The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle (NWFF, Aug 13-19)

“The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle” is the most imaginative, disturbing, hilarious, and transcendent  underground movie since “Eraserhead.” Three male janitors are impregnated with phosphorous blue fishes through the ingestion of self-heating cookies. The experience of pregnancy and act of giving birth takes them through mind-warping changes that result in their transformation  from angry young men to  sweet, forgiving mothers.  It is a breakthrough film for Seattle, which has been struggling through this last decade  towards securing a regional identity in the indie-film community.  Writer/director David Russo is the first to succeed in capturing the crazy beauty that crackles through the Puget Sound people, those angelic derelicts who scour the filth of toilets with stardust in their hair. The movie throws its satirical stones at everything from the absurd use of art grants money to the exploitation of the marginally employed as guinea  pigs by research labs.  His cast, headed by   Marshall Allman playing straight man to Vince Vieluf’s expansively mad “lord of the (toilet) rings,” is excellent. The story begins with a nod to J.D. Salinger, as Dory the Datameister (Allen)  finds a message in a   bottle containing  the same   profanity that incensed Holden Caulfield  when he saw it scribbled on a wall.   Dory’s journey of reconciliation with a world that gives him the finger swells with  a reckless joy  that opens up new wormholes for  brave and imaginative exploration into the realm of fresh ideas.

The Law (Varsity, Aug 13-19)

In a small Italian fishing village, the men play a periodic game to determine where the power in the town lies. The game is called “The Law” and the man who can imply enough force to dissuade the other players from challenging his claim to absolute power gets to pretend he is the boss of the town.  Of course, the town’s true boss is never to be found at these games, occupied as he is by a wealth of young playmates.   This game of law is the broad-shouldered theme of Jules Dassin’s curvaceous 1957 melodrama, which is notable mostly for a cast that includes Marcello Mastroianni, Gina Lollabrigida, Melina Mercuouri, Pierre Brasseur, and Yves Montand.   The strongest of the several storylines has Lollabrigida scheming to make Mastroianni her husband. The weakest involves an adulterous episode in the life of a  judge’s wife. Although little of this has much to do with the themes of power as represented in the town game, it is  its steamy  sexiness  that give “The Law” its reason for being. This village is a borderline Nymphoville, where the women have a hard time making up their minds between all the ready-steady  men.  Unlike other European sex symbols, Lollobridida’s assets are not easily conveyed in a still photograph.  You have to see how she moves inside  those dresses to fully appreciate her appeal. She puts on quite a fashion show in “The Law,” proving she is one of the few actresses who  doesn’t disappear in the shadow of Mastroianni’s monstrous sex appeal. Also some of the location touches, such as the men netting a school of fish, fail to convince us of Dassin as a neo-realist. The unique manner in which he has Yves Montand undress Melina Mercouri, however,  shows that he has a way with  vivacious sex-comedy.

Wah Do Dem (Grand Illusion, Aug 13-19)

There are two good reasons to see “Wah Do Dem.”  First, if you have ever considered a vacation aboard a cruise ship, the picture gives a fairly accurate account of what you are letting yourself in for, especially if you are a young person traveling alone.  Second, it is a charming and funny movie about what happens when you wander off on your own at a port of call and wind up stranded with neither clothes nor money in a strange country.   There is only one reason not to see “Wah Do Dem,” and that is if you are looking to see Norah Jones in another romantic comedy such as “My Blueberry Nights.”  Jones appears only in one scene, as the girlfriend who breaks up with Max on the eve of what was to be their Caribbean vacation, leaving him to go it alone. Oh, and if you have any interest in Jamaica, or are a fan of reggae music, you shouldn’t miss it. There is a fantastic scene with The Congos performing on a full moon night.

 Secret to a Happy Ending (NWFF, Aug-13-15)

It’s funny how a band can  work  for twenty years and still be under the radar of most music lovers. “Secret to a Happy Ending” begins as standard rockumentary   with one of the members of Alabama’s Drive-By Truckers  asking if we want to hear a song. It is not very  impressive, but as the film continues, the music grows on you,  until by the end you want to go out and buy some of their albums.  It is a quiet development from the standard  footage of band members playing club dates and talking about how much they love playing in this band to the moment when we the audience start to get inside the songs and the world from which they came.  This is accomplished primarily through intercutting  stories behind the songs into the performance footage.  There are raucous political songs telling how the damming of the Tennessee River has changed the lives of the people in the region  as well as elegiac ballads for those who have passed through this world and gone on to other things.  Eventually the film arrives at a profound vision of the duality of the South,    contrasting  the racially harmonious recording sessions at Muscle Shoals  with the   infamous  race riots across the river in Birmingham.   More than that, “Secret to a Happy Ending” is a chronicle of poor people making art out of their marginalized existence, like farmers  working a piece of uncultivated land for a few potatoes and some onions.