‘Walt & El Grupo’ ***
With his studio hobbled by a strike, laboring under financial hardship and a world war on the horizon, Walt Disney packed up his troubles for a 10-week 1941 tour of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile. He brought with him a team of animators and collaborators, eager to soak up ideas for new work. The tour was part of the federal “Good Neighbor Policy” initiative designed to strengthen Latin American ties. What came of it? “Saludos Amigos” and “The Three Caballeros,” for starters. Disney’s Latin American tour wasn’t exactly the stuff of high drama, but this enjoyable documentary from Theodore Thomas and Kuniko Okubo is the next best thing to being there while it happened. The filmmakers make smart use of personal correspondence, snapshots, animation sketches and film footage, and some of that footage reveals a jubilant Disney cutting loose on the dance floor, cutting a surprisingly rakish figure. The doc will be of interest primarily to Disneyphiles and animation buffs, but that covers just about every film lover I know.
Running time: 1:46.Opens Friday at AMC Pipers Alley, 1601 N. Wells. MPAA rating: PG (for historical smoking).
— Michael Phillips
‘Motherhood’ *
Katherine Dieckmann made an interesting film three years ago in “Diggers,” set among a precarious community of clam-diggers on Long Island. With her latest picture, which she wrote, she stays closer to home, and the results are weirdly off-kilter — a comic search for one woman’s self-fulfillment that gives whiners a bad name.
All flounce and desperation, Uma Thurman plays the harried mother of two living with her husband (Anthony Edwards) in Manhattan’s West Village, conveniently located around the block from the local elementary school. Thurman’s character, who maintains a blog about her universe, struggles to prepare for her daughter’s birthday party, thereby setting up one contrivance and obstacle and workaday task after another — getting the cake, finding a parking place, flirting with a delivery man, re-connecting with husband. So unseemly and uninteresting are the character’s musings, you wonder: Why is it that the French seem to be able to do this sort of slice-of-life so effortlessly? The movie opened the Chicago International Film Festival. Why, I’ll never understand.
Running time: 1:30. Opens Friday. MPAA rating: PG-13 (for language, sexual references and a brief drug comment).
— Michael Phillips
‘Evangelion 1.0’ ***
Writer-director Hideaki Anno’s dazzling anime “Evangelion: 1.0” will be best understood by those familiar with Anno’s 1995 TV series “Neon Genesis Evangelion,” which culminated in the 1997 feature film “The End of Evangelion.” This new film, a huge hit in Japan, is the first of a three-part series and is said to be a reworking of the TV show rather than a remake of the feature. In any event “Evangelion: 1.0” is a showcase of superb graphics, technical bravura in its design and operation of weaponry of mass destruction and its use of rich and varied color.
The film is set sometime in the future as Tokyo is threatened by a third attack of a fleet of gigantic alien spacecraft, ironically named Angels, armed with a diabolical array of weaponry and intent on wiping out all mankind, natch. The Japanese government agency NERV knows that this will be its last chance to defeat the Angels. NERV is relying on its immense Evangelion spacecraft, designed by its remote, stern supreme commander Gendo Ikari (voice of John Swasey). He has recruited his 14-year-old son Shinji, who hasn’t seen his father in years, to pilot Evangelion 1. Shinji is understandably puzzled and apprehensive at his selection.
At first the film seems to be aiming at a very youthful audience, but its spiritual and philosophical asides and metaphysical aura suggest that Anno is aiming at the profound. Despite largely effective English dialogue that allows key characters to acquire dimension, the plot is hard to follow, especially early on. Yet the film pulls you in as it explores Shinji’s perplexing dilemma and his maturing. The story possesses a true depth of character. There is every reason to hope that Anno’s multiple meanings become increasingly clear in the subsequent installments.
Running time: 1:38. Plays Fri-Thu. at the Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Ave.; 773-871-6607 or musicboxtheatre.com. MPAA rating: PG-13 (for action violence and some nudity).
— Kevin Thomas, Special to Tribune Newspapers
‘Leon Morin, Priest’ ****
With his trademark ability to blend austerity with emotion, especially in underworld films such as “Le Doulos” and “Le Samourai,” the late French director Jean-Pierre Melville has become a cinephile favorite. Now, 1961’s “Leon Morin, Priest,” a film that’s at once similar to his classics and significantly different from them, is getting an American release.
“Leon Morin” is set, like several Melville films (most notably “Army of Shadows”), during Germany’s World War II occupation of France. And, as usual, it features a man who lives by a code. This time, however, the code is God’s and the man, as the title indicates, is a priest.
Not just any priest, however. As played by the dreamy Jean-Paul Belmondo, the hottest actor in France after 1960’s “Breathless,” Leon Morin is drop-dead handsome, with the confidence and charisma to go with his magnetic looks. Is it any wonder that Barny (“Hiroshima Mon Amour’s” Emmanuelle Riva), the film’s narrator, can’t get him out of her mind?
After a leisurely opening that shows how the narrator and her friends cope with varying facets of the Occupation, Barny decides to give the local priest, whom she’s never met, a hard time. But unable to shake his imperturbable self-confidence, she ends up intoxicated both with him and, eventually, the religion he represents.
Much of “Leon Morin” is taken up with what can only be described as a religious flirtation, with priest and parishioner engaging in theological discussions that always have an undercurrent of sexual tension about them.
Melville, of course, knew exactly what was going on. “The main idea,” he said in a 1970 interview with critic Rui Nogueira, “was to show this amorous priest who likes to excite girls but doesn’t sleep with them. Morin is Don Juan: He has the women all crazy about him.” That makes for a fascinating, unexpected movie that fans of French film in general, and Melville in particular, will not want to miss.
Running time: 1:53. Plays Fri.-Thu. at the Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St.; 312-846-2600 or siskelfilmcenter.org.
— Kenneth Turan, Tribune Newspapers critic
‘Sliding Liberia’ **
The title is borrowed from the adopted name for surfing as coined in Robertsport, a small cape and cove tucked into Liberia’s remote west coast. Body-boards, what few of them exist along the coast of that war-torn country, are called slide-boards, and as best as this film shows us, there is only a handful of dudes in the entire country who know how to use ’em.
Despite Liberia’s history — 14 years of civil war resulting in 250,000 dead and 800,000 refugees — those figures and a few minutes of archival footage are the only context offered. The lion’s share of “Sliding Liberia” is gorgeous, slow-motion shots of a quartet of American 20-somethings who traveled together to Western Africa in search of the perfect Liberian wave. Their barely documented personal connection comes via the main narrator, Nicholai Lidow, who had shared a house in Ghana with a handful of Liberian refugees on a semester abroad. He has returned annually since UN peacekeepers recaptured the country from rebels in 2003, checking on his friends and bringing his surfboard on every trip.
Beyond a few vague interviews and beauty shots of those perfect waves, there’s little to take away from this 45-minute documentary. Lidow and his crew speak of bringing community to Robertsport, but it’s unclear how. Surfing might have the power to cultivate a cross-cultural bond, but if this footage is any indication, it’s a long way from cultivating commerce.
Running time: 48 minutes. Plays Fri-Thu. as part of the Burning Fuse Film Festival, Facets Cinematheque, 1517 W. Fullerton Ave.; 773-281-4114 or facets.org.
— Lauren Viera
