Parker, Penguins, Heights!

Are the movies getting better or is my resistance getting lower? I saw three films this week that I thought were outstanding: Ellie Parker, After Innocence, and Little Sky. The last two are already gone, but the best of these is yet to come.

A brilliantly observed and achingly funny satire (yes, I laughed until my stomach actually hurt—not something I can say of a film very often) on trying to make it in Hollywood, Ellie Parker reveals Naomi Watts as a gifted comedienne. In drama, Watts can be overwrought—I didn’t like her in 21 Grams. Just to single out a few moments…the scene where Watts, as Parker, is tramping around inside a dumpster in the back alley outside her apartment building, and who should be driving along and see her rummaging in the trash, but her psychotherapist…(I think this was the point where I helplessly and involuntarily said out loud to the screen, “I love it!”)…Early on, there’s an extended sequence (it must go on for about 10 minutes, and it never ceases to be a scream) of Ellie driving on an LA freeway, not only talking on her cell phone nonstop as she weaves in and out of lanes, but also fixing her hair and makeup, changing her skirt, trying on different pairs of shoes, and even boots, and all the way rehearsing incredibly bad dialogue for her next audition: “I sucked his cock! I sucked it good! He had blood all over his fucking shirt!”

Watts co-produced this ultra-low-budget film with Scott Coffey, who wrote, directed and co-stars in Ellie Parker. Together, they skewer every indie movie cliché imaginable, with swipes at von Trier, Nicole Kidman (don’t tell me that Watts’ Southern belle audition scene, “Delta Breeze,” isn’t a complete send-up of Kidman in Cold Mountain), and the whole lot of acting coaches, casting directors, and other poseurs who come between actors and their art.

Coffey will be in Seattle for both SIFF screenings at the Neptune: Thursday June 9 at 7:15pm and Saturday June 11 at 2pm. There’s no U.S. distributor yet, so see this one while you may.

Another excellent film, more handsomely produced certainly, Heights, screens on the 9th over at the Uptown at the exact same time as Ellie Parker. Heights repeats on Friday June 10 at 4:45pm, also at the Uptown. The movie’s young director Chris Terrio (he’s 28, I believe) will be here, too, and lucky me, I get to interview him. (Thanks, Amanda and Ranielle!)

Don’t be put off by the film’s Merchant-Ivory pedigree—it’s nothing at all like those stately costume dramas. Set and filmed in contemporary Manhattan, Heights features lots of extremely good-looking young actors: James Marsden, Elizabeth Banks, Jesse Bradford, and oh, yeah, some fellow by the name of Rufus Wainwright, who makes a cheekily sardonic movie acting debut. Eye candy quotient aside, the movie also has a few pertinent things to say about being in your 20s and trying to find a career niche in the arts and in journalism. Jim Denault, who was the cinematographer for Maria Full of Grace, also shot this film, and it is gorgeous to behold.

I was disappointed by March of the Penguins, which will screen on June 11 and 12 at the Harvard Exit. It isn’t horrible the way Deep Blue is, but neither is it as well photographed as the sumptuous Earthling. Like Earthling, March of the Penguins suffers from an excess of unnecessary voice-over narration, here provided by Morgan Freeman, spoon-feeding us every little detail, which we could observe perfectly well without him telling us what we’re seeing. The music is appropriate to the images, unlike Deep Blue’s trashy orchestral bombast; Fred Seldon has several excellent flute solos that, if the movie does well at the box office, will inevitably be “covered” by James Galway someday on a ghastly “tie-in” “inspired by” CD. But really, can’t nature documentaries trust us to think for ourselves? Do we need a narrator to tell us “The loss is unbearable,” when we see a mama penguin grieving over her poor dead chick?