Movie Reviews: The Box, A Christmas Carol, The Men Who Stare at Goats

GO  THE WEDDING SONG Like her appealing first feature, La petite Jérusalem, Karin Albou’s The Wedding Song probes the threats to an intimate bond between two Semitic women. Here, World War II steps in to test a happy friendship between Tunisian neighbors Nour (Olympe Borval), a devout Muslim, and Myriam (Lizzie Brocheré), whose Jewish, single mother (played by the director) is equally poor but more secular, schooled and ambitious for her daughter. The prospect of Nazi invasion, with the collusion of a French administration only too happy to refuel latent tensions between Arabs and Jews, threatens a bond already complicated by the romantic entanglement of one girl and the prospect of a forced marriage for the other. Though lovely to look at, The Wedding Song is a little overwhelmed by its relentlessly hyperpoetic imagery — all those enormous eyes staring in fright from nocturnal shadows incongruously makes you think of crying-kitten posters. The overdetermined pressures of the big picture, with war, class, race and religion crammed into every frame, threaten to turn each character into a historical position paper. Still, this spirited film sustains its momentum as a tale of powerless women uniting to take back control of their destinies. (Music Hall) (Ella Taylor)

GO  THE YES MEN FIX THE WORLD The antiglobalist performance guys who call themselves the Yes Men are masters of forging corporate rhetoric and media protocols. Their forte is the phony Web site and the fraudulent PowerPoint presentation. A sequel to 2004’s The Yes Men, The Yes Men Fix the World continues the saga with the heroes’ greatest stunt — one of them going live on BBC World in the guise of a Dow Chemical spokesman to announce that Dow would mark the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal chemical disaster with a $12 billion aid plan for the victims. Dow stock dropped faster than the interviewer’s jaw. The BBC, which had taken the bait of a faux Web site, blamed the Yes Men for fooling the poor people of Bhopal into thinking they would get justice. But Fix the World asks that the spectator decide which hoax was crueler — the Yes Men’s, which at least directed attention back to Bhopal, or Dow’s. As hinted by their affirmative name, the Yes Men enact scenarios, however fleeting, of social justice. But mainly, Fix the World is about the beauty of the riff. The Yes Men are funniest when addressing a straight audience, making outlandish claims in favor of the free market and the benefits of unregulated catastrophe — the Black Death gave us capitalism! What’s fascinating is spectator reaction (or lack of same). Some people laugh or register disgust; others find their outrageously mercenary ideas “refreshing.” As one Yes Man explains, “Instead of freaking out, they just took our business cards.” People want to believe. (Sunset 5; Playhouse 7) (J. Hoberman)