Category: Film Reviews

Johnny Depp again, this time as a voiceover in this short (77 minutes) macabre, funny, and perverse look at life, love, and death. Interesting, Bronwen and I both liked it, enjoyed the music (Danny Elfin) and liked the romantic plot, but neither little Bronwen nor her friend Katherine liked it. The voices are fun. But…

Jon Stewart wrote and directed this story of Mazier Bahari’s (well-played by Gael Garcia Bernal–Bronwen has a crush on him–in some excellent cross-cultural casting) imprisonment for espionage in Iran based on the latter’s memoir, Then They Came for Me. An Iranian-Canadian filmmaker and journalist working for Newsweek,. Bahari was covering the 2009 Iranian presidential election,…

Judy Davis, Sam Neill, Geoffry Rush, and F Murray Abraham in a wonderfully bizarre Australian film about an Aussie commie woman’s crush and one-night stand with Joe Stalin. Her son becomes an organizer for the policeman’s union. Very funny, weird, great soundtrack, Abraham in a farcical turn as Uncle Joe. No American would ever make…

It must be the week for films about 14-year-old boys This film strikes me as a look at a couple of steps up from beasts of the southern wild Ellis lives with his mother and father on a houseboat in the River Delta. He and his best friend, Neckbone–who lives with his uncle, an oyster…

It took us three nights to watch this slow, gorgeous yet rather opaque Thai film as we both kept falling asleep. It’s a very weird, and beautiful story about a Thai man dying from an illness in a ‘space’ where ghosts and animal/people are the norm. It ends as strangely as it begins. Who has…

It’s been a long time since I enjoyed a Star Wars film. I loved the first (4th?), enjoyed the second (5th), and found the 3rd (6th) to be like watching a bad Muppet movie. The prequels 1, 2, 3, bored and saddened me. Jar-Jar Binks was a new low even in comparison to the Ewoks….

It’s probably close to sacrilegious to say this, but I was underwhelmed by this nice little film. I kept waiting for the many laugh out loud scenes, and they just didn’t come until the totally wild scene at the end at the kiddy beauty/talent contest. It’s a great send-up/critique of both regular and especially kiddy…

Interesting look at IMF controls over debt and underdevelopment in Jamaica. The game is rigged, kids. Narrated by Jamaica Kincaid

Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman star in this sentimental road movie for the dying. Rob Reiner directs. Sean Hayes has good lines. It’s predictable and funny. Quick and well written, it’s nothing special. Live life to the fullest. Do what matters and what you want and what you’ve got to do. Wealth lets you do…

Interesting pop-psych sci-fi with Keanu Reeves and Lawrence Fishbourne. Nice play on the issue of what is reality and what is the image as a few people struggle to destroy the enslavement of the rest of us by AI machines (artificial intelligence) that actually control our world, suck our energy, and keep us living the…

Jackie Chan action flick that’s fun to watch for the ½ hour of stunts, but the plot is incredibly stupid

Interesting story about a young man who falls for a transsexual he knew as a young boy. Not the hilarious comedy type. This is a thoughtful, sometimes painful, sometimes sly look at gender-bending and the personal costs and benefits thereof. Nice work by all concerned

Jafar Panahi wrote and directed this very interesting little film about six girls arrested for trying to sneak into the Iran-Bahrain soccer match in the 2006 World Cup cycle. An indictment of the oppression of women, it was filmed over 38 days but one of those was the actual game day at the stadium. It…

Interesting suspense classic from France about a husband and his mistress plotting to kill his wife The audience is not in on the information. Subtitled

Jamie Lee Curtis is good in this remake of the Disney classic about the mother and daughter who exchange bodies and, of course, learn to truly love and respect one another’s tough row to hoe. It’s good. On the other hand, there are just some parts I have trouble with. It’s much more adulatory about…

Interesting to see this right after “Menashe” because even though this is a very different film, there are many themes in common. In particular assimilation, communal/family pressure vs individualism, and what one will do for the people one loves most dearly. Kumail (Kumail Nanjiani) is a Pakistani-American immigrant struggling to make it as a standup…

Interesting, occasionally affecting taping of Julia Sweeney’s one-woman show about her starting out on her own after leaving Saturday Night Live and getting divorced. Buying a house, her brother becomes sick with cancer, her family moves in with her, she herself becomes sick, her brother dies, and lots more happens. I found the film thoughtful,…

Interesting, sometimes humorous look at cultural change and modernization among Mongolian herders in the 1970s. Anachronistic but weirdly interesting. Russian. Subtitles

Interesting, well photographed, emotionally connecting, but very simple and sort of slow piece about a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks in exile in India. The elders pine for Tibet, the youngsters want to watch the World Cup. Tibet is an ideal for them, not a reality. The prayer scenes and life scenes are fun. Some…

Isabel Huppert stars in this very good, well made and very painful look at sexual repression, S&M, passion, and the terror of giving in to it. Huppert is astounding. The film flips back and forth between eros and horror. It is a very intelligent and very painful film to watch. See it on DVD and…

Isabelle Huppert stars in this Paul Verhoven thriller with a sense of humor about a woman who is raped and refuses to become a victim in any sense. Michelle is a successful sex/violence video games production company owner who is assaulted by a masked assailant in her home. She is also a ‘mature’ bourgeois woman…

It is also about people recreating themselves. A very good film. See this one!

It must be our month for wedding pictures. But whereas the other has real substance, this one is pure spun sugar. No there there, I’m afraid. Some very funny stereotypes, and the Chicago house built to resemble the Parthenon is a total hoot, but otherwise not worth much. Gigantic hit because of feel good fantasy…

I very much liked this Phil Donahue/Ellen Spiro piece about Tomas Young, a 25-yo quadriplegic Iraqi War vet. His politicization, his candor, his pain are there for all to see. It is very graphic and disturbing. The producers juxtapose his 5-day life changing stay in-country with the banality of the House/Senate pseudo-debate giving Bush/Cheney the…

I’d never seen this minor Hitchcock dark comedy. Excellent cast of Hollywood character actors and new faces!. Capt Albert Wiles (Edmund Gwenn) is out hunting rabbits and stumbles on a dead man he fears he’s accidentally shot. Almost everyone in town comes by: a spinster, Miss Ivy Gravley,. Arnie, a young boy (Jerry Mathers not…