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The Private Lives of Pippa Lee
At one moment during my second viewing of The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, it hit me...this was Kelly. You see, I used to love to tell this story about Kelly, a girl I knew in New York City in the 80s back when we were all sort of meandering, figuring out what we were going to be when we grew up. .... ... Read more |
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The Last Station
I was recently informed that the some partisans who are challenging health care reform were seen trotting around with copies of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Piece, as an example of Congressional excess: apparently the draft bill is even longer than the epic masterpiece. One wonders if any of these individuals have actually read it .... ... Read more |
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The Messenger
When writers Oren Moverman and Alessandro Camon came up with a screenplay about casualty notification officers they, not surprisingly, had some trouble talking anyone into financing it. Iraq war movies haven’t been doing well: a controversial war, far removed from most people’s day to day consciousnes .... ... Read more |
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That Evening Sun
I made a reference to Hal Holbrook, the 84 year old star of this film, and realized that I, but few others remembered this incredible actor. Maybe it’s because he grew up in South Weymouth, just down the road from where I grew up or maybe it’s because of his memorable performances as Mark Twain .... ... Read more |
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La Danse
The esteemed Frederick Wiseman graduated from Yale law school and made an almost immediate u-turn, heading toward what has turned out to be an unparalleled career as a cinema-verité master of the documentary form. Over the course of 42 years, 38 films, Wiseman has maintained a steadfast approach .... ... Read more |
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Broken Embraces
Pedro Almodovar is a master: one of the most interesting filmmakers to emerge in the 1980s introducing a uniquely grand, wildly visual, sensuous and socially observant world of post Franco Spain. Almodovar is the kind of director with a deep and rich knowledge and reverence for “cinema” .... ... Read more |
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Julie and Julia
Too much Julie, not enough Julia. I know, I know, how do you pitch a movie about a 6'2" unique looking woman who inexplicably became a television star in the 1960s by teaching people about French cooking techniques? If you're Nora Ephron, the writer and director, you say ... ... Read more |
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The Ugly Truth
is that I can never quite decide how I feel about Katherine Heigl. There is no question that she is a increasingly popular and commanding screen presence, and the small, TV screen has proven too small to contain her at the moment. But, as if often the case in Hollywood, as she has migrated to the big screen.... Read more |
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Lorna's Silence
This has been a year chock full of immigration stories in films: mostly harsh and unro-mantic takes like Welcome (an Iraqi teenager tries to swim across the English Channel) or Sin Nombre (a young girl makes the dangerous journey from Guatemala to the U.S. mostly by riding on the tops of trains).... Read more |
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The Red Shoes
I recently attended a screening of the newly restored masterpiece The Red Shoes, written, directed and produced by the creative team osf Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, also known as The Archers. This team also
wrote and produced Black Narcissus and the notorious Peeping Tom.... Read more |
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Humpday
What happens when two college buddies, now about 30 or so, decide to make a porno? What happens when the porno is meant to be part of "Humpday", Seattle's annual gay pride fest? What happens when the two guys are straight in the only mildest metrosexual sense? ... Read more |
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500 Days Of Summer
Okay maybe I just have to admit that romantic comedy or "rom com" is not in fact dead. I recently reviewed the refreshingly femme led Weathergirl which screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival and towards the end of the same I stumbled upon another. I guess stumbled upon is not exactly true.... Read more |
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Adam
I don't think I'm giving anything away by saying that this is a film about a man with As-perger's syndrome, a neurological disorder that is at the higher functioning spectrum of autism. Since we have become more aware of those around us who are show signs of autism and since.... Read more |
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Public Enemies
I don't like writing negative reviews. I truly respect all of the effort put in by all the many skilled people involved in putting together a film, especially a huge picture with top above and below the line talent. So
then with respect to Michael Mann's new take on John Dillinger and Melvin Purvis, let's talk about acting.... Read more |
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Sex Positive
As we look back nostalgically on the 1980s, many may conveniently forget about the explosion of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the resulting toll it took on the populations of major cities like New York and San Francisco. Sex Positive is a small focused docu-mentary about Richard Berkowitz, a gay activist and how he.... Read more |
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Surveillance
At the center of Surveillance, the second film by Jennifer Lynch (nee of David), is a cu-rious couple played by Bill Pullman and Julia Ormond. Ormond was once the incredibly beautiful next big thing (Legends of the Fall), who, for my money, still has an unrivaled Julie Christie like beauty......... Read more |
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DEAR LEMON LIMA
Right after I saw Suzi Yoonessi's coming of age film about a half-Yup'ik girl named Va-nessa Lemor, I went right home and told my own 9 year old all about it. The next day she told me she had been writing in her own journal, to "Lemon Lima" and apparently the film has had the same effect on one of it's target audiences......... Read more |
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Food, Inc.
