My Sister's Keeper

Three-Hankie Weepie
Nick Cassavetes Turns on the Waterworks
By Cole Smithey

Nick Cassavetes' three-hankie weepy lurches during moments of music-video sequences, and gratuitous voice-over narration from members of the Fitzgerald family as they struggle with their terminally ill daughter Kate (well played by Sofia Vassilieva). Parents Sara (Cameron Diaz in the best performance of her career to date) and Brian (played by the ever-dependable Jason Patric) made an ethically challenging decision when they chose to conceive a second daughter, Anna (Abigail Breslin), as a genetically engineered resource to physically help keep leukemia-stricken Kate alive. At eleven, Anna decides that she wants to be legally exonerated from her bodily responsibilities to Kate, and seeks medical emancipation with the aid of Campbell Alexander (Alec Baldwin), a successful ambulance-chasing attorney. A court battle, overseen by an especially perceptive Judge De Salvo (Joan Cusack), looms while Kate pursues romance with a cancer-suffering patient named Taylor (Thomas Dekker). The crux of the drama comes down to Sara's ability as a mother to see beyond her involuntary urge to fight like a martyr for the life of a daughter whose pain and suffering must eventually come to an end. In spite of some of its less than elegant editorial decisions, "My Sister's Keeper" is full of terrific performances all around. Joan Cusack is phenomenal as a judge recovering from the loss of her own daughter, and Abigail Breslin confirms her status as one of the most gifted young actors in the business.  

Co-written by Jeremy Leven and Cassavetes, the film is based on the Jodi Picoult's 2004 novel, and blunders whenever the filmmaker puts himself between the material and his actors. The movie opens with Anna's narration, showing off her mature-for-her-age comprehension of how "most babies are accidents" because "only people who have trouble making babies actually plan for them." The language is a little to cutesy for the material--it feels like it came from a romantic comedy--and tilts the drama too far toward Anna as a would-be protagonist, while that barley obscured obligation falls much more squarely on the shoulders of Kate, who finds a number of unusual ways to mediate the family crisis that is her life and consequently trickier aspects of the narrative.

Anna is expected to soon donate one of her kidney's to Kate when she enters Campbell Alexander's office to request his legal defense in getting her off the hook for the surgery. After years of donating blood and bone marrow, with the effect of limiting the activities that she can or will ever be able to participate in, Anna's medical predicament is an especially sensitive one to Campbell, whose own physical defects cause him no end of public humiliations, as we discover later on.

Anna's legal action causes a blow out rift with her mother, who runs both-guns-blazing into Campbell's office to confront the clear-eyed attorney in a well crafted dramatic scene that sets the stage for the courtroom sub-plot that distracts from Kate's daily struggles with chemotherapy as a toxic balm to her cancer ravaged body. 

"My Sister's Keeper" manages to encompass the complexities of a disjointed family acting with best intentions in a medical calamity that necessarily involves a battery of outside influences. If only Cassavetes could have trusted the film enough to leave out the distancing montage music sequences and beside-the-point narration, he could have approached a perfect drama. Nonetheless, with the aid of a great cast,  Cassavetes has made a movie that will relieve six months worth of tears for audiences willing to take its cathartic journey.  

(New Line/Warner Bros) PG-13. 106 mins. (B+) (Four Stars)

The Soloist

Mispronounced Orchestration
Disturbed Musical Prodigy Remains Unapproachable
By Cole Smithey

Robert Downey Jr. plays a divorced newspaper journalist who discovers homeless musical prodigy Nathaniel Ayers (well played by Jamie Foxx) and takes responsibility for helping the mentally disturbed musician while writing a series of politically-charged stories about him. Based on the book by Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez, newbie screenwriter Susannah Grant fails to create an engaging arc for her adaptation and punctuates the drama with distracting touches of inappropriate genre clichés. Note to screenwriters; spilling urine, raccoon or otherwise, on your protagonist doesn't engender character development or empathy. As Lopez struggles with getting the irascibly schizophrenic Mr. Ayers into housing where he can play his freshly gifted cello, the need for maintained psychiatric care becomes more obvious. Heartfelt performances from Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx can't counteract a lack of narrative focus that prevents the film from taking hold, although they are entrancing in and of themselves.

