Kathmandu :

Three movies which capture America from the 1930s to the present with one of them a Cannes contender, Down in the Valley has a cowboy romanticism masking the main character as either old fashion ranch-hand or a delusional psychopath.

In his movie review, Glenn Kenny of Premiere Magazine says, “I think that Down in the Valley, written and directed by David Jacobson, is a poetic, moving picture about growing up absurd in southern California. Norton plays Harlan, a seemingly sincere young hayseed, who moves into the life of Tobe (Evan Rachel Wood), a good kid, albeit a bit of a natural rebel, who’s growing increasingly restless under the gaze of her flinty single dad (David Morse) and increasingly exhausted by the peculiar emotional demands of her younger brother Lonnie (Rory Culkin). The sweetness of the Harlan-Tobe romance takes a new flavour after we find out that Harlan’s not who he appears to be; the story turns most upsetting, but never loses its focus on the essential loneliness of all its characters.”

A beautiful if flawed is Ask the Dust of which Jeff Shannon writes, “Adapted from the acclaimed 1939 novel by John Fante, Ask the Dust represents a 30-year labour of love for Robert Towne, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Chinatown. Towne must have been inspired by the challenge of capturing the inner life and outer environs of Fante’s literary hero, struggling writer Aturo Bandini (played by Colin Farrell), as he arrives in LA circa 1932, sells occasional stories to legendary American Mercury editor HL Mencken (heard only in voice-overs provided by film critic Richard Schickel), lives in the seedy Alta Loma hotel in the dusty neighbourhood of Bunker Hill (where a fellow resident is played by Donald Sutherland), and falls into a stormy relationship with Camilla (Salma Hayek), a Mexican waitress who shares Bandini’s immigrant dreams for a better life in sunny

California. There are good times and bad in this passionately combative romance (and Hayek has never been more sensuously appealing onscreen), and Towne has done a perfect job of capturing an arid combination of hope, depression, and artistic ambition. Ask the Dust never fully succeeds as an emotionally involving drama (the lives of writers are notoriously difficult to translate to film), but there’s something undeniably seductive about this curious and great-looking film.”

But the funniest is American Dreamz and Bret Fetzer is of the opinion, “Thinly disguised versions of American Idol and the Bush presidency collide in the satire American Dreamz. Bored and self-loathing, Martin Tweed (Hugh Grant) wants to give his hugely popular reality show American Dreamz an extra boost by courting political controversy — but suspects he may find personal redemption in the form of scheming contestant Sally Kendoo (Mandy Moore), who manipulates her boyfriend (Chris Klein) to give herself a vote-winning backstory. Meanwhile, equally desperate to court popularity, the President’s chief of staff (Willem Dafoe, looking suspiciously Dick-Cheney-esque) gets Tweed to let the President (Dennis Quaid) be a guest judge on the show. But unbeknownst to all, a privately conflicted terrorist (Sam Golzari) has been selected as a contestant, and his sleeper cell wants him to blow up the President in the final competition.

Sharp and funny lines are sprinkled throughout and the cast is uniformly excellent; the relationship between Grant and Moore is oddly touching, and Marcia Gay Harden makes an amazing First Lady.”

Concludes Grant, “The Bush-like president is rather endearing; a president who has actually discovered a whole new thing in life:

he’s discovered reading newspapers and actually finding out about the world for himself and becoming well-informed and it’s actually very endearing.”