally the celluloidal equivalent of the multi-car pileup that serves as a hastily knotted conclusion to the story's rat's nest of loose ends. Grade: D+
Artist: Client. Album: Heartland.
Artist: Feist. Album: The Reminder.
I didn't want to like this Frank Capra fable for the YouTube set; this populist cannonade across the ramparts of the filmmaking establishment; this hipster subversion of intellectual property mores and celebration of every denomination of mass culture; this preciously analog take on what is largely a digital phenomenon; but like the imperative at the very center of its title—BE KIND—it eventually won me over with its glad heart and irresistible fondness for the very medium it lovingly deconstructs. At one point a character even suggests that we, as an audience, become "stockholders" in our own happiness through the act of participating in, and creating, the art that we adore. And any movie that evokes The Purple Rose of Cairo by giving us the gift of Mia Farrow's rapt expression as she watches a film within a film already has too many odds in its favor for me to maintain much cynicism in its presence. As for its technical merits, Gondry is up to his usual perception-warping tricks, to comic and moving effect. If the schmaltz gets thick at all, it's only near the very end, by which time the preceding hundred minutes have made a lasting impression. Grade: B+
Imagine if Renny Harlin had directed Time Bandits. Basically a ninety-minute continuity error. Grade: C-
Artist: The Airborne Toxic Event. Album: Does This Mean You're Moving On?
Artist: Elliot Smith. Album: Either/Or.
Artist: The Chemical Brothers. Album: Surrender.
Artist: Ohm. Album: Star Fall.
Deeply moving story, intriguingly shot by Janusz Kaminski. Given the Julian Schnabel imprimatur, I was expecting un peu plus surrealism and un peu moins literal emotional telegraphy, but accomplished filmmaking nevertheless. Max von Sydow in particular delivers a heartbreaking turn in a minor supporting role. Grade: B+