British director Joe Wright ("Atonement") fails to make much of his big Hollywood break with an unimaginative approach to an unready script in need of serious doctoring. To his credit, Wright evokes a cosmopolitan Los Angeles where thousands of troubled homeless people unite under the slithering arteries of freeways and side streets that figure prominently into the lives of Steve Lopez and Nathaniel Ayers. What the filmmaker doesn't capture is something that the television news show "60 Minutes" summed up in its segment about Lopez and Ayers, and that's the real-life connection that Nathaniel Ayers has made with the staff and students at the Los Angeles Symphony in spite of his obvious mental fragility. Instead, Wright keeps Ayers' relationship to music as a cerebral closet where the character's fantasies about Beethoven enable a respite from other more distressed spaces of his consciousness.

Part of the film's troubles come from an unattended need for likable characters. The mere fact that Steve Lopez suffers a nasty bicycle accident in the film's opening scene does little to convince us that he's particularly deserving of our empathy. That he soon thereafter picks up on Nathaniel Ayers as a potential story lead to exploit also keeps the audience at an editorial distance that delays the first act's obligation to immerse us in the motivations of the story. Altruism is one of the hardest themes for any dramatist to voice because, unless it's happening under an atmosphere of an emergency, it raises questions that the author had better be prepared to provide for.

As a journalist Steve Lopez is a dedicated servant of his community, however sprawling and cruel LA's urban landscape may be. That Lopez works for his bi-polar ex-wife Mary (Catherine Keener)--she's his editor at the paper--who might just as easily go all gooey-eyed for him in a bar or publicly humiliate him with a vengeance at an awards dinner, tweaks the drama without sufficiently addressing how these people relate. Since she's a bad animal, the implication is that Mr. Lopez is drawn to impossibly disturbed people. Every character  except Lopez has unpredictable warning flags that pop up throughout the story and keep the audience off balance in an unproductive way. When Lopez brings a cello coach to work with Nathanial in preparation for a recital, the teacher brings some strange religious baggage that hits the movie with an odd smudge that sticks like pigeon droppings on the narrative. It's these kind of haphazard subplot gestures that make the movie feel like a poorly picked scab.
The wound might be intriguing to look at for a while, but by the end you feel a little sick.
(Paramount) PG-13. 105 mins. (C) (Two Stars)

Magnolia

Unity of Opposites
P.T. Anderson Shuffles The Cards of Estranged Kindred Synthesis
By Cole Smithey
 
Writer/director P.T. Anderson proves not only that he is no one-hit wonder ("Boogie Nights") with his latest screen effort, but that he is a master of pithy dialogue and dynamic juxtaposition of character. In his third feature, the director brilliantly sets apart ten characters who support and oppose each other in revealing set-pieces, confirming the film's loosely optimistic leitmotif that "strange things happen all the time."

Descendants against parents, adults against kids, bosses oppose employees, counter help battles customers, cancer destroys life, fame fights anonymity — these are just a few of the conflicts that Anderson frames to push his characters over the brink of socialized behavior. Julianne Moore and Melinda Dillon ("Close Encounters of the Third Kind") are long suffering wives to their despicable cancer-dying husbands Earl Partridge (Jason Robards) and quiz show host Jimmy Gator (Philip Baker Hall). Cocaine addict Claudia (Melora Walters) and washed-up whiz kid Donnie (William H. Macy) are the damaged-goods offspring of cruel parents, while home nurse Phil Pharma (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and policeman Jim (John C. Reilly) are pillars of compassion. Little Stanley (Jeremy Blackman) is an optimist representing hope for the future in his willingness to speak out.

