Apron Strings is a 2008 film about prejudices: interracial, intercultural, socio-economic and sexual preference. It’s set in New Zealand. Most of the characters are of Indian descent. (Combine India and New Zealand and you have a fascinating accent.)

Okay, so maybe it’s a woman’s movie, if there is such a thing. My wife gives Apron Strings an A. The film started with promise: a title sequence with visually sensual closeups of Indian food being prepared. But I found the concept of tying everything to food and cooking one that quickly grew tiresome. My wife was completely wrapped up in the characters and their stories: two estranged sisters, a half-Indian gay son who’s trying to get in touch with his lost Indian side, a troubled mother with a vegan daughter having an out-of-wedlock baby and a drunk/gambler/loser son. And that’s just the start. For me, it was way too much to accept. The script is weak. Most of the actors are only so-so. (There are one or two good performances.) And that cinematography that teased me during the opening credits, became annoying. Too much fancy lighting. And sound that sucked. Skip it.

Update: Last night I reviewed Up in the Air and gave it a B rating. Somehow I manged to forget one of the most-objectionable aspects of the film: the product placements. The film was filled with American Airlines, Hertz and Hilton. I mean everywhere. Someone suggested it was actually intentional on the part of director Jason Reitman. True, the plot ties in with travel-related company loyalty programs, but this was ridiculous and interfered with the film far more than it supported it. Besides, the screening was sponsored by American Airlines. I think that discredits the ‘intentional’ theory. After thinking about it for these past 24 hours, I’ve downgraded Up in the Air to a B-. At this rate it could be a solid C by Sunday.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with Jason Reitman’s new film, Up in the Air, which opens Christmas Day. It’s a competent movie, with some truly touching and funny moments. It just wasn’t special in the way we’ve come to expect from this young filmmaker’s earlier features, Thank You for Smoking and Juno. Reitman’s script is good, just not as good as Diablo Cody’s script for Juno. Hearing the director describe what Up in the Air means to him during tonight’s Q&A made me appreciate it that much more, but future audiences won’t have the benefit of those comments.

One highlight is George Clooney, who steps out of his usual slick role. He’s still charming — he is George Clooney, after all — but in this role he shows a vulnerability that I don’t recall seeing in his previous performances. Clooney plays  Ryan Bingham, a corporate downsizing consultant who spends his entire life flying from city to city, laying people off. (Yes, Reitman has updated his script started seven years ago to incorporate the current unemployment crisis.) Bingham is the “bad guy” but, as Reitman said tonight, “with a heart.” This is in contrast to the young MBA-ish Natalie (played by relative newcomer Anna Kendrick) who is revolutionizing the layoff biz by firing people via teleconferencing.

Also very good is Vera Farmiga who plays Alex, Bingham’s female soul mate. Reitman may have chose the name Alex for it gender ambiguity, for in both character and plot Ryan and Alex have reversed their roles from what we’ve come to expect in most stories. (I can’t say more without being a plot spoiler.) Yes, we get to see George Clooney’s softer, feminine side.

The music in Up in the Air is quite good, and everything else is, as I said, competent. It just wasn’t special enough to earn more than a B rating. Opening December 25, it may get a lot of sentimental support from the critics. It is a more mainstream film than Reitman’s earlier pix and it was apparently a big hit at the Toronto Film Festival.

Updated October 15.

Not the normal film-festival fare, Pierrot Le Fou is a Jean-Luc Godard film from 1965. It was at this year’s Mill Valley Film Festival because the lead actress (the terrific and stunning Anna Karina) was supposed to be here. Unfortunately, she recently broke her foot so the best she could do was phone in her greetings from Paris. Luckily, we knew that in advance.

Wikipedia says this is a great example of postmodern film, which translates into a movie that is (a) often surrealistically confusing, and (b) highly inventive and entertaining so long as you just go with it. I quickly gave up trying to comprehend the big picture and just sat back and enjoyed the filmmaking. My wife, on the other hand, insisted on understanding as much as possible with the result that she didn’t enjoy it as much as I did.

Some of the metaphors are awkward, but it’s a 44-year old film, after all. It’s also Jean-Paul Belmondo at his best. For 110 minutes of fun and ’60s Godard nostalgia, rent Pierrot Le Fou.

I guess you’d call Storm a German international war-crimes prosecution thriller. Kerry Fox is superb as Hanna, an extremely confident prosecutor trying to land a conviction of a former Yugoslavian National Army commander. She’s got interference coming from all directions including trouble with her boss and co-workers, problems with witnesses and issues with the court in the Hague.

The rest of the cast was also good. I particularly liked Rolf Lassgård who played Jonas, Hanna’s ambassador boyfriend. (He was also terrific in a great 2006 Danish/Swedish film, After the Wedding.)

Storm is a high-production value film (ie, healthy budget), but has way too much hand-held camera work. C’mon, guys. Either shoot the whole film hand-held or use the technique for effect. But what’s the point of filing 75% in that style? (Maybe it was less than 75%, but it became annoying.) There were good dolly and locked-down shots, too, and the lighting was fine, so I really don’t get what they were trying to do.

Storm is a 2009 German film, but it’s mostly in English with a few subtitled scenes in other languages. It won the Amnesty International Film Prize (and others) at the 2009 Berlin Film Festival.

A Chilean/Mexican feature, La Nana (The Maid) is one that’s still growing on me, a few hours after the screening.

Raquel has been the live-in do-everything maid for an upper-class Chilean family for 23 years. For that matter, it’s really the only family or relationships she’s ever had, and that’s why things have gotten a bit weird around the house.

