Art House

Fire

The War Zone

As unflinching and bleak as it is beautiful, Tim Roth's directorial debut, The War Zone, is remarkably accomplished filmmaking. Adapted by Alexander Stuart from his own novel, the film centers on a family that has just moved from London to the wind-swept English seaside during winter. The relative isolation soon reveals an ongoing incestuous relationship between the working-class father (Ray Winstone) and his 17-year-old-daughter, Jessie. The middle-class mother (Tilda Swinton) has just given birth to their third child and desperately avoids knowing the truth, leaving Tom, the younger brother, with the horrific responsibility of exposing the family secret. Fearless in its hard-fought depiction of incest, The War Zone pulls no punches; this vivid portrayal of abuse within a family and the scathed consciousness that results is not for the faint of heart. True to his theater background, Roth doesn't explain how or where such brutal choices were first taken, choosing rather to let the actors bear the ambiguities and anguish of a terrible knowledge in the their body language. --Fionn Meade

The Interview

It's hard to describe the opening scenes of The Interview without using the word "Kafka-esque," so let's just get that out of the way and focus on this truly wonderful Aussie suspense flick. Hugo Weaving, best known in the U.S. for his roles in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and The Matrix, plays Fleming, an Everyman who is rudely awakened one morning when the police burst into his house. Fleming is roughed up, refused food, and interrogated about an unspecified offense. "Oh," you might say, "one of those." But just when you think you've got a handle on it, The Interview slips away and becomes something else again. To reveal any more would be to ruin the pleasure of watching a beautifully crafted script unfold. In addition to a fascinating plot and clever dialogue, The Interview boasts superb performances by Weaving and Tony Martin as Steele, Fleming's chief interrogator. Grab a copy and impress your friends with the little-known gem you've discovered. --Ali Davis

Unmade Beds

At first glance, Nicholas Barker's documentary about four New York City singles seeking partners through personal ads looks like it's trying to be a hipper, East Coast version of the Cameron Crowe hit Singles. The characters--two men and two women who play themselves--address the camera with candid, earthy, and bitter observations about the dating scene. And the film titillates the viewer with male and female nudity within the first five minutes. But where Singles was brightened by goofy humor and a hard-hitting soundtrack, Unmade Beds is weighed down by its characters' desperation and a mostly lackluster musical score. While two of the characters are looking for long-term relationships, the more interesting pair have shallower goals: Brenda, a shapely Italian woman in her 40s, wants a man who will pay her bills in exchange for "sex a couple of times a month, maybe four." Mikey, a 54-year-old self-described Jack Nicholson/Harvey Keitel type, is looking for babes to take home for the night and thinks nothing of walking out on a blind date who turns out to be a "mutt." Ordinarily, these are not people you would invite into your living room; however, Barker weaves their stories together in a way that provides sardonic and occasionally entertaining social commentary on the mating game. To emphasize the film's motif of voyeurism, the soliloquies are interspersed with frequent, almost painterly shots peeking through the windows of random apartment dwellers engaged in activities ranging from vacuuming to intercourse. These interludes are the most real and compelling moments in the film, and it is a shame that Barker does not let the viewer see more of these other, less desperate New Yorkers' lives. --Larisa Lomacky Moore