"Magnolia" is like Tarantino’s "Pulp Fiction" in that it polarizes audiences. For every audience member who walks out on "Magnolia" in disgust because he feels no compassion for its characters, there will be ten more in the audience who will spill loving praise on the level of intimacy Anderson achieves from his virtuoso cast. I suspect that the phenomenon is due primarily to "Magnolia’s" centerpiece sub-plot involving Tom Cruise as a misogynist crusader named Frank T.J. Mackey. Frank gives brutally male seminars entitled “Seduce and Destroy” that teach the underachieving male participants the power of "respecting the cock and taming the cunt." Frank has effectively funneled his sense of confused familial loss and abandonment into a lucrative empire by espousing a system of conquering women from their most tender regions. Cruise is so compelling in his over-the-top motivational speeches that you can’t help feeling simultaneously repulsed and attracted. However, it’s when Frank is confronted by a prying black female television interviewer that his shields of defense mechanisms are exposed layer by crumbling layer.

P.T. Anderson’s acumen with juggling multiple characters is comparable to director Robert Altman’s expert ability to unify a broad scope of personality types. Like Altman, Anderson suffers from an unwillingness to edit his cinematic tapestries tightly, rather choosing to leave narrative remnants strewn about for added texture. For example, there is an unexplained sub-plot involving a murder and a little boy who performs an offensive self-penned rap song supposedly identifying the killer for police officer Jim. Gratuitous scenes like this one serve to water down the film's overall emotional impact

With one good final edit "Magnolia" could have been a perfect movie. All of the actors give exceptionally genuine performances. But part of the glory of the film’s strength resides in its shortcomings. There is an excess of information that gestures toward fathomable depths of characters acting from alternately secure to tragically unstable centers of resolve. In the difficult challenge that Anderson has set up for himself as a social satirist lies a mirror of desire and fulfillment that his characters strive for in ways that are every bit as flawed and suggestible as human nature. Just as something so reliably surprising as the weather can modify people’s behavior, "Magnolia" encompasses an inter-connective human bond that accepts reality’s blind spots. Purity of intention, as the story suggests, is a happy accident that can hit everyone.
Rated R. 188 mins. (A-) (Four Stars)

Gomorrah

Mafia Rules
Neapolitan Crime Syndicate Comes Up for Inspection
By Cole Smithey

Roberto Saviano’s tell-all mafia expose provides rich narrative soil for director Matteo Garrone ("The Embalmer" - 2002) to weave together five stories of mob-related corruption sucking dry the Italian industrial province of Naples and its squalid suburbs and infecting the entire financial landscape of the European economy. A master tailor--enslaved to his occupation since childhood--two would-be teenaged gangsters, a pair of illicit toxic-waste disposal contractors, and a 13-year-old mafia recruit living in a drug-infested housing project, make up the unforgettable characters in this devastating picture of social collapse. The clan's corrupt system, or "Camorra," that pulls the social strings of the region makes the Sicilian Cosa Nostra look like nice guys by comparison. You may never want to visit southern Italy after seeing this film.

It is said that if you throw a rock from a Naples hotel room, a gang war could ignite. Since writing "Gomorrah" Roberto Saviano has had to live under police protection in secret military barracks. The Camorra has placed a permanent death sentence on his head for exposing their multinational activities that include drug-dealing on a massive level, laundering money through diamonds, clothing stores, and tourism businesses all over Europe. It is estimated that the Camorra's annual profits exceed $233 billion. The agile crime syndicate's improper disposal of toxic waste in the Campania region has resulted in a spike of cancer-related illnesses in the area.

The personalized effect that director Matteo Garrone achieves in collapsing the extent of the Camorra's far-reaching crimes into a fictional narrative form derives from the collaborative effort of six screenwriters, of which he himself is one.

