Short Cuts

Rabbit-proof Fence

Australian director Philip Noyce put aside slick Hollywood thrillers to make this affecting drama about aboriginal children stolen from their homes in the 1930s. It was part of Australia’s effort to "raise" generations of aborigines to "white" standards, but the heart of this tale is a journey: half-white 14-year-old Molly (an amazing Everlyn Sampi), sister Daisy and half-sister Grace escape from their nun-operated prison camp and head home – 1,500 miles north through the desert outback, without food, water or shelter. So it’s a chase movie, as the wise-but-innocent kids follow the country’s barbed-wire "rabbit-proof" fence back to their homeland, evading white trackers and the relentless zeal of A.O. Neville (Kenneth Branagh), a true believer in a failed policy that resulted in Australia’s "Stolen Generations," along the way. Based on a true story, Peter Gabriel provides the film score, and Noyce’s vision of the outback is as gorgeous as it is deadly.

The Pianist

For some unfathomable reason, Roman Polanski’s multi-Oscar-winning Holocaust drama never made its way to Manila screens. Adrien Brody gives his best performance yet as Wladyslaw Szpilman, a famous Warsaw concert pianist who is separated from his family during the Nazi occupation. Survival is the theme of this film, but Polanski (who also escaped from a Warsaw ghetto during the war) shows how luck is as important as strength and heroism. Small details (like the boy selling caramel in a detention center, and the Jews being ordered to dance with one another to stay warm) seem fresh, despite all the Holocaust movies you’ve seen. The last 40 minutes of the film are like a silent movie, with the emaciated Brody achieving an almost tragi-comic dimension worthy of Chaplin or Keaton, stumbling from one hiding place to another, toting a can of cucumbers (but lacking a can opener), and expressing all with his gaunt, sallow face. Deserving of its Oscars.

25th Hour

Spike Lee is a frustrating artist: full of furious visual energy and ideas, yet handicapped by a tin ear for drama. Still, he is worth watching in a "coulda been great" kind of way. 25th Hour follows the final day for Monty Brogan (Edward Norton) before he goes to jail for dealing drugs. In that span of time, he tries to figure out how he got there. Good performances by Norton, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rosario Dawson, Anna Paquin and Barry Pepper can’t redeem the dialogue, which veers from sharp and insightful to melodramatic and plodding. Bravura sequences include Norton spouting a litany of hatred into a mirror, encompassing every ethnic group in NYC, including his own. Other shots – during the closing monologue and inside the bar – are poetic and luminous. Other touches remind you – a bit clumsily – that Spike Lee is trying to work in his reaction to 9/11. But at least he’s bothered to commit one to film.

Human Nature

Somewhere in between Being John Malkovich and last year’s clever Adaptation, screenwriter Charlie Kaufman banged out this satirical screenplay on human nature, a venture directed by Michel Gondry and released in 2002 to obscurity before heading to video shelves. Rhys Ifans plays Puff, a man raised in the wild by apes, then brought back to civilization for etiquette training by scientist Nathan Bronfman (Tim Robbins). Bronfman’s girlfriend is Lila (Patricia Arquette), a woman afflicted by hirsutism (excessive body hair) who also chose to live in the wild away from civilization. As you would expect, the fun comes in Ifans’ transition from leg-humping Neanderthal to barely-repressed civilized man. Gondry (who previously directed Bjork videos) tries to conjure up Kubrick (Moog sounds similar to A Clockwork Orange and set design straight out of 2001), but the material is more at the level of Animal House. Still, there are plenty of fun parts, an out-of-left-field song-and-dance number, and some kooky questions raised about what it means to be "civilized."

Personal Velocity

A chick film narrated by a man, Personal Velocity tells three loosely-related tales about three women on the loose. Writer/Director Rebecca Miller interweaves the stories of Delia (Kyra Sedgwick), Greta (Parker Posey) and Paula (Fairuza Balk), the first a victim who fights back, the second a career woman who embraces success, and the third a wounded and wandering soul who learns to care for someone else. The narration reads like a short-story collection, which is a trend among indy films these days. Aside from some self-conscious camerawork, Miller does a good job of focusing on character: Sedgwick is strong, sexy, a little scary; Posey turns in an actual performance instead of a sustained attitude; and Balk does her usual thing. As independent films go, this one works better than most, having won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2002 Sundance Festival. Miller has a good eye for detail, and each tale says something about carrying on with life, though there’s no uplifting film music or heavy-handed catchphrase to spell it all out for you.