KCUR Arts Reporter Steve Walker walks us through some of the Art, Foreign and Documentary films showing in our area.
The Secrets in their Eyes
This year's Best Foreign Film Oscar went to this Argentinian film that tries to be all things to several audiences: a romance, a character study, and a time-shifting crime thriller. But director Juan Jose Campanella, who does have a gritty style and a knack for camera placement, bites off more than what can be comfortably digested. A police inspector begins a novel whose basis in truth is a crime he worked on two decades earlier, so the film colors in its narrative by leaping to and fro both time periods. Though it's a bit talky and relies on ridiculous plot conveniences that the director passes off as good police work, there's a stunning 5-minute sequence set above, in and around a soccer stadium that almost makes it worth seeing for that alone. - Steve Walker
Exit through the Gift Shop
A thrilling documentary about what modern art means in this first decade of the 21st century. At its center is Banksy, one of today's most influential contemporary artists despite the fact that no one knows what he looks like. He became ultra-famous in his native England for a style of stencil-based graffiti known as "street art" that transformed ugly walls into one-panel works that were both politically savvy and hilarious. Meanwhile, Thierry Guetta, a Los Angeles-based novice filmmaker, is filming numerous American street artists and eventually gets Banky's cooperation during a trip to the U.S. Part of the film's deceptive yet charming ruse is that Banksy turns the tables in a film that he now takes credit for. Even those who feel like contemporary art is so much spray-paint and cardboard - and here, it often is - will be fascinated by what it reveals about the new breed. - Steve Walker
Sweetgrass
A fascinatingly serene documentary about the day to day workings of a Montana sheep ranch. Told without narration, the first half of the film documents everything from the herding and feeding to the shearing, a process that looks brutal but seems to comfort the sheep. Moments of true drama are found in scenes shot in the lamb nursery, where mother lambs are tricked into nursing motherless orphans; it's sort of like "Babies" with hay. Less riveting is the months-long sheep drive overseen by two ranchers, the youngest of whom is a ridiculous creature both profane and religious. - Steve Walker
Ajami
An ambitious Oscar nominee for this past year's Best Foreign Film finds Arabs and Jews trying to live amongst one another in a gritty multi-ethnic neighborhood in Jaffa, where some residents embrace peace while others espouse if not court violence. Co-directed by both an Israeli and a Palestinian, the film plays tricks with the viewer's sense of time and place (a character whose murder we clearly see shows up a few scenes later) and further complicates the story with alternating dialogue in Arabic and Hebrew. Of course it's sub-titled, but the story is still pretty hard to navigate. - Steve Walker
Everyone Else
This German film brutally dissects the relationship between a thirtyish couple vacationing on the island of Sardinia. Audiences may feel lost if not annoyed by the first 45 minutes or so because the director doesn't care to spell out who they are, where they are, or why they're there. But the talented actors manage to sell the story, and you're soon gripped by the warts-and-all portrait of modern relationships. What it most reveals is what many know but few talk about: the ability of people who love each other to most egregiously hurt each other as well. - Steve Walker