Two charismatic but woefully foolish boys, Marco (Marco Macor) and Ciro (Ciro Petrone) hang out in a disused building acting out scenes from Brian De Palma's "Scarface," and dreaming of creating their own two-man crime syndicate. The duo's discovery of a Camorra arms stash gives way to one of the film's most indelible sequences in which the boys indulge in some impromptu assault rifle target practice, dressed only in tennis shoes and underwear, along the squalid muddy shore of a river that runs through town. They will not be forgiven for their immaturity and ignorance of the crime world that they flirt with, and their story provides a crucial segment to the film's soup-to-nuts encapsulation of the way the Naples society is inducted through the Camorra's system of corruption from an early age.

The inner-workings of one way the mafia enslaves its workers comes across in the storyline of the haute couture tailor Pasquale (Salvatore Cantalupo) whose Camorra-supported clothing business produces dresses that will be worn on red-carpet events in Cannes and at the Oscars by the likes of Angelina Jolie. Pasquale has worked under the Camorra from dawn to dusk since his youth, and yet he has little to show for his contributions. So it is that Pasquale decides to risk his life to sell his skills to a competing Asian manufacturer for which he makes cloaked nocturnal excursions to instruct its staff of seamstresses. Pasquale's mastery of his craft is persuasively exhibited in Salvatore Cantalupo's expressive performance in keeping with the solid work of the film's ensemble.

"Gomorrah" is a virtuosic example of modern neo-realistic filmmaking that briefly plays into expectations of the mafia crime genre before flipping the vernacular on its head through timing, framing, and performances. Matteo Garrone's all-encompassing vision allows the film to be read on manifold levels that reach beyond the psyche of a singular generation. It is a reluctantly compelling film that fulfills a cinematic gap in the way it approaches its subject and fulfills the author's passion for what amounts to a martyr's effort at rescuing his homeland and incidentally a much broader spectrum of political and economic influence.
Rated R. 137 mins. (IFC Films) (A) (Five Stars)

Revolutionary Road

Indoor Fireworks

DiCaprio and Winslet Look Back In Anger

By Cole Smithey

Richard Yates' 1961 novel about a young couple staring into the abyss of the American Dream myth provides director Sam Mendes with plenty of emotional ammunition to fuel a gorgeous but devastating drama. Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet are perfectly cast as Frank and April Wheeler, a married couple with two kids and a dream of abandoning their cookie-cutter suburban lifestyle for a new start in Paris. Everyday, 30-year-old Frank commutes into Manhattan from their ideal split-level home in Connecticutwhile April keeps house. Both are smart and articulate enough to see the dead-end before them but April has a sharper sense of the immediacy of their plight. Michael Shannon pulls off a high-wire supporting actor performance as John Givings, a mentally indigent visitor who all too accurately assesses the couple's problems during his brief weekend visits to their home. This is an intense social drama that barley lets the audience catch their breath. DiCaprio and Winslet give stunning performances that resonate long after the movie is over. There will be tears.

The 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy torpedoed America’s starry-eyed fantasy of suburban homogeneity that had been fueled in part by Senator Joe McCarthy’s 10-year run of fear-mongering that helped fuel the Cold War and led to the House on Un-American Activities Committee witch hunt.

Set in 1955, Frank has abandoned the bohemian lifestyle that introduced him to April, a fresh-faced intellectual with a romantic soft spot. An exquisite flashback party scene shows Frank’s effortless charm and knack for seduction that wins over the woman who will later offer him a last chance at escape from a trap he can barely fathom.

These days Frank whiles away his life at a soul-numbing desk job for a machine-producing company that doesn’t scratch the surface of his potential so much as it more than pays the bills. On his 30th birthday Frank indulges in an afternoon tryst with a full-figured girl (Zoe Kazan) from his secretary pool. DiCaprio dynamically demonstrates Frank’s impatience leading up to the adulterous encounter and his consequent dissatisfaction with the girl. It’s an end run experiment that goes ever-so-slightly wrong. When Frank later admits the indiscretion to April, she pointedly asks him why he told her. As he grapples for an answer, we witness Frank’s utter confusion and desperation that infects her with an emotional virus that moves like quicksilver through her physiology. The emotionally loaded scene is one of many such cataclysmic intimate events that explode with a fury and passion that is mesmerizing for its range of pent-up disappointment.

