Village Vidiot

A superb John Sayles film about a small-town Texas sheriff searching for the truth about his father, himself, and his past. Great acting all around, wonderful writing, many plot twists. I thought it the best movie I saw that year, and indeed, in many years. One or two clunky little bits of excessive sincerity, but…

A strangely underwhelming and disappointing feature detailing the struggles of a young girl to bring the last “golden compass” to her scientist Uncle in the frozen north of a parallel universe. She has to fight against the “Magisterium,” an authoritarian religious system a la Catholicism-cum-Stalinism, especially in the person of Nicole Kidman’s Mrs Coulter She…

A small comic drama about three unemployed guys in Jersey City who try to turn to crime, but can’t cut it at all. Nicely acted with some good bits, especially by Vincent Gallo (boy, is this guy good!), William Forsythe, and Francis McDormett (she can do anything!). A nice, if occasionally dumb and funny movie…

A slow, sad, painful look at a 15-year old Chinese girl sent from the city to the countryside. It is about her betrayal by the party (sent there for no reason, sent deeper into the steppes for even less reason) and the local party men who sexually use her as she desperately tries to get…

A silly bit of well-meaning fluff about beauty contests and a female FBI agent sent undercover to find out who’s trying to sabotage the contest. Fun work from Sandra Bullock and Michael Caine (as the pageant consultant who makes her the woman she has inside her) but it’s otherwise not worth much at all. A…

A silly and very funny movie about these two cartoon morons on the road. I really liked it!

A rare film for me that I disliked enough that I decided not to finish. I found the script and the acting wooden, although I have increasingly enjoyed both Daniel Craig and Adam Driver. Sadly, a boring heist film set in the big money arena of car racing. I took it home because it received…

A not very funny French comedy about adultery. I found it depressing, but that may just reflect my fear of adultery and bisexuality these days. Subtitled

A nicely acted film that is more fun to watch than to think about. It’s literate, intelligent, very funny, and strangely false. This film stars Michael Douglas as a very stoned, successful novelist with terror in his heart. His younger wife (#4?) leaves him. He teaