If you are nostalgic for the British post-punk rock scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s and want to learn more about bands like Joy Division, Happy Mondays, and New Order, Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People is your ticket. Shot on digital video, Party People is a wild and often dizzying ride that has passion and energy, great music, and playful humor (along with the obligatory "f" words, drugs, and sex). The soundtrack features bands such as the Sex Pistols, Joy Division, the Clash, New Order, and A Certain Ration, music that keeps the energy popping from start to finish. Part documentary and part fiction, the film is narrated by impresario Tony Wilson (Steve Coogan) who was the driving force behind Factory Records, an indie label that played an important role in the spread of the new wave sound, overseeing early works of such bands as Big in Japan, Echo and the Bunnymen, and Cabaret Voltaire.

The film is not a comprehensive look at the total Manchester scene that also included such great bands as The Charlatans, Stone Roses, Inspiral Carpets, and The Smiths but concentrates solely on the impact of Wilson and Factory Records. It follows Wilson as he goes from promoting Friday night sessions at the Factory Club to opening the birthplace of rave, the famous Hacienda Dance Club, while keeping his day job as a TV reporter and host for a local TV station in Manchester. After a hilarious opening sequence showing journalist Wilson hang gliding, the film turns to a Sex Pistols concert in 1976 where actual footage of the Pistols is interspersed with actors performing the songs. Although only 40 people attended, Wilson had a vision of what was possible and the small number in attendance didn't faze him, "How many people", he asks, "were at the Last Supper"?

Wilson persuades his station to televise a Sex Pistols performance, an event that led to Wilson being asked to manage several of Manchester's rock groups. We soon meet Ian Curtis (Sean Harris), lead singer for the band Joy Division, his producer Martin Hannett (Andy Serkis) and Happy Monday's singer Shaun Ryder (Danny Cunningham), bands that helped put Factory Records on the map. Harris conveys Curtis' electric energy and manic stage personality while performing great Joy Division songs such as "Love Will Tear us Apart" and "Atmosphere". Unable to come to terms with growing fame and faced with crippling epileptic seizures and an impending divorce, Curtis committed suicide on May 18, 1980 at age 23, a sad end for a consummate artist whose personal agony translated into music of sublime melancholy.

Though lovers be lost love shall not; And death shall have no dominion - Dylan Thomas

Armed with scientific curiosity, a desire for adventure, and a chauvinistic desire to spread its power to other realms, mankind has always dreamed about traveling to outer space. What is ironic is, as the film Solaris suggests, the journey may only bring us closer to confronting inner space: our fears, regrets, feelings of guilt, and issues of conscience. Based on the novel by Stanislaw Lem, Solaris has been filmed twice: once by the great Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky in 1972 and recently by Steven Soderbergh in a much more condensed version, though the idea can be traced to the 1962 film, Journey to the Seventh Planet. The three-hour plus Tarkovsky version takes place almost entirely within the claustrophobic confines of a space ship but the philosophical space is vast. Tarkovsky's film is exceedingly slow-paced with his trademark long takes, static compositions, and mood of solemnity, yet it contains haunting images of cinematic poetry.

Set at an undisclosed time in the future, the film opens with psychologist Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis) gazing at a lovely image of underwater reeds rising and falling in cadence. He then visits his estranged father in his countryside home in a fifteen minute sequence that is not present in Lem's novel, but crucial to the film's conclusion. When Burton, a friend of his father, warns Kris of strange happenings on the space station surrounding the oceanic planet Solaris, Kris is sent to investigate. After an extended highway montage of Burton's car ride home that perhaps suggests a road going nowhere, Kris arrives at the space station to find that one of the crew has committed suicide, and the others talking about ghost-like apparitions that resemble dead loved ones. He gradually discovers that the planet they are circling is a living entity, producing exact copies of people extracted from the crew's memory. One of the "guests" is Hari (Natalya Bondarchuk), Kris' wife who took her own life.

Though able to regenerate herself after being sent on a rocket into space, she slowly begins to take on human characteristics and Kris becomes as attached to her as to the memory of his wife. The character of the psychologist is much less emotional than in the Soderbergh version and the lack of flashbacks makes it difficult to fully appreciate the trauma of Kris' recent past. In a gorgeous scene, Hari discovers a painting by Pieter Bruegel of a village in winter that helps her get in touch with snowy scenes from Kris' childhood, enhancing her development toward being human. As the alien Hari realizes, however, that she can never become the real Hari, she separates herself physically and emotionally from Kris, suggesting that the created memory of the past is more real than the reality of the present. While Tarkovsky's film is plagued with poor editing and other technical difficulties and struggles to amass any cumulative power, it is filled with unforgettable images that remain indelible and a philosophical depth that demands repeat viewing.

