Village Vidiot

Cheryl loaned us this fine film about a woman (Halle Berry) whose husband Brian (David Duchovny) is tragically murdered. She’s left with two kids (both precocious, one of them is Berry’s son) and establishes a relationship with Jerry (Benicio Del Toro), Brian’s best and oldest friend and a very wacked out former-lawyer become heroin addict….

Captivating, non-linear romantic drama from Spanish filmmaker Julio Medem. Presented in the voice and vision of a boy (Otto) and girl (Ana). Their star-crossed love is joined to the comings, goings, and car crashes in the lives of their parents. Most critics found this too melodramatic (Jay Carr in the Globe actually liked it a…

Burt Munro (Anthony Hopkins), New Zealander extraordinaire, rebuilt his 1920 Indian again and again, racing it and turning it into the world’s fastest street bike under 1000 cc. With the help of his friends and the many weird and wonderful Americans he meets along the way, he’s able to race at Bonneville and sets a…

Bronwen, Bronwen, and I all liked this shift from the book to the movie about the young wizard who goes to school at Hogwarts Acadamy. Fun special effects and scary too. Alan Rickman and Maggie Smith are marvelous as teachers at the school, and everyone is really first rate. A fun story for all full…

Bronwen went to a sister city meeting for a project she wants to work on in Nicaragua so I went to the movies and saw this excellent, humane film about the inhumane role of the Stassi in East German life. A Stassi loyalist leads a surveillance of a playwright and his actress wife with orders…

Bronwen wanted this Sandra Bullock film for Chanukah and we obliged. A pretty lame story (you know its lame when Betty White is the best thing in the movie!) about a harridan editor who is going to be deported to Canada and fakes a marriage to her assistant.

Bronwen usually hates movies like this and she only went to it with me in the theater as a ‘favor’. Imagine my surprise when we both really enjoyed this very well-written, witty, well-made, sometimes visually stunning, curious sci-fi Marvel Comic treat. Well-acted by all, Paul Rudd reprises his role as Scott Lang, Ant-Man, enduring the…

Bronwen really hated this funny homage/satire of Vietnam War films with Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey, Jr, Nick Nolte, Matthew McConahey, and a bizarre and wonderful bit of work from Tom Cruise (who I usually hate). A film crew of imploding stars go to Viet Nam to make a film about the war. Very…

Bronwen liked this Japanese comedy more than I did; it really made her laugh out loud. A wimpy rental car clerk has an accident because his boss is baiting him. He runs into a car owned by a Yakuza and is forced to go to their headquarters. It explodes and he winds up going to…

Bronwen enjoyed this weak melodrama, a costume period piece about an illusionist (Edward Norton) in fin de siècle Vienna. I found myself less enamored of it. In love (of course it’s mutual) with a duchess about to be betrothed to the Crown Prince, he plots a way to free her from his clutches. The plot…

Bronwen and I watched this Felliniesque Argentine/Italian piece from the early 1990s for her class on Spanish language film and conversation. It stars Marcello Mastroianni in one of his last roles, and chronicles the tale of small village in rural Argentina (what do they do there, anyway?) A young woman whose husband has just died…

Bronwen and I really liked this Jonathon Demme remake of the Sinatra/Lansbury classic, and yes, we know we’re almost alone in that. This one featured Denzel Washington as the Gulf War major brainwashed by the Manchurian Corporation to make one of his soldiers, again Raymond Shaw played by Liev Schreiber, a congressman and then vice…

Bronwen and I loved this magical/historical look at post-Civil War Spain through the eyes of a little girl, her mom, her fascist stepfather, Republican guerillas, and the magical creatures of the forest and the underground. This is a stellar and incredibly painful film with some scenes of horrible brutality. But the magic is so powerful!….

Bronwen and I liked this lyrical fantasy action film from Jiang Yimou. It is a long piece about the battle between the forces of the state and the rebels who are expert with daggers and all aspects of martial arts. Beautiful people abound in this classic and it is quite a pleasure to watch until…

Bronwen and I liked this look at this film by and in part about Zana Briski as she worked with the children of prostitutes, alcoholics, addicts, etc in Calcutta’s red light district. She taught a group of them photography and then used their photos (many of them very good and very beautiful) to help get…

Bronwen and I liked this documentary about Al-Jezeera, the Arab satellite tv station that has so much audience in the Middle East and the Arab community in the US. It is both supportive and critical, acknowledging the bias of these Arab journalists (their despair and confusion on the fall of Baghdad is palpable) and the…

Bronwen and I both really liked this, Tom McCarthy’s second movie. His first, “The Station Agent,” was excellent. Once you get beyond the conceit of the situation, this is a stellar drama with fine acting and deeply humane plot-lines. Walter, an economics professor played superbly by Richard Jenkins who was nominated for an Oscar for…

Bronwen and I both really liked this Gus Van Zant biopic starring Sean Penn as the charismatic gay SF supervisor who was assassinated along with Mayor George Moscone. In his one year in office as the first elected out gay male official in the country, he helped transform the nation and his view of the…

Bronwen and I both really liked the acting in this French film starring Kristen Scott Thomas as a former prisoner released into the world after serving 15 years for killing her son. Wonderful acting by Thomas and all the principals and with a specially moving bit of work by Frederick Pierrot as the police parole…

Bronwen and I both really liked seeing this 1991 Chinese drama about a blind banjo player and his blind apprentice again. The master believes he will regain his sight when he breaks his 1,000th string. Hoping against hope, he moves forward with increasing intensity and desperation. Known as a saint, he resolves conflicts among clans,…

Bronwen and I both really enjoyed this well-made Charles Kaufmann look at a man (Jim Carey) who decides to have unpleasant memories of a relationship removed via a new process. (It won the Oscar for best original sceenplay a month after we saw it). Kirsten Dundst is in this as well. Some parts don’t fit…

Bronwen and I both liked this sad and well written boxing movie produced and directed by Clint Eastwood. A strangely loving and kind film about a horribly violent world populated by unusual men and women. It stars Eastwood and Hillary Swenk as a boxing manager and a woman fighter. This one won the Oscar for…

Bronwen and I both liked this painful yet straightforward story of Vera Drake, a straightforward working-class woman of 1950 who, for 20 years, ‘helped girls out’ of a pregnancy out of an understanding that they did not want to have a child, or with married women, more children. It’s not hard to get, but it…

Bronwen and I both just tolerated this light romantic comedy with so many untenable elements in it. Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton are both ok, although I am just sick of movies about rich people in the theater/movie/music/advertising world. Don’t these folks know any normal people?. A few very funny scenes, a nude scene by…

Bronwen and I both enjoyed this somewhat predictable Clint Eastwood-directed and star vehicle (he says it will be his last bit of acting) about a 70+ former autoworker/Korean War veteran, Walt Kowalski, whose wife has died, whose neighborhood has gone immigrant, and whose country has changed. All he has left is his mint 1972 Gran…