FLICKERS

Natasha Richardson as Sally Bowles--"Cabaret" (1999)

Review: THE NEW TWENTY

THE NEW TWENTY

In his sleek and accomplished debut film, writer-director Chris Mason Johnson tracks the lives and loves of a cadre of 29-year-old Manhattan college friends who betray themselves and each other by abusing the Big Three—sex, money, and drugs. At the center is Andrew (Ryan Locke), a lean, blond alpha-dog investment banker whose beautiful Asian fiancée (Nicole Bilderback) may be his match in the world of business. Among those circling this golden couple are Ben (Colin Fickes), who's gay, overweight, and addicted to online sex sites (there's a great moment when a trick comes over to Ben's apartment and the two men reject each other on sight), as well as the drug-addicted Felix (Thomas Sadoski) and commitment-phobic Tony (Andrew Wei Lin). We have been here many times before (see 1966's The Group), but Johnson and co-writer Ishmael Chawla have a light touch that keeps things from turning overly melodramatic. (No vases get thrown.) Supported by veteran New York actors such as Terry Serpico and Bill Sage, the strong ensemble of young actors create fully defined personas, thanks in large part to their director's willingness to linger after a dramatic peak and observe the characters in private, take-a-breath moments. He's got something, this guy, and although I'm surely overpraising The New Twenty, I'd hate to see a movie this ethnically and sexually diverse fade away on today's dead-end gay release circuit. After all, for better or worse, every generation deserves its own St. Elmo's Fire. (Chuck Wilson)

review: EVERLASTING MOMENTS (opening this week)

Despite its Hallmark title, Everlasting Moments is a deeply involving family drama that marks a late-career triumph for 77-year-old Swedish director Jan Troell, whose two-part 1971-72 epic, The Emigrants and The New Land, was internationally beloved. As with those masterpieces (which are thrilling beyond measure), Troell is once again delineating the complexities of marriage, in this case that of Maria (Maria Heiskanen) and Sigfrid Larsson (Mikael Persbrandt) who wed in 1907 and soon have a houseful of children. A dockworker, alcoholic, and womanizer, Sigfrid leaves the worries of familial responsibility to Maria, who one day goes to hock an old camera that she won in a contest and never used. Encouraged by an obviously smitten camera shop owner (Jesper Christensen), Maria begins taking and later developing her own photographs, a process that is forever miraculous to her. Despite an obvious “gift for seeing”, this mother and beleaguered wife often sets aside her camera, but gradually, over the course of ten years, she finds a way to balance her art with her life, a feat, Troell suggests, that is as miraculous as the capturing of image to film. Despite some schematic plotting, Everlasting Moments is the work of a master, one who draws from Heiskanen, Persbrandt and Christensen performances that are marvelously subtle, in which the truth of a given character lies not in what is being said aloud but in what is being held within — as with one of Maria’s portraits, it’s all in the eyes. (Chuck Wilson)