If you're wondering where your food comes from, or even if you think you know where your food comes from, or even if you don't care, you need to see this film! Let me con-fess that I'm a foodies, a non-meat eater, so I guess for me it was preaching to the con-verted. Yet this is not an anti-meat film..... Read more |
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What goes up
It's hard to know what to say about a film that frames it's story around the Challenger explosion of 1986. The press notes say that the objective was to examine why we need heroes, and how we twist them for our own purposes, an interesting assignment... Read more |
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Burma VJ
With the recent extension of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest (thanks to an sus-piciously misguided American who swam onto her compound as well as upcoming elections), the release of Burma VJ seems a perfectly timed reminder of the consequences of Western post-colonial disinterest....Read more |
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Departures
When Departures was announced as the winner in the Best Foreign Language Film Category at this year's Academy Awards, I think I might have fallen over in my seat. I was sure I had my ear to the ground on this one and besides I had seen both The Class and The Baader-Meinhof Complex, the latter of which I thought should win although given it's very controversial subject matter, I knew would not.... Read more |
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Summer Hours
The last Olivier Assayas film that I saw, and reviewed last spring was The Boarding Gate a kind of oddball thriller that zipped back and forth between France and Hong Kong. This time out it's an entirely different subject, mood and location. .... Read more |
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SÉRAPHINE
Whenever I see yet another film about an overlooked woman painter, like the recent documentary about abstract expressionist Grace Hartigan, or even the outstanding feature film Carrington, about early 20th century painter Dora Carrington, I cannot help but feel just a bit sad. Read more |
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Downloading Nancy
This was the second in a series of films I have recently seen and reviewed about the effects of sexual abuse by predatory uncles. In the earlier film, however, the effect was used primarily as a metaphor which is itself problematic as a film like Downloading Nancy underlines. Sexual abuse is not a metaphor or parallel to the damage wrought by clinging to the past, it's not really a metaphor for anything.Read more |
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Revanche
This Austrian film, nominated in the best foreign film category for the Academy Awards this past February, is nothing short of a masterpiece. I have already reviewed two others in that category, The Class and The Baader-Meinhof Complex and will do the same shortly for the winner, Departures.Read more |
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Treeless Mountain
What can you say about film where the mother abandons two adorable little girls? Do I hear urchin? At the same time if you're anticipating something overly sentimental you won't find it in Treeless Mountain, a rather sober or sobering yet beautiful tale of two little parent-less girls in China.Read more |
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Songs of Sparrows
Sometimes it's hard to enter into the worlds of others particularly when a culture so dic-tates the unequal treatment of women. I admit it, it's offputting and this was my initial experience of the opening of the Iranian film, Song of Sparrows where even a young girl of maybe 10 or 11 must cover herself up, away from the gaze of men.Read more |
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American Violet
In American Violet, we have another from the headlines true story about the injustices of the war on drugs and poverty, simply but competently told and skillfully acted. It’s the kind of film that you so want to be excellent and exceptional but which doesn't quite hit the mark. Yet as a recounting of the outrageous imbalance of power in the justice system and the larger culture, it's more than good enough. Read more |
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Lola Montes
Having been fortunate enough to be invited to the recent premiere of the restored ver-sion of Max Ophüls 1955 classic, Lola Montes, I nonetheless didn't know quite what to expect. The restoration itself was a joint venture between the Franco-American Cultural Fund which includes the DGA, WGA, MPAA and the SACEM and other organizations such as Les Films du Jeudi and the director's son, Marcel Ophüls. So there were a number of important industry people on hand at the Directors' Guild Theatre including Michael Bay and the newly appointed French Attaché. Read more |
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Donkey Punch
Donkey Punch is a strange title to say the least but it is clarified soon enough. This film is another entry in Magnet Releasing's "6-Shooter Film Series" which so far has given us Let The Right One In, Timecrimes (both previously reviewed here) and Special, to be followed by Big Man Japan and Eden Log. The series means to introduce the best in worldwide genre film from up and coming filmmakers and each selection hails from a different country, including one from the U.S. Read more |
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A Converstation with David Hare
Because ultimately, what Schlink is saying is that it's not the same to be literate and to be morally literate. In other words, by becoming literate, by actually learning to read and write she does not learn to understand what she did or indeed to repent, she dies in the Christian sense "unshriven", without ever having come to terms with what she did. Schlink's way of putting it is that you can be literate but a moral idiot. Read more |
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Shall we Kiss
