Oh Nazis & Street Musicians & Six Bob Dylans...

Black Book(dir. Paul Verhoeven)
I've seen it described as Showgirls meets Schindler's List and if you go into it expecting that's what it's going to be, you'll definitely be disappointed. It has some perverse qualities like one memorable moment where a man raises a gun under the covers, making it look like an erection, but it's just not pulpy enough to really come across as anything resembling what that description seems to suggest. It's actually pretty dry and is a little too prestige-y for it's own good. The film goes kind of crazy with the double crosses in the events after the war and doesn't quite deliver on the promise of a Paul Verhoeven directed movie about a Jewish woman that sleeps with Nazi(s) to help the resistance effort. I slightly recommend
**1/2 out of ****
Once(dir. John Carney)
Musical montage after musical montage, it somehow remains blandly charming up until the end, which secured it's current notch in the recommendation scale because of it's heartwarming nature. It's definitely a musical film and like musical films, if the songs don't do much for you emotionally, you're not going to be all that emotionally involved. I was relatively indifferent until the ending rolled around. I slightly recommend.
**1/2 out of ****
I'm not there.(dir. Todd Haynes)
I should get this out of the way: I don't know jack shit about Bob Dylan. I just know loose details, but even without a proper knowledge of Dylan, it's hard to resist calling this film a superficial look at a life. All the film really has going for it is it's central gimmick of six actors portraying six different Dylans. There's the whole "reinventing himself" aspect of his life that makes this narrative technique seem viable, but given that the film doesn't have a profound sense of time in correlation to each of the separate Dylans, it's hard to really take this idea and run with it in an intellectual way. Interestingly, the film that this reminds me most of was Emilio Estevez's atrocious Bobby, but instead of being cringe-inducingly sappy, it's dully pretentious and much like that film, it's look at the 60's is merely a superficial history lesson and one of it's most affective moments is a brief glimpse at it's central figure in documentary footage. Another affective moment in the film happens to be a bizarre funeral/concert set in Richard Gere's storyline that contains an emotional sincerity and serenity that is truly lacking in the rest of the picture. Outside of Marcus Carl Franklin and Richard Gere, all the actors portraying a "persona" of Dylan simply employ a stylized impersonation and call it a performance. You never grow to care about any of these "personas" so the film is practically devoid of emotional engagement. This would be fine if it was intellectually stimulating since the film's construction is obviously heady, but it's not. You never get a sense of Dylan as a person by watching this outside of the brief glimpse of the actual Dylan at the end that truly shows that a documentary would have probably been a better option for Haynes, but you know, there's nothing really "genius" or "artistic" about that. As an examination of an artist, it fails and as simply an enjoyable piece of cinema, it fails as well.
*1/2 out of ****