French film critic Luc Moullet made his feature directing debut with this 1966 black-and-white comedy, and like his other big commercial success, The Comedy of Work (showing next week), it’s sweet and tender and focuses on conditions and bureaucracies peculiar to his native land. Two teenage girls with the same name, clothes, and bags meet by chance, become roommates in Paris, and try to survive their first year at the Sorbonne; despite their superficial similarities, one is right-wing and the other communist. The small-scale gags and episodic narrative easily accomodate guest-star appearances by Claude Chabrol, Michel Delahaye, Samuel Fuller, Eric Rohmer, Andre Techine, and Moullet, as well as the director’s own parents. In French with subtitles. 75 min. (JR)
Adapted from Shawn Wong’s 1995 novel American Knees, this intriguing, well-acted feature by writer-director Eric Byler (Charlotte Sometimes) has the merit of not fully explaining its multilayered characters and asking viewers to take the initiative in figuring them out. A middle-aged Chinese-American professor (Chris Tashima) in southern California, still adjusting to his recent separation from a much younger woman (Allison Sie), gets involved with another teacher (Joan Chen), a traumatized Vietnamese refugee, and no one behaves according to expectations. 107 min. (JR)
The 1991 original was silly and campy, but director Paul Verhoeven and screenwriter Joe Eszterhas had a stylishly hokey way of recycling Hitchcock tropes and an appreciation for Sharon Stone as superwoman/dominatrix that made her a star. She’s still magnificent as novelist Catherine Tramell, who has moved to London and finds herself a shrink (David Morrissey) to play Emil Jannings to her Dietrich. But like many sequels this is actually a remake, and it suffers from the law of diminishing returns. Screenwriters Leora Barish and Henry Bean are hip enough to reference cultural theorists Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Zizek, though director Michael Caton-Jones, no stranger to kinkiness in Scandal, seems bemused by the more formulaic elements. With David Thewlis and Charlotte Rampling. R, 114 min. (JR)
A meteor lands in the sticks, and a slimy tentacled creature enters a local’s body (Michael Rooker), turning him into a squishy monster with a hunger for meat that drives him to devour most of the people and animals around him. Gross-out horror comedy is my least favorite genre, but this movie’s so skillful I have to take my hat off to it. Writer-director James Gunn, who worked on the script of the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead, relies too much on George A. Romero’s imagery without trying for any of his or Joe Dante’s satire. But he’s so adept at laughs, thrills, and repulsive effects that even the product placements are inspired, and he gets the most out of Nathan Fillion, Elizabeth Banks, and Gregg Henry. R, 95 min. (JR)
John Barrymore plays a Jewish lawyer with an unfaithful wife and a faithful mistress in Elmer Rice’s 1933 adaptation of his own play. It’s one of Barrymore’s best performances, and William Wyler’s direction of this brisk comedy-drama is exemplary. With Bebe Daniels, Doris Kenyon, and Melvyn Douglas. 82 min. (JR)