To the relentless strains of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake and Nutcracker Suite with some Schubert periodically thrown in, comes a light but ultimately not so light cautionary tale about the possibility that there may be no such thing as an innocent kiss. Emmanuel Mouret brings his fascination with this and related questions of desire to this very funny and compelling tale. Read more |
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American Swing
As a child of the 70s and someone who came of age in New York City in the early 80s, I had a vague memory of something called Plato’s Retreat but I’m pretty sure I didn’t really know what all the fuss was about. By the time I arrived the tide had already turned and we were hanging out at the Pyramid Club, The Limelight, The Tunnel and other long defunct locales. Now, after seeing the documentary on the notorious sex club, I’m absolutely sure I had no idea what was going on just up the avenue Read more |
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Sin Nombre
As someone who helps people with various immigration issues...that’s right when I’m not writing I’m an immigration lawyer but that’s a long story for another day...I could not help but be grateful to see a film like this. Every day I see or deal with people who are what we immigration lawyers call foreign nationals and what the Department of Homeland Security calls “aliens.” Read more |
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Tokyo Sonata
I recently heard a report about the astonishing increase in crime in Japan, and the fact that a significant amount of crime is being committed by the disaffected elderly. Appar-ently Japan has been experiencing a long and steady economic decline that perhaps some of us have only become aware of given the global depression now upon us. Read more |
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Edge of Love
I grew up with only the vaguest sense of who Dylan Thomas was...we had a recording of his and I remember his distinctly sonorous voice. I knew he was a famous Welsh poet, however somewhere along the way I began to think of him as Richard Burton. Unfortunately, until encountering this film, The Edge of Love, I hadn’t thought to look much beyond the legend of the alcoholic Welsh genius who died before his time. Read more |
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The Wrestler
The Venice Film Festival, Golden Lion winning The Wrestler is a film that cuts deep on so very many levels but probably, most significantly, in it's portrayal of the aging dreamer, in all of us.Read more |
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The Elephant King
The Elephant King is the story of two different sides of the same coin American broth-ers, set amidst the ex-pat splendor and horror of southeast Asian tourism. Read more |
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The Boy in the Striped Pajams
Adapted from the novel by Irish writer, John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, is a new and unusual entry in the Holocaust film genre. Read more |
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Let The Right One In
Do vampires ever really go out of style? This fall Alan Ball via HBO is giving us True Blood, an excellent adaptation of a southern gothic book series that imagines vampires out of the closet. Read more |
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Time Crimes
Timecrimes is a new the suspense thriller straight out of the Spanish mind of director, Nacho Vigalondo, a young energetic fan of, Hitchcock, Philip K. Dick and karoake. It's a brainteasing story involving time travel and murder, and a sense of the comedic. Read more |
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The Reader
I would say that I did, for the most part, welcome A. O. Scott's recent observations in the Sunday New York Times about the surplus of films, particularly during Academy Award nomination season Read more |
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AFI Wrapup
The annual AFI festival based at the Arclight Cinema in Hollywood this year presented an exciting and very significant number of superb films. Read more |
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EXPIRED
Ah, if this film had just been about 30 minutes shorter...or maybe if it had felt a bit shorter I would be giving it a full throated “huzzah!” Samantha Morton, one of the greatest actors now walking the planet Read more |
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THE DARK KNIGHT
Yes, I did have to stand in line for the 2:45 Friday show of The Dark Knight at the Vista Theatre which is one of the only theatres in L.A. Read more |
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FLYING: CONFESSIONS OF A FREE WOMAN
I was recently hired to operate a camera on an ultra low budget feature. As is often the case I was the only woman crew member but additionally, because the theme of the film was a bachelor party, I was very often the only woman in the room. Read more |
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The Family that Preys
So you know, as a critic, that things aren't so great when you have to sign a waiver that pledges you to not write a review before the movie is released in theaters. Not even if you promise not to publish it until the day of. Read more |
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Save Me
It's a tricky thing to make a film that tries to build a bridge of understanding. The domi-nant perception is that such an effort is too subtle for the average moviegoer to under-stand and therefore tolerate. Read more |
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LEMON TREE
When I watch films that take place in the dry landscapes of the middle east, it reminds me of the dryness of my home in southern California and simultaneously reinforces the contrast between our very different way of life. Read more |
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Mr. Lonely
Harmony Korine says that he likes to play the camera like an instrument and this commitment to experimenting with the visual is what makes his new film, Mr. Lonely remarkable. Read more |
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MADE OF HONOR: Boy Loses Girl, Puts on Wee Mini Kilt.