In Soderbergh's leaner and more accessible film, George Clooney is Kelvin, the psychologist whose wife has committed suicide. He is sent to the space station Prometheus to investigate the loss of contact with the Solaris mission after receiving a plea from Commander Gibarian (Ulrich Tukur), a Prometheus astronaut. When he arrives he finds that Gibarian has committed suicide, Dr. Helen Gordon (Viola Davis) has barricaded herself in her room, and scientist Snow (Jeremy Davis) is barely comprehensible in his attempts to explain what is taking place. Kelvin quickly learns that Solaris is not just an inert planet but a sentient being (perhaps a metaphor for Heaven) that creates exact replicas of people from the crew's past including Gibarian's young son and Kelvin's wife Rheya (Natasha McElhone).

Increasingly drawn to the double of his wife, Kelvin is forced to complete the past and take responsibility for her suicide. Enhanced by a lovely score by Cliff Martinez, Soderbergh's is a moody and deeply spiritual version that pares the story down to its essence. As told in numerous flashbacks, much of the film is taken up with Kelvin's memories. In one crucial scene at a dinner party, while Rheya defends the idea of a higher intelligence, Kelvin plays the role of a coldly rational scientist and scoffs at her ideas. Ultimately, with the guidance of the intelligent ocean of Solaris, Kelvin is provided a second chance to confront his demons. Allowed to take responsibility for his past, he is able to embrace the spiritual harmony of the universe. While perhaps less poetic than the Tarkovsky version, it's theme of the pain of love and memory are deeply moving and the film resonates with a quiet beauty all its own.

GRADE: A - Tarkovsky

GRADE: A - Soderbergh

The household is divided into public and private spaces. The white families rooms are private and off limits to all except Protée who works in the house while the servants are forced to eat and shower outdoors, exposing their naked bronze bodies to the white family's gazes. It becomes clear when her husband Marc (François Cluzet) goes away on business that Aimée and Protée are sexually attracted to each other but the rules of society prevent it from being openly acknowledged. In one telling sequence, she invites him into her bedroom to help her put on her dress and the two stare at each other's image in the mirror with a defiant longing in their eyes, knowing that any interaction is taboo.

Chocolat is loosely autobiographical, adapted from the childhood memories of the director, and is slowly paced and as mysterious as the brooding isolation of the land on which it is filmed. Denis makes her point about the effects of colonialism without preaching or romanticizing the characters. There are no victims or oppressors, no simplistic good guys. Protée is a servant but he is also a protector as when he stands guard over the bed where Aimée and her daughter sleep to protect them from a rampaging hyena. It is a sad fact that Protée is treated as a boy and not as a man, but Bankolé imbues his character with such dignity and stature that it lessens the pain. Because of its pace, Western audiences may have to work hard to fully appreciate the film and Denis does not, in Roger Ebert's phrase, "coach our emotions". The truth of Chocolat lies in the gestures and glances that touch the silent longing of our heart.

GRADE: A-

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The film is more of a collection of brutal images than a coherent narrative, an explosive and disturbing picture of a community mired in nihilism and the hopelessness that follows. Containing standout performances from young actors Tyrin Turner, Larenz Tate, and Jada Pinkett, the film's violence is graphic and realistic, avoiding (with some exception) the special effects and highly stylized violence we have come to expect from the genre. Caine (Turner), who narrates the film, is a product of the mean streets and has witnessed violence his whole life. His father, a dope dealer, and his mother, a heroin addict are both dead and Pernell (Glenn Plummer), the man who he turned to for guidance, is in prison. He is forced to live with his religious grandparents and his only adult companion is Pernell's girl Ronnie (Pinkett) and her five-year old son. By the time he is in high school he is already dealing drugs and carrying a weapon. His best friend is a borderline psychotic named O-Dog (Tate), the epitome of inner city youth who have no stake in society, kill without conscience, and whose self-respect is only as strong as the weapon they carry.

In the film's opening, a Korean grocer becomes the first target of the pent-up frustration of Caine and O-Dog who shoot them to death in a random, purposeless act after the grocer says that he pities their mother and asks them to leave the store. The videotape, retrieved by the killers during their escape, is sickeningly replayed throughout the film by O-Dog as entertainment at parties. The scene underscores the racism directed at Asian storekeepers, also depicted in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, and brings to mind the general problem of white storeowners who act as middlemen for corporations unwilling to set up franchises in the inner city. When a new Denny's restaurant opened recently, it was the first restaurant opened in Watts in thirty years.

Caine is bright and looking for a way out and we feel sympathy for him without supporting his violent actions and his unwillingness to take responsibility for his life. He is tempted by offers to escape, one with a friend who has become a Muslim and is leaving for Kansas, the other with Ronnie who is moving to Atlanta, but the only world that he is comfortable with consists of drugs, guns, and early death. We want him to get out before it's too late, but we know too well that it is hard to breakthrough the context of his life -- that is no hope and no way out. When he gets a neighborhood girl pregnant and refuses to help, the girl's cousin comes looking for him, leading to a climactic confrontation that leaves us desperate for answers yet unable to see any. Despite its cutesy title, Menace II Society is one powerful mother of a film.

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