Czech these out
There's some beautifully crafted work on display in "Czech That Film," the Twin Cities' annual festival of award-winning contemporary and select classic Czech cinema. "It's a great opportunity for audiences to get a feel for the unique quirkiness that people have come to expect from Czech movies," said Jesse Bishop, programming director of the Film Society of Minneapolis St. Paul, which hosts the eight-film, Aug. 19-21 event. This year's lineup is an eclectic mix, indeed. There is the darkly entertaining family medical drama "Home Care," last year's Czech entry for the the foreign-language Oscar. Writer/director Slávek Horák's debut feature is a poignant story of a devoted nurse delivering residential treatment who realizes that she needs relief herself. (7:15 p.m. Friday.) The budget is much higher and the tone much darker in "Gangster Ka," a slick, tangled organized crime thriller about high-level fraud and revenge. (9:30 p.m. Friday.) There is even a wonderful restored 1958 rarity, director Karel Zeman's dreamlike steampunk animated fantasy "Invention for Destruction" (5 p.m. Sunday). Adapted from a Jules Verne story, it gives us a scientist kidnapped by an evil millionaire and ordered to create a super-bomb to take over the world. The mind-blowing battle is on, with retro-futurist submarines, bicycle-powered zeppelins and even furious killer squids duking it out. The visuals are eye-popping insanity. The cast, in formal 19th-century frock coats and top hats, travel across the screen aboard animated railways and sailing ships adapted from old woodcut and steel engraved illustrations. The creepy Victorian contraptions move about in ways both charming and sinister, like uncanny scientific magic tricks. (St. Anthony Main Theatre. All features in Czech with English subtitles. Info at mspfilm.org)
COLIN COVERT
