Doc Films Scorecard

Winner of the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, Born Into Brothels creates a powerful portrait of life in Calcutta's red light district. The documentary chronicles a group of remarkable children whose mothers work as prostitutes who are each given a camera and with it the ability to view their world through a new lens. A stunning illustration of poverty and destitution, Born Into Brothels is at the same time a poignant tribute to the power of art and the undaunted grace of childhood.

Music video director David LaChapelle's full-length documentary, Rize follows two emerging dance styles in South Central Los Angeles and their dueling participants. "Clowning" and "Krumping" share their roots in founder Tommy the Clown, the hippest birthday clown in town, and both feature elaborate costumes and face paint. With footage recorded over the course of two years, LaChapelle intersperses interviews of the dancers with captivating sequences of their lightning-quick dancing, displaying the slick, pop style the director has developed in his previous work. And, of course, the whole saga ends with a climactic stadium dance battle between the feuding Clowners and Krumpers.

The crucial prerequisite for Wong's newest film 2046, In the Mood for Love stars Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung as boarders of adjacent Hong Kong apartments who begin an affair after learning their spouses are already cheating on them. With this simple outline, Wong produces a film that is anything but: In the Mood for Love is a startling meditation on love, memory, and the cinema itself, with Wong's narrative ambiguities saying a good deal about all three. The tidy glamour of early `60s Hong Kong lives on the screen thanks to beautiful cinematography and a densely layered soundtrack of Nat King Cole and Chinese operettas. In Cantonese with English subtitles.

In director Steven Spielberg's freely adapted version of H. G. Wells' novel, we follow New Yorker Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) as he struggles to bring his two children to their mother in Boston... the difficulty being that the entire world has just been attacked by aliens in an assault apparently planned millions of years earlier. En route he learns to become the father he had failed to be to his young daughter and rebellious teenage son by protecting them from both extraterrestrial attackers, whose plan for earth becomes gruesomely apparent, as well as from desperate humans just as frightening.

Alphaville--the Capital of Pain. Low-rent detective Lemmy Caution (B-star Eddie Constantine) traverses its mysterious landscape on a highly serious mission: the destruction of Alpha 60, the ultra-rational computer crackpot tyrant. Alphaville is one of Godard's strangest and most alluring fusions: romanticism blends with futurism, the detective yarn finds emerges from sci-fi pulp, and Paris's obscure modern corners become Alphaville's cosmic wallpaper. It may not sit well with apolitical Star Wars fanboys, but this is inarguably the greatest science-fiction film ever made.

Wong's breakthrough film--in the US, anyway--thanks to distribution help from Quentin Tarantino. A quick cheapie Wong shot at night concurrently with the production nightmare of Ashes of Time, Chungking Express displays an enormous verve. Wong follows two Hong Kong cops (Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tony Leung) as they struggle with romance. One falls in love with a drug smuggler in a blonde wig (Brigitte Lin), the other with the counter girl at the Chungking Express (Faye Wong in a delectable performance). "One of the 10 best films of the last 25 years"-Sight and Sound. In Cantonese with English subtitles. DVD

"))<>(( forever" is the endearingly odd message from six-year-old Robby that initiates an internet chat room exchange that will at once charm and disturb you. Conceptual performing artist Miranda July's feature film debut portrays the quietude of the lives of several Los Angeles residents. The film depicts, among many quirky subplots, a teen corrupted by two budding harpies, a precocious neighbor collecting home appliances for her dowry, and July as a wistful performance artist who believes she is destined to grow old with a slightly unhinged shoe salesman. The film has notched awards at Cannes and Sundance.

The film for which Wong won the Best Director prize at Cannes, Happy Together remains his best work for some critics. Two of Hong Kong's biggest male stars--Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung--play lovers adrift in Buenos Aires. Cheung always asks to start over, but Leung is understandably hesitant to renew his relationship with his sloppy but lovable companion, especially so after meeting Chris Chang, a short-order cook who may never learn of Leung's nervous affection. In Cantonese with English subtitles.

