Sticking With It: 'Of Gods and Men' and 'Public Speaking'

My cinematic cup runneth over this weekend. 

Tonight, I finally caught Fritz Lang's very, very dark "Scarlet Street," while Sunday will find me (and several others crammed into my apartment) watching the 83rd Academy Awards - that is, following a quick run to the local multiplex to catch the (apparently) super-trashy, supernatural 3-D Nic Cage film, "Drive Angry." More on that later.

For now, I'm glad to report I thoroughly enjoyed two new films, both of which are odes to perseverance, although the heroes of neither film actually benefit from doing so. The first is Xavier Beauvois's Cannes favorite, "Of Gods and Men," which is based on a true story about a group of monks who decide to stay in an impoverished mountainous area of Algeria, despite increased threats by fundamentalist terrorists.

The film, thankfully, takes a completely nonpolitical approach to the material. Rather, it's a quiet, sobering picture about faith in the face of horror and Beauvois does a nice job of fleshing out each of the seven monks - not so much through words, but via facial expressions, the silences in between words and some solid performances.

It's a powerful film. In a key scene, an Algerian official pleads with the monks to leave, arguing that their fate at the hands of the fundamentalists will likely justify to outsiders all the negative traits they associate with Islam. Fortunately, Beauvois's film escapes that same fate.

Also struggling to keep on keepin' on is the heroine of Martin Scorsese's new film, which just happens to be a documentary about Fran Lebowitz. The writer and acerbic wit, whose first two books of essays - "Metropolitan Life" and "Social Studies" - were a sensation in the 1970s, has not published a book in 16 years.

In Scorsese's film, Lebowitz is candid about her "writer's block" and tackles everything from her childhood to America's dumbed down popular culture. Author Toni Morrison notes that Lebowitz "seems to [me] almost always right but never fair." It's hard to argue with that description as you listen to Lebowitz's spot-on and frequently hilarious takes on publishing, art and "cultural elitism," a phrase in which, for my money she puts the final nail in the coffin.

Scorsese steps back as director of the film and lets Lebowitz run the show. Most of the picture is made up of one-on-one interviews between the filmmaker and the writer at Ye Waverly Inn. Some stock footage is well-placed, including sequences from Scorsese's own "Taxi Driver." It's a low key, side project for the filmmaker and a fitting tribute to its subject.