Village Vidiot

Anglo-American wizardry in a JK Rowling. prequel to the Potter cycle. This one’s set in NYC, a truly backward, morally loose and up-tight and corrupt place in the 1920s, where Newt (Eddie Redmayne) a wizard explorer arrives with a set of illegal fantastic beasts in his valise and all hell breaks loose. It’s clear why…

Andy’s on his way to college now, and where does that leave his toys?. In the attic?. Sent to a daycare center where they are abused and tortured by true little ones?. And how can they make this right?. A very nice, loving, funny and playful look at meaning and aging in a disposable world…

An ok if overly long piece about Marine snipers during the first Gulf War. Craziness and boredom, lack of meaning, false patriotism figure large, along with ill-health, depression and lack of meaning. No one kills anyone directly. Based on one man’s story.

An interesting, well acted, if sometimes overly melodramatic look at the life and loves of the DePres sisters, one of whom became a ‘wife’ and the other a brilliant cellist, married Daniel Berrenboim, and died of MS Painful and sometimes overly florid with the classical music

An important and sad film that is well acted but not very well written. Great work by Don Cheadle as the hotelier in Rawanda who saves thousands of Tutsis, a Hutu Schnindler, but he’s already there as his wife is Tutsi. Nick Nolte as the Canadian colonel who cares and isn’t allowed to fire. Very…

An accurate, overblown and over the top historical film about the Dreyfus Affair with Oliver Reed and Richard Dryfus. Very melodramatic in style. I did not like this one. Directed by Dryfus

Also known as “Cria Cuervos” or “Raising Crows”. This moody,. 1974, transhistorical drama by A Suares stars Geraldine Chaplin and a set of fine actors. Looks at a young Spanish girl’s trauma around her mother’s (Chaplin) death in the 1950s from a long disease and the philandering and emotional distance of her husband. Shortly thereafter…

All warfare carries with it the moral dilemma of civilian death, now politely termed collateral damage. Drone warfare examined in this film brings with it exceptional elements. In this film, we see some of those complexities and moral difficulties as British, Kenyan, and American team members stalk Al-Shabab militants in Kenya for capture on the…

Alfred Hitchcok’s classic Cold War tale of a NY ad-man, twice-divorced,. hard drinking, still tightly connected to his mother, caught up in a deadly spy game featuring American and foreign agents. Some marvelous tight comic and tense dialogue and plot twists. Featuring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Martin Landau, Leo G Carroll, Mt…

After Friday night’s talk-fest (“Before Sunset”) this is a comic-drama of silences and attitudes. Jim Jarmusch’s classic breakout film must have cost a few thousand to make but it stunned the film world in 1984. Willie (saxophonist for the Lounge Lizards John Lurie), a marginal gambling hipster in NY (and definitely not a part of…

After a horrible week that included two police killings of unarmed African-American men and the horrific assassination of five Dallas police, we were not in the mood for a heavy and painful film. Rather, we consciously chose a pleasant trifle of a fairy tale, a sweet and kind story of a group of Brit retirees…

A young French priest is sent, first to Quebec City (village) and then inland to a mission to the Hurons. His journey with his Algonquin paddlers and guides, his travail, and his faith all run up against the cruelty of the cultures he visits, their mutual hatred, their openness to sexuality, and his own obstinate…

A wonderful set of character studies that makes the alternative very normal and

A wonderful neo-realist film from Majid Majidi, the Iranian who also did “The Color of Paradise”. This is a superb and sad film about a young man, Lateef, and the construction site he works on. Afghan refugees are used and abused as cheap and illegal workers at the site. When one is injured, his daughter…

A well-done story of conjoined twins and their eventual separation. The death of one. The hooker who cares. Most of the acting is good, although the dialogue becomes quite stilted in parts.

A very well-crafted film that only occasionally

A very traditional sports-is-politics-brings-nation-together flick from Clint Eastwood. It stars Matt Damon (ok) and Morgan Freeman (who’s up for an Oscar tonight) as the captain of S Africa’s rugby team and Nelson Mandela (guess who plays which role?) Freeman is very impressive as the saintly NM who sees what others can’t and is willing to…

A very rough look at the hunt and killing of Bin Laden. It’s about Maya (Jessica Chastain) who hunts OBL for 10 years. Issues of bureaucratic lassitude abound, but the first half hour of torture has sparked a huge debate because the film states that a key clue is provided by torture in the early…

A very quirky comedy about the impact of a new gun on a New Jersey couple. An odd, sort of off base film, that’s nonetheless interesting

A very interesting and unusual documentary about Ray Johnson, a performance artist and fine graphic artist in the NYC scene during the 50s-90s when he finally committed suicide. Bronwen knew him a bit. Even his most intimate friends and lovers really didn’t know him. He remained brilliant, eccentric, idiosyncratic and opaque throughout his life, and…

A very good concept film with a weak ending. Sweet little Renee Zellwenger (in her first good role in ages) sees her nasty husband executed in a gangster-like hit/scalping and flips out. She imagines she is in the world of a TV soap opera and is leaving hubby for her ex-fiance, an MD on the…

A very funny, very well acted Woody Allen piece with a stellar job by Mira Sorvino (Oscar winning) as the hooker birth-mother of his adopted son. See this one

A very funny, insightful, touching piece of science fantasy from a Russian/French company about a window that lets people go between. St Petersburg and Paris. Self-critical in a sly way. See this one. Subtitled

A very disappointing film for several reasons. One, directed by and starring Robert Redford, this 2013 offering deals with a subject I care and know about, the radical antiwar movement of the 1960s and ‘70s and Weather in particular. It posits RR (73 or 74 when the film was made) as a former Weatherman gone…

A tough one to review because the presentation is quite ambiguous. Freddie Quell (Juaqine Phoenix) is an alcoholic, sailor/navy vet, suffering from war and booze induced trauma returning from WWII who can’t keep a job and is wandering aimlessly when he stumbles onto a yacht hosting Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a self-proclaimed prophet a…