La Nana keeps us on the uncomfortable edge of not knowing if we’re supposed to be afraid of Raquel or for her. It’s hard to tell if she’s a good guy, bad guy or both. It’s not even clear whether we’ll ever really understand what makes her tick, but we want to and the plot and character keep moving, so we don’t give up.

If that sounds unpleasant, it’s actually an engrossing comedy with undertones that occasionally border on even the horror-film genre. (How’s that for a confusing description?) Writer/director Sebastian Silva weaves his way through the personality of this very complex character played brilliantly by Catalina Saavedra. And you’ll love Sonia, a cameo role played by Anita Reeves. The film deservedly won a Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Saavedra won a Special Jury Prize for her performance.Don’t go too far out of your way to find La Nana, but if it’s showing nearby by all means see it.

(Yes, today was a three-documentary day.) Okay, so here’s another one of those liberal expose films — this time, all about the sins of bottled water. And being a good liberal, I was all set to be shocked and called to action. But Tapped just didn’t work for me.

Good topical/social-issue documentaries are essentially journalism. The consistently best are probably the shows from WGBH’s Frontline series. You might not agree, but I’d put An Inconvenient Truth in that category, too.But Tapped isn’t in that league.

The issues surrounding bottled water — e.g., we pay more per gallon for it than we do for gasoline — are legitimate, and one could make a legitimately journalistic film that gets people all riled up. Unfortunately, Tapped forgoes real journalism. Even Michael Moore’s films are more honest than this. Tapped makes its cases mostly by implications. As a trivial example, there are repeated shots of a dirty plastic water bottle sinking slowly in a tropical ocean. Did the filmmakers just happen to get that shot time after time, or was there a diver positioning ot over and over again. Okay, that’s a silly example, but its typical.

After it convinces us of how evil the Nestlé company is for stealing the water of Newfield, Maine, the film jumps to references of cancer and other awful diseases. No explanation. No connection, at least at first. Just innuendo and association. Never any real facts that connect bottled water (and the plants that manufacture the bottles) to cancer. Yeah, they do eventually get there, but it’s all so implicit and not very good science. Again, I’m sure the manufacture of plastic water bottles is poisoning people who live nearby and good science on this exists, but Tapped doesn’t bring this to that conversation.

The film is also overproduced. Too slick. Too much doom-and-gloom music. Why can’t they trust the content to stand on its own? You’ll get the idea by visiting the film’s web site, but you may not want to. Not only does it have a Flash splash page, it also maximizes your browser to full screen. That alone is an unforgivable faux paux and just shows how over the top this project is. Stop buying water in plastic bottles, but skip this movie, too.

Tough call on Homegrown, a 52-minute documentary about the Dervaes family who grow 6,000 pounds of organic produce every year on their one-fifth acre parcel next to the 210 freeway in Los Angeles. I thought it would be one of those inspiring films, but I was disappointed. As a film, it was weak. And the family is weird — almost creepy. Jules has raised his now-adult three kids who (at least at the time of this film) still live at home and appear to be lacking in outside-home social activities. Hey, I’m into organic foods, environmentalism and all those liberal causes, something here isn’t quite right. Again, I’m probably in the minority on this one. Lots of other people leaving the film loved it. So check it out and make your own call. And let me know what you think.

My recommendation for this 27-minute documentary is easy. If you live in Marin County or if you’re interested in organic farming and ranching, see it. Otherwise, you probably won’t be interested. And to make it easy, you can see Hidden Bounty of Marin: Farm Families in Transition in its entirety on YouTube. It’s probably not really a documentary, but more of a marketing piece for the farmers of Marin and GrownInMarin.org. I enjoyed it, but I live here and I know some of the farmers (from the local farmers’ markets) and the great CowGirl Creamery.

Original is one of the best Danish features I’ve seen in a while. It seems I often describe Danish films as quirky, and this one is no exception to that observation. Are Danes just naturally quirky by American standards?

As Kristine Kolton wrote in the Mill Valley Film Festival program, “If there’s one thing Henry has learned, it’s that reality is overrated. When his father dies bizarrely in a moose-hunting accident, Henry’s mother checks out of the real world for good.” Working from a highly inventive script, the cast are all excellent. The film is clever and very well paced but lightweight. Don’t expect a masterpiece here, just enjoy it. It’s just a lot of fun, and you’ll just grin your way through the whole thing.

This is one for geeks, musical or otherwise. Filmmaker John Korty (The Crazy Quilt, for those who are old enough to remember) spent two years documenting the rebuilding of a 1927 Steinway piano donated to U.C. Berkeley. In the mid-70s I built a Zuckermann harpsichord, and while that’s a lot simpler than a piano, I could truly relate to the craftsmen at Callahan Piano Service in Oakland who do this work. (Most of those in the film were at tonight’s screening along with Korty.)

The film is in Korty’s classic dry style. He just puts it out there. No glitter or gloss. The soundtrack includes parts of performances by the students who were competing to win the finished piano. It probably won’t bother most people, but I was distracted by the differences in audio between the close-mic’d interviews intercut with the distant-mic’d piano performances taped in Berkeley’s Hertz Hall. I’ve recorded there, and my guess is that they used just a pair of ceiling-hung mics. Nothing wrong with the quality. It just didn’t match the rest of the track.

I’m a Korty fan, but I wouldn’t recommend seeing Miracle in a Box: A Piano Reborn for the filmmaking. If you like machines, moving parts or musical instruments, see it for Callahan and the piano. You’ll probably have to track it down on DVD or watch the preview.