Nancy Keefe Rhodes covers film, photo and visual arts for the City Eagle. She has written "Make it Snappy" since December 2006, a weekly film column reviewing both current theatrical releases and DVDs recent and enduring. She is a member of the national Women Film Critics Circle. She archives her film reviews at www.MovieCrossRhodes.blogspot.com. Reach her at nancykeeferhodes@gmail.com.
In 1946 Italian filmmaker Roberto Rossellini made a film called “Paisá” – criminally hard to find here – whose six episodes depict the Allied liberation of Fascist Italy between 1943-45 through the eyes of ordinary people interacting with, primarily, U.S. GIs. These vignettes often turn on misunderstandings due to language and O’Henry-like twists, but “Paisá” features pretty keenly observed portrayals by a non-American filmmaker – and it brims with a deeper, more serious appreciation for the Yanks that we are no longer so sure greets our troops abroad...
(Rupert Friend as Cheri and Michelle Pfeiffer as Lea de Lonval)
Stephen Frears’ “Chéri” is that unusual film that is worth seeing as much for its flaws as for its considerable accomplishments. In order to do that around here you’ll have to be quick, because it’s playing for one week only right now at Manlius Art Cinema...
“I probably wasn’t injured because I was way in the back of the vehicle. I was on top of all the bottled water, because I was little,” my friend had explained, recounting how the troop convoy in Afghanistan encountered on IED on the road beyond the city. My friend paused a beat, then added before going on, “Well. I still am little.”
The capacity to compress yawning gaps between the before and after of life-shaking violence to a simple, quiet change of tense is similar to the kind of detail you’ll find in Kathryn Bigelow’s film, set in the pre-Surge days of 2004 Iraq, which opens this week at Manlius Art Cinema...
