Wednesday, June 2
SIFF
I Killed My Mother
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7 p.m., Neptune
American Faust: From Condi to Neo-Condi
Back when Will Ferrell did his live HBO-on-Broadway special reprising his dimwitted W. character from SNL, a smokin'-hot dancer came out as Condoleezza Rice to grind her hips like a ho. It seemed unnecessary and mean-spirited, like this documentary. If you want to continue hating on Bush and Cheney, fine, but the former Secretary of State seems like more of a D.C. careerist than a despicable war criminal. Sebastian Doggart's doc is a one-sided clip job whose sources all fall predictably left. She's reduced to the "my husband" slip and "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud" Iraq War testimony before Congress. Her private life is opaque or smeared: A bitter ex-boyfriend, then a receiver with the Denver Broncos, sneers of their relationship, "She chose power over love." (Dude, really? Maybe you're just an ex-jock signing old football jerseys, which she correctly foresaw.) If Rice benefited from affirmative action and promiscuously (if chastely) jumped from mentor to mentor to reach power; and if she then fudged the truth while in Washington, D.C., how does that make her much different from any politician there today? You can be a war-hating Democrat and still despise this film. (NR) BRIAN MILLER (Also: SIFF Cinema, 4:30 p.m. Thurs., June 3.)
7 p.m., Harvard Exit
The Athlete
Yes, there is a movie to be made about Ethiopian distance-running legend Abebe Bikila, but that movie is contained in the archival footage included in this fatally clumsy biopic. The Olympic marathon champion in 1960 and 1964, Bikila is seen in majestic color newsreels and excerpts from Kon Ichikawa's famous documentary Tokyo Olympiad. In context, his triumphs were part of post-colonial Africa's struggles for national freedom. Running to barefoot victory in Rome, we are too often reminded here, was a repudiation of the Italian invasion of his country in 1935. The Athlete means well, and co-director Rasselas Lakew—who also plays Bikila in dramatic recreations—plainly wants to honor his heroic countryman. Students of the sport will already know of Bikila's 1969 car crash; this movie adds little to the historical record. That it ends with a dogsled race in Norway, set to the keening of Sigur Rós, just makes the hagiography more awkward. But with shoes or without, maybe it'll inspire a few runners to attempt a marathon. (NR) BRIAN MILLER (Also: Egyptian, 4:30 p.m. Thurs., June 3.)
7 p.m., Egyptian
I Killed My Mother
If you enjoy being trapped in a small car while a French-Canadian mother and her gay teen son scream at each other (not once but twice), this is your movie. Plus there's more screaming at home, on the sidewalk, on the phone—it's just like reliving your own bitter teen coming-out years, right? In French. Turned up to 11. Writer-director Xavier Dolan penned this autobiographical, self-validating screenplay when he was 17, so his gay hurts are still raw at the mature age of 21—when most kids are in college, but he was walking the carpet at Cannes. And because the domestic strife gets so shrill, the kid so sulky and spiteful, and his mother so clueless, you just know they're eventually going to reconcile. (How else to get to Cannes? Let's add queer-bashing, too, and make the kid a poet.) Dolan's filmic technique is crude, and a final fantasy sequence idiotic. But he's got a keen grasp of the obvious tensions that afflict many families, whatever the sexual dynamic at work. When Hubert lambastes his mother's "revolting clothes that make me want to barf," every grown woman in the audience will likely remember once saying the same thing to her mother, too. Only without making a movie about it. (NR) BRIAN MILLER (Also: 7 p.m. Sun., June 6.)
9:30 p.m., Egyptian
Gordos
Daniel Sánchez Arévalo's Spanish dramedy has a group of overweight men and women meet for therapy sessions to lose weight. Among these neurotic, insecure people, Gordos achieves the rare feat of not containing a single likable character. Enrique, once the spokesman for a weight-loss program called KiloAway, struggles with anger management as well as weight issues. He loses weight when he starts habitually vomiting and having sex with his business partner's wife. Sofia and her fiancée Alex are pious Catholics who have never seen each other naked. She rapidly starts dropping pounds once she finally finagles Alex into having sex with her. Leonor gained weight in a supposedly subconscious attempt to get her boyfriend to dump her; she loses weight once she starts having sex with 20 random strangers. This movie isn't about fat people trying to get healthy; it's about fat people desperately wanting to look attractive so that they can have sex. Even the therapist, Abel, turns out to be a snaky bastard: He loses interest in his pregnant wife once she starts putting on baby weight. In one horrible juxtaposition, her giving birth is intercut with Abel having sex with another woman. But, on the bright side, I burned a few calories hating this shallow, distasteful, pointless movie. (NR) ERIN K. THOMPSON (Also: Pacific Place, 11 a.m., Fri., June 4, and Uptown, 9:20 p.m. Mon., June 7.)
Thursday, June 3
