This was a truly “independent” film, in which none of the usual movie rules applied. For long stretches it was so “real” that it seemed lifeless. Except for Michelle Williams, recognizable even clothed head to foot, no effort was made to explain, or particularly distinguish, any of the characters. The Indian looked like someone from Milwaukee who overstayed his bronzing appointment, and the Wild West guide looked like a TV star who had pasted on a scruffy beard. Great care was taken to show how the oxen were coaxed across the river, but since there seemed no way the covered wagons could make it, that scene was simply omitted. Key plot ponts – such as the meaning of the title – were mumbled unintelligibly. Finally, when the story had been driven to a dramatic climax, we were given an ending – which I won’t give away – that left the entire Edina movie theater laughing in disbelief.

A Werner Herzogian quest for the unusual and the unknowable, placing us inside a French cave with wall paintings from 32,000 years ago. Herzog’s dialogue is wonderfully breathless and the score is lusciously mystical, taking us out of the realms of archaeology and other science into the greater mysteries of human existence. Above all, one is stunned by the extraordinary accomplishment of the art – there is nothing “primitive” in the representations of prowling cave lions or the set of four horses, skillfully shaded and delineated. (Compare these, for instance, with American Indian paintings of horses 32 millenia later.) Questions abound: were these painted to assure a successful hunt? to ward off evil spirits? to celebrate life? If 99% of the bones found in the caves came from cave bears, why are there so few pictures of bears, and so many of rhinoceros, ibex, even elephant? Are there other caves to be found where the paintings aren’t quite so good? Was this moment in time a unique flowering of art, like the Golden Age of Greece, or Egypt’s Old Kingdom? If so, how lucky we were to have stumbled upon Chauvet, and now grateful that Herzog charmed the French to let us in the door.

A thoroughly genial chase film about a foul-mouthed alien, a sort-of bastard child ofE.T. and Borat. All the acting, or should I say mugging, was pitch-perfect, not only by the refreshingly unfamiliar British leads, but also by the reliable American supporting cast, such as Kristin Wiig, Bill Hader and Justin Bateman. This was not a movie you’d go out of your way to see (and in fact, the 6:40 showing at Metro 4 was actually empty), but neither was it a film you had any regrets about spending 1:40 with in the afternoon.

A hauntingly beautiful story of French monks in remote Algeria during a time of civil war, but what impressed me most was the respect it gave and intelligence it ascribed to its viewers. Quotidian events were presented on a par with liturgical, and when crisis came, it was realistic, not overwrought. Whether the monks were saints or oddities depended on your view of religion coming in; the movie depicted them as very human: the leader Christian’s willfulness appeared heroic at first, then offensive to his brethren on closer inspection. The rebels were ruthless, but the government they fought was consistently called corrupt. This story was not about bad guys versus good guys. It was about men caught in a situation beyond their control, struggling for an answer, struggling to help, struggling to survive.
The film itself failed to specify a date or place when it began, giving it a universality that dissipated when a postscript spelled out the fates of the individual monks, for me an unnecessary anticlimax.