CAIRO TIME (Canada/Ireland, Ruba Nadda)
Patricia Clarkson plays Juliette, a New York magazine editor who arrives in Cairo in order to enjoy a much-needed vacation with her husband, a UN employee overseeing a refugee camp in Gaza. When hubby is delayed for several days because of work, a bored Juliette finds company in the only person she knows in the city, her husband's former colleague Tareq, played by Arab-British actor Alexander Siddig (best known for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine). Cairo Time is basically Before Sunrise for the over-45 set, as Juliette and Tareq are drawn closer together despite the many barriers keeping them from taking things too far. Strangely, I've become a sucker for middle-aged romances such as Remains of the Day, The Visitor, even Last Chance Harvey. I guess I like them because they are subtle emotional dramas where veteran actors so often relegated to supporting parts really shine when given the chance to play the lead. Cairo Time isn't perfect - there's an awkward pacing in several scenes between Clarkson and Siddig which Arab-Canadian writer/director Ruba Nadda should have tightened, and so little happens in the story that one might get bored - but the actors have some lovely moments together (the final shot of Siddig is heartbreaking), Irish composer Niall Byrne's score is terrific, and Cairo is so beautifully shot that the film is essentially a love letter to the city. Consider Cairo Time a romantic Egyptian travelogue.

THE CONCERT (France, Radu Mihaileanu)
Aleksei Guskov - sort of the Russian Sam Neill - plays Andrei, the disgraced former conductor of Moscow's famed Bolshoi orchestra who, thirty years after his fall, now works as a janitor at the very theater he once commanded. In an admittedly contrived turn of events, Andrei intercepts a faxed invitation to the Bolshoi to play in Paris, and decides to round up all the old musicians he once led and go to Paris in order to perform, quite fraudulently, as the Bolshoi. What starts off as a farcical comedy slowly transforms into something more poignant, as a Parisian violinist (Melanie Laurent, from Inglourious Basterds) is asked to perform with the orchestra, and we soon learn that there is some sort of secret history that involves both her and the Russian conductor who is so fascinated with her. Cynics will deride The Concert as predictable, sentimental, and manipulative - and indeed, it is all these things, but I fell for it. Hook, line and sinker, I fell for it. I think the film works in spite of its faults because Mihaileanu and his writers never stray from the story's theme, that of the transformative power of music. One look at any cast member's face and it is clear how much music means to his or her character, and that's very touching. The film also provides some wry insight into both Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, and how the fall of the Iron Curtain affected so many people, for better or for worse. (It's not a dissimilar experience from the fine German dramedy Goodbye, Lenin!.) I hesitate to recommend The Concert to everybody, only because you might wind up rolling your eyes at it, but I was very, very moved. And whenever a movie does that to me, as jaded as I've become, I can't help but love it.

MACHETE (US, Robert Rodriguez and Ethan Maniquis)
In 2007's Grindhouse, the failed double feature experiment by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, the highlights were arguably the trailers for non-existent exploitation films that played between the two features. Rodriguez's own phony trailer, "Machete", gave audiences a taste of what they wish Grindhouse had more of: sex and chaos. In 2010, Rodriguez finally got to take his apparently years-in-the-planning feature-length version of Machete to the big screen. Danny Trejo, the Chicano Charles Bronson, stars as a former Mexican cop now hiding out in Austin, Texas as a day laborer. He soon finds himself caught between an Underground Railroad-style network for immigrants, a corrupt racist senator, and all manner of shady characters. With that wild 2007 trailer and a mind-boggling cast that includes Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba, Don Johnson, Cheech Marin and Lindsay Lohan, Machete sure sounds like great fun. But Rodriguez understands that the nonstop action in the trailer can't be sustained over a feature length film: all that insanity can get pretty boring when there's no story. However, I think Rodriguez and his team erred too much on the side of caution, and Machete's script, while not exactly hard to follow, is surprisingly convoluted - which means there is a lot of exposition, cutting down on all the time that could have been dedicated to the sex and violence that audiences paid to see. And while I laud its earnest pro-immigrant politics, the heavy-handed message further drains the film of its energy. Machete definitely has some great crazy moments, but they are few and far between, and Rodriguez and his longtime editor Maniquis actually deliver rather flat action sequences. (As a friend put it, Rodriguez has been "phoning it in" when it comes to action ever since he made it big. I'm inclined to agree.) Machete is intermittently amusing, but because the movie promised so much dumb fun yet wound up being neither enjoyably dumb nor particularly fun, I was disappointed.

SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD (US, Edgar Wright)
If you asked any urban hipster under 30 what movie he was going to see on August 13, 2010, he would have said Scott Pilgrim, and you might be excused for thinking the movie was thus going to be a big hit. That it wound up bombing at the U.S. box office tells you that most Americans are not really into a film like Scott Pilgrim, a nearly unclassifiable mishmash of indie comedy, martial arts flick, rock musical, live action cartoon, and superhero movie. Adapted from Bryan Lee O'Malley's Toronto-set comic books, the film's simple setup is that fey 22-year-old slacker Scott (Michael Cera) falls for too-cool-for-school Ramona (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and, in order to win her, must defeat her seven evil exes in elaborate battles modeled after video games like Street Fighter. These over-the-top challenges serve as a metaphor for the insecurity young men feel when dating a girl who's out of their league: each of Ramona's evil exes represents someone hip, successful, or sexy that Scott can never be. Thematically, the film goes no deeper than that. There's no profundity here, merely eye candy - and lots of it, courtesy of the talented Edgar Wright, who gained legions of nerdy fans with his British TV series Spaced and his first feature, the excellent Shaun of the Dead. After his cop comedy Hot Fuzz faltered - perhaps it was too English even for Wright's Anglophile fans - it seemed the director would reclaim the film geek crown with Scott Pilgrim. Indeed, this movie is destined for cult status for its clever visuals alone, which push the medium to such limits that I honestly wonder where cinema can go from here. (I'm surprised it wasn't released in 3D.) But while this is a lively, funny, eye-popping experiment in mainstream filmmaking, it's not much more than that. Weirdly, Scott Pilgrim reminded me a little too much of (500) Days of Summer, with a generous helping of Run Lola Run, a dash of Sin City, and a hint of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. In other words, I think Wright is trying just a wee bit too hard to appeal to every twenty/thirtysomething who flocked to those hipster classics. Don't get me wrong: I did enjoy this film, and would even pay to see it again. But if I'm being a little harsh, it's because Shaun of the Dead stunned me with the real emotion and depth lurking beneath its "zombie comedy" sheen, so I know Wright is capable of finding the soul in his poppy material, which he doesn't do here. There should be a rule: The more style you display, the more substance you need to back it up with. But the cast is perfect (Cera's boyishness may soon doom him to Ralph Macchioland, but his comic talents keep his career afloat) and you can't deny Wright's sincere passion for both moviemaking and pop culture.

THE TILLMAN STORY (US, Amir Bar-Lev)
Compelling documentary that sets the story straight about Pat Tillman, the NFL football star who gave up a lucrative career in order to join the Army (with his brother) and fight in the so-called War on Terror. After Tillman was killed in Afghanistan, the Department of Defense concocted a self-promoting story about his heroic end, which fell apart months later once it was revealed that Tillman was accidentally shot to death by his own buddies. Bar-Lev, who directed the fascinating doc My Kid Could Paint That, once again explores a family caught in the middle of fact and fiction, as Tillman's mother embarks on a quest to expose the military's cover-up, which takes her right to the top of the chain of command. The film also debunks the various myths surrounding the surprisingly complicated Tillman, who at first came across as a lunk-headed jock whose rah-rah patriotism got the best of him, but in fact was an atheist who read Noam Chomsky, dismissed the Iraq War as illegal, and kept his reasons for fighting the war so private that even Bar-Lev, out of deference to Tillman's family, doesn't dig into it. (It's a misstep for the film, since the question "Why did he join?" is never fully answered, though it's implied that Tillman had an overwhelming sense of duty and commitment to everything he set his sights on.) I was also surprised to learn that Tillman was a San Jose boy, like me, and that his politicized memorial service - John McCain was even in attendance - was held at San Jose's modest rose garden, just a few blocks from my mom's house. Just goes to show you what the media hides from you: I had pictured the man as some Texas roughneck from a conservative family, not a Silicon Valley dude from a liberal clan. All in all, The Tillman Story is excellent filmmaking. Angering and depressing? Yes. But also great documentary storytelling.