“Revolutionary Road” is a rear mirror parable of cultural dissatisfaction that questions “the good life” and America’s reliance on social mores to define our identity. April and Frank see the problem before them and they are able agree on a solution. The couple makes public their plan to move to Paris where April will support the family while Frank follows his artistic calling—whatever unpredictable form that may take. The disclosure meets with uniform contempt from neighbors and co-workers whose underestimated influence will act with subversive accuracy.

We are swept up in the couple’s idealism that rejects America’s formulaic system in favor of foreign liberation. A question about the true nature of freedom nags and bites at their relationship in way that enables the audience to participate in the thought process as it develops. Justin Haythe’s (“The Clearing”) expressive adaptation of Richard Yates’ novel endows the material with an economy that allows space for the actors to expand on their characters’ constricting consciousness.

British-born director Sam Mendes has only made three films since “American Beauty” (1999). “Road to Perdition” (2002) and “Jarhead” (2005) offer transparent crucibles of American historical attitudes toward violence. The antagonism in “Revolutionary Road” stems directly from a relationship made unsustainable by objectively attractive social conditions. The suburban protectionism and perfection that Frank and April engage in is enchanting on the surface but disfigures their personalities to an unrecognizable state of sterility. Frank’s imagination is the first to collapse and drags April down with it as he accuses her of the defects he feels in himself. The American Dream was a MacGuffin to enable a corporate restructuring of the world’s landscape beyond the paltry grasp of its citizens. The freedom that Frank and April imagined in 1955 is under far more pressure today than it was then, but conformity is still the last word.

Rated R. 119 mins. (A) (Five Stars)

Hector Babenco’s Carandiru

By Cole Smithey

When I asked director Hector Babenco what he thought of the potential influence of his latest film "Carandiru” to effect social reform, he responded that he didn't believe books, paintings, or films had any ability to bring about social change. He went on to explain that reality is so sunken into societies that change can only come over a long period of time through the efforts of many people. It wasn't an answer I expected from the self-taught director of such socially vital films as "Pixote" and "At Play In The Fields of The Lord," but his self-possessed candor made me rethink why I had asked the question in the first place.

Born of Russian and Polish Jews in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Hector Babenco emigrated to Brazil in 1971 after seven years of traveling around Africa, Europe and North America. He set about learning the craft of filmmaking by making short films, documentaries, and commercials under Brazil’s oppressive military regime while working on his first film “King of the Night,” and his second feature “Lucio Flavio” (about a criminal who promised to reveal the truth about police led death squads). “Lucio Flavio” (1978) became so controversial when it was released that Babenco received many death threats even as the movie became the fourth highest grossing film in Brazil’s history.

It was Babenco’s next film “Pixote” (1981), about Brazil’s desperate plight of its millions of homeless children, that won the director wide international acclaim. Using a group of child non-actors playing themselves, Babenco created a deeply affecting movie that charted new territory in real-life emotional drama, of which Fernando Meirelles’ “City of God” is an heir. The widespread success of “Pixote” opened doors to Hollywood that enabled Babenco to make “Kiss Of The Spider Woman” (1985), “Ironweed,” (1987) and “At Play In The Fields Of The Lord” (1991).