One of the biggest problems with the wedding romantic comedy genre is that someone usually gets left at the altar at the end. Read more |
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WATERLILIES : It’s Tough To Be A Girl
Nymphets, swimming pools and France doesn’t sound progressive, it sounds tantali-zingly voyeuristic in the most conventional way. Read more |
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ROMAN POLANSKI: WANTED AND DESIRED
Wanted and desired...I’ll say. I’ve had a “thing” for Polanski ever since, while exploring my depressive, 19th century Thomas Hardy phase, I found Tess of the D’Urbevilles.Read more |
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QUID PRO QUO
Why would someone
want to be in a wheelchair? This is the central question asked,
explored but perhaps not answered in this very spare.Read
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Tell
No One
This superb French
thriller, based on an American novel by Harlen Coben is a taut, rock
and roll ride, anchored by a moving love story. I was fortunate enough
to see this film twice, first at the City of Lights, City of Angels
French film festival here in Los Angeles and then a year later at a
recent press screening.Read
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A
Previous
Engagement
How can you not
love this film, if you are a (gulp) middle of your life woman who just
to-tally changed your life for the better a la Oprah? Read
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Forbidden
Kingdom
How can you
possibly go wrong with Jackie Chan AND Jet Li? Oh and that’s
what
the producers are thinking... Read
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Before
The Rains
Ahhh so
that’s why it looks so good...the Director, Santosh Sivan
made
his name as a Cinematographer on films like Bride and Prejudice, one of
the umpteenth outings of Jane Austen recently Read
more |
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HATS
OFF!
You sit down to
watch this movie and all of sudden you’re being sucked into a
fantasy world-- it’s Central Park going in and out of focus
with
that brrrring harp that signals magic Read
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Roundtable
Report:
My first!
It’ll never
be like this again so don’t worry! I finally went to my first
“press junket” for Run, Fat Boy, Run Read
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Snow
Angels
I can’t
honestly tell you not to go see this film, it’s one of those
films that you really, really, really want to be outstanding. Adapted
as well as directed by David Gordon Green from Stuart
O’Nan’s novel of the same name, Snow Angels has a
top
drawer cast in a dark Read
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The
Boarding Gate
From the moment
Sandra (Asia Argento) slinks, literally, into Miles’ (Michael
Madsen) overly bright, glassed office somewhere in or near the not
Eiffel Tower Paris we know he and perhaps we are in deep trouble. In
this role, and others, Ms. Argento plays the kind of Read
more |
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Paranoid
Park
I've always been a
Gus Van Zant fan, I mean To Die For, Drugstore Cowboy, the sadly
prophetic My Own Private Idaho. After all isn't it Gus we have to thank
for the ascent of Ben and Matt in Good Will Hunting. Then there's that
unfortunate Hitchcock "remake" and well...uh, never mind. It's 2008 and
he's back in Portland and has directed a moody adaptation of a young
adult novel by Blake Nelson. Read
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The
Hammer
So I had to quiz my
husband about Adam Carolla because I missed the whole Man Show thing. I
think it was sometime after AbFab became the last female-oriented show
to leave Comedy Central...that is before the happily heralded return of
Sarah Silverman. Read
more |
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The
Signal
So it's New Year's
Eve in Terminus and everyone's going crazy because their televisions
have "disrupted the synaptic neural networks" as Clark (Scott
Poythress), the designated tech geek explaner reminds us repeatedly.
Just before the nightmare is unleashed, Maya (Anessa Ramsey) and Ben
(Justin Welborn), the ostensible heroes, whisper sweet nothings to each
other while designating her husband Lewis (AJ Bowen)as the villain of
the piece. From then on we follow their meandering journey back toeach
other. Read
more |
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Oscar
Nominated
Live Action Shorts
Wow...after
suffering through that last...ahem...film, it was nothing but a
pleasure to sit down and see what the members of the Academy nominated
in the short feature category. Read
more |
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