TRIPLE LUTZ

Here's a trio of recent film reviews. The Puffy Chair is in very limited release, so it might be awhile before you can actually sit in it. As for Drawing Restraint 9, director/star/megalomaniac Matthew Barney swears that he'll never release his "opus" on DVD, so get thee to the movie theater if you want to embark on this warped cinematic odyssey. Methinks District B13 is playing all over creation.

The Puffy Chair
Grade: B+

This indie road movie gets off to a bumpy start but soon kicks into gear with funny and touching vignettes about romance and the humiliating restrictions of traveling on the cheap. Up-and-coming filmmakers Jay and Mark Duplass tell the deceptively simple story of a failed musician who hits the highway with his girlfriend and his brother, stopping along the way to pick up a La-Z-Boy recliner that he bought for his father through a grossly misleading eBay ad. Nominated for two 2006 Independent Spirit Awards.


Drawing Restraint 9
Grade: B-

Avant-garde poster child Matthew Barney shows an alarming lack of restraint in this overlong and pretentious follow-up to his famed Cremaster Cycle. Despite these near-fatal flaws, the film has considerable visual appeal thanks to odd and unforgettable images of pearl divers and bloody blubber. Alternately hypnotic and mind-numbing, the virtually dialogue-free story portrays a man and a woman (Barney and his real-life partner Björk) who board a Japanese whaling ship, have tea together and mysteriously morph into whales. Björk is stupendously photogenic as always, though her musical contributions to the soundtrack suffer from the same little girl preciousness that has plagued her recent albums.


District B13
Grade: B

This adrenaline rush from France delivers a few scenes that rival Run Lola Run and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for sheer action ecstasy, but the sublimely choreographed chase scenes and gunplay can’t make up for mediocre storytelling and one-dimensional characters. Set in Paris in 2010, the occasionally disjointed plot follows a hunky convict and a cop who team up to dismantle a gang and defuse a bomb in a walled-off ghetto known as District B13. Co-written by Luc Besson, the man who brought us the superior action flick The Professional.