April 2008
Time Out - Movies
Shine a Light
German release date: April 4
This is a comedy about the Rolling Stones. At least, the first ten minutes of the music documentary are, when a brief humorous prologue cross-cuts between Mick Jagger in London and Martin Scorsese in New York prepping for the film. Jagger is unhappy about the stage-design for his upcoming concert, which he thinks looks like a dollhouse. Scorsese, the director, is fretting that he still hasn’t got the playlist.
Shine a Light chronicles two performances of the Rolling Stones’ “A Bigger Bang” tour, which took place on October 29, and November 1, 2006, at the New York City Beacon Theater. Footage from the shows is intercut with backstage material, rare historical clips and interviews with the band. Despite the contextual material,
Shine a Light is principally a concert movie. Aided by a team of elite camera operators—including veteran documentarian Albert Maysles, who captured the Stones on screen 38 years ago in
Gimme Shelter—Scorsese captures moments of excitement and intimacy on stage that distinguish this documentary from the many previous films featuring the band.
Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
US-Rated: R
German release date: April 10
A small jewelry store in a Westchester shopping mall is robbed, in an explosion of blood and shattered glass. Both the old lady minding the store and the thief are shot. From this grim opening scene,
Before the Devils Knows You’re Dead recounts the story of a hopelessly dysfunctional New York family, via out-of-sequence episodes. The eldest son, Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman), is a frustrated, drug-abusing stockbroker who is unable to satisfy his wife, Gina (Marisa Tomei). The youngest son, Hank (Ethan Hawke), struggles to make alimony payments and is having an affair with Gina. Both brothers, desperate for money, plan to rob their parents’ jewelry store. Hank recruits a small-time thug for the job, and the thief and the mother of Hank and Andy (Rosemary Harris) shoot each other during the robbery. As his wife lies in a coma, Charlie (Albert Finney), the paterfamilias of this doomed clan, obsesses over the crime and becomes determined to get to the bottom of it. His sons are trapped in a quicksand of lies, selfishness, ineptitude and devilishly bad luck. Octagenarian filmmaker Sidney Lumet, who received an Oscar for lifetime achievement in 2005,
lends a velocity and energy to innovative storytelling in
Before the Devils Knows You’re Dead. It is a superb crime melodrama approaching the scope of Greek tragedy. <<<