But shortly after “Spider Woman,” the director was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer and was forced to direct from a wheelchair by the time he made “Fields Of The Lord.” Babenco’s oncologist was Drauzio Varella, a dedicated doctor who also happened to be a voluntary AIDS prevention worker at Sao Paulo’s notorious Carandiru prison facility. Doctor Varella prescribed a life saving bone-marrow transplant for Babenco, and the two men frequently talked about the many stories of the prisoners at Carandiru before Varella’s book “Estacao Carandiru” became a literary phenomenon in Brazil selling over 400,000 copies. Although Babenco initially disregarded making the book into a movie because he felt he had already covered similar ground in previous films, he began to associate with the prisoners’ desire to survive to that of his own struggle with cancer.

The result is a moving series of vignettes about the lives of prisoners in the infamous Sao Paulo penitentiary where a brutal police massacre left 111 people dead in 1992. Filmed on location in the actual prison before it was demolished, Babenco’s “Carandiru” is a soulful movie that eschews glamour and formula to present a thoughtful meditation on an endemic prison reality that reaches far beyond the confines of the richest city in South America. It is not to be missed.   

Rated R. 145 mins. (A-) (Four Stars)

Gardens of the Night

Bitter Fruit
Damien Harris Examines Stolen Innocence
By Cole Smithey

Writer/director Damian Harris ("Mercy") spent ten years researching this delicately handled study of two children's life-trajectory through prostitution after being kidnapped by a couple of molesters/pimps (Tom Arnold and Kevin Zegers). Leslie Whitehead (Ryan Simkins) is an adorable little 8-year-old girl fascinated by the way her girlfriends put on lipstick in their school's bathroom. The scene represents a fleeting glimpse of innocence ruthlessly stolen by Alex (Arnold) when he returns to kidnap her after giving Leslie a ride to school in the town of Wilmington, Pennsylvania. Thrown in with a similarly aged black boy named Donnie (Jermaine Scooter Smith), Leslie's indoctrination into pornography and prostitution shifts to the film's second half wherein she and Donnie live out their troubled lives as eloigned young adults on the streets of San Diego. Gillian Jacobs ("Choke") and Evan Ross convincingly play Leslie and Donnie in their older incarnations.

With a stuffed-up nose and quick talk Tom Arnold's Alex calls for a non-existent lost dog in Leslie's sleepy neighborhood; its manicured lawns and tweeting birds abetting his good-natured masquerade. Alex goes into great detail about his friendship with Leslie's father, with whom he claims to be a co-worker, and we can see the young girl's suspicious judgment of the man whose car she rides in, slip into tenuous trust. When Alex arrives to pick her up from school with a lie about the whereabouts of her parents, Leslie is unprepared to argue. She becomes a mute witness to her own demise as she befriends her less educated fellow captive Donnie, and Alex pretends to talk to her father on the phone. It's in these truly frightening scenes of implicit captivity that we discover a world of outrageous deception and cruelty that push the drama to the edge of horror. Alex uses verbal imagery about a caterpillar becoming a butterfly to mitigate the physical and psychological pain that Leslie soon endures, and the "Silence of the Lambs" simile is not lost on the film's theme.

Society's quiet complicity to child prostitution is crystallized in a chilling scene where Leslie is transported by a sub-contracted pimp (Jeremy Sisto) to the well-appointed home of a judge (Raymond Gideon). The man's elegantly dressed wife takes Leslie upstairs to a tranquil bedroom where three other girls dressed in ballet tutus await an indefinite sexual scenario, presumably involving the seemingly respectable couple. The effect is at once exasperating and confusing for its oblique sheen of civility. A competitive stare between Leslie and the other girls adds a depth of unwelcome social interaction that Leslie silently endures.

As a filmmaker Damien Harris defers to the power of his actors' facial expressions to transmit the volumes of subtext necessary to convey human indignations better left to the imagination. Ryan Simkins' open face provides an ideal canvas for the filmmaker to transpose his distilled complex narrative, and Gillian Jacobs' performance approaches an instinct for survival rarely shown in such a raw state. "Gardens of the Night" is a powerful and provoking film about a disturbing and all too real subject. There's a bitterness here that will not go away. 