Described as a "kind of Spellbound crossed with Strictly Ballroom" (Los Angeles Times), this incredible documentary provides a glimpse into the lives of eleven-year old children growing up in diverse neighborhoods of New York City and discovering the world of ballroom dance. Three public elementary schools are tracked as they vie to win the citywide dance competition. Told from the perspective of the urban youths, Mad Hot Ballroom mixes sweet hilarity and heartwarming determination with the rhythms of swing and rumba.

Paul Haggis (screenwriter of Million Dollar Baby) fashions a complex tale in which the lives of several people collide in Los Angeles. His characters all engage in some form of racial prejudice: explicit or tacit, overt or latent. This may sound like an after-school special where lessons come easily and follies can be reversed, but Crash is realistic and hard-edged, brought to life by a star-studded cast including Don Cheadle, Sandra Bullock, Ludacris, and Matt Dillon. In this high tension, multi-perspective tale, each day might be the best of your life: not because something good happens, but because it could have been so much worse.

A long-delayed production due to the China Film Bureau's ire over Jia making Xiao Wu without state approval, Platform is a masterpiece constructed from long, lovely takes, though it circulates in Mainland China only on the black market. This is only the second time Platform has screened in Chicago since its enormous success on the festival circuit. Jia follows the turbulent political transformations of the 1980s through the changing fortunes of a theatrical troupe that begins in 1979 as the Peasant Culture Group and evolves to become the All-Star Rock and Breakdance Electronic Band by the late `80s when China is increasingly influenced by Western capitalism. In Mandarin with English subtitles.

This profile of the high-contact sport of wheelchair rugby (a.k.a. Murderball) and its players focuses on the rivalry between Team USA and Team Canada, both on and off the court. It focuses on Mark Zupan, star player for Team USA, and Joe Soares, who becomes Team Canada's coach after he is asked to retire from playing on the U.S. team. Murderball succeeds both as a sports movie and as a look at the athletes and how their disabilities affect their lives, in some ways for the better. Along the way, it frankly answers all sorts of impolite questions about quadriplegics, such as how they have sex.

The most self-explanatory title in the history of non-pornographic cinema. The 40-Year-Old Virgin stars Steve Carell as Andy Stitzer, a middle-aged electronics salesman who has never had sexual intercourse. His coworkers naturally goad him on, throwing little Andy out into the seamy world of SEX! SEX! SEX! Eventually, he meets Trish, a 40-Year-Old Single Mother/Grandmother, played kinkily by Catherine Keener (the kinky one in Being John Malkovich), and the prospect of love (and sex) appears on the horizon.

Tim Burton and Johnny Depp team up again for a remake of Roald Dahl's classic children's novel. Burton's interpretation sticks more closely to the plot of the book than Mel Stuart's 1971 version, though Burton does ad a stern dentist father to explain Wonka's candy obsession. Depp says he channeled Vogue editor Anna Wintour to play Wonka, while some see a resemblance to Michael Jackson. One actor (Deep Roy) is digitally multiplied to play all the Oompa Loompas. The Oompas' psychedelic songs (with moments of Busby Berkeley-like choreography) are sure to be a boon to high teenagers for years to come.

Oh Dae-Su is an average guy with a job and a wife. It is their daughter's birthday, but he never makes it to the party; instead, he is mysteriously captured and imprisoned. After 15 years of watching cooking shows, scrawling in a notebook, and punching an ugly drawing on the wall, Oh Dea-Su is released just as mysteriously as he was apprehended. He begins a quest to find the people who stole 15 years of his life and to get some answers. For example, did 15 years of fighting a wall prepare him to take on several humans at once? Yes! What is his weapon of choice? A claw hammer! But is he actually just playing into his captor's plans? This Korean film is a fantastic adaptation of the Japanese manga. In Korean with English subtitles.

The only way to end a survey of the early Godard films is Weekend, the auteur's distinctive vision of the Apocalypse. Godard delivers the End of Days, bourgeois-style--endless traffic jams that descend into arson, rape, cannibalism, and the like. Needless to say, these obstacles obstruct the path to an inheritance for the central "characters," Corrine (Mireille Danc) and Roland (Jean Yanne). Be prepared for one of the most incendiary films ever made, filled with heresies of political doctrine and narrative comprehension.