(City Lights Pictures) Rated R. 108 mins. (B+)

Towelhead

Cherry Bomb
Racist Sexploitation Movie is Unspeakable
By Cole Smithey

As its openly racist title implies "Towelhead" is an exploitation movie that wears its shock value on its guilty sleeve. It is the most disgusting, ethically reprehensible, and irresponsible film to come out of the 21st century's first decade. Screenwriter/first-time feature director Alan Ball (screenwriter on "American Beauty") paints himself a darker hue than even pedophile-styled filmmaker Larry Clark ("Bully") in making a film, based on Alicia Erian's novel, that unrelentingly returns to its primary narrative subject of a 13-year-old girl's genitalia and its every function. Jasira (Summer Bishil) is sent by her mother Gail (Maria Bello) to live with her effeminate Lebanese father Rifat Maroun (Peter Macdissi) in a Houston suburb after Gail discovers that her live-in boyfriend shaved Jasira's pubic hair because she was teased about it at school. Upon arrival at her physically abusive father's house Jasira gets her first period and soon develops a habit of public masturbation by rhythmically squeezing her legs together. Turned on by her neighbor Mr. Vuoso's (Aaron Eckhart) nudie magazines that she masturbates to when she baby-sits his 10-year-old son, Jasira describes to the married man how doing so gives her "orgasms." Mr. Vuoso takes advantage of the situation to manually steal the girl's virginity before she begins an active sexual relationship with a black boy at school after he verbally dominates her by calling her a "sand nig***" and a "camel jockey." This is a movie that has the potential to scar viewers both young and old, and should be avoided at all cost. As Roger Ebert said of the film "Dirty Love," this movie "wasn’t written and directed; it was committed."

In an interview with Elvis Mitchell, Quentin Tarantino made an interesting point about a director’s responsibility for knowing the backstory of his film’s universe. He gave an example from "Kill Bill" about the Hatori Hanso samurai sword as being a bloodthirsty blade compelled to always draw blood whenever it is unsheathed, even if it means that its user must prick his own finger with its razor-sharp tip. It’s the kind of distinction that helps explain how Tarantino is a great filmmaker, and Alan Ball is a hack because Ball evinces no depth of knowledge to assure his audience of his intention.

Ball has been quoted as promising its Arab-American author Alicia Erian that he would make sure his film version of her novel stayed "funny." The only moment of numb sarcastic humor comes late in the story when Rifat’s crunchy-Granola neighbor Gil (Matt Letscher) unexpectedly speaks Arabic to the negligent father Rifat as a means of intimidation. It’s a damning instant that shows the filmmaker out of touch with the film’s social universe. The would-be sympathetic neighbor breaks character by disclosing a language ability that he was indebted to have disclosed with his Middle Eastern acquaintance if not for some ulterior motives that vis-à-vis threaten the audience.

"Towelhead" is not a comedy, but a cheap sexual exploitation melodrama with no ethical compass. Nearly every scene carries some prurient content meant to shock and titillate for the sake of conveying "underage" characters (all actors were over 18 when the film was made) having inappropriate sexualized experiences. It is a movie without context, although it uses the Iraq war to feign political circumstance. To say that its protagonist’s actions are defensible via her suggestible innocence is to deny the fury with which she pursues her very public sexual encounters that hinge on her feigned humiliation in proximity to supervising or intruding adults. Every character here is a pillager with a hidden agenda that is never disclosed because the filmmaker doesn’t bother to develop such answers.

"Towelhead" was originally titled "Nothing is Private." However the producers chose one they could bait the Council on American-Islam Relations because, in the author’s words, "people who are likely to use terms like "towelhead" to refer to Muslims are neither the audience for my book, nor for the film." The subtext here is that no one should see the movie because you would, in reality, have to speak its title to purchase your ticket. I urge against it.

(Warner Independent Pictures) Rated R. 116 mins. (F) (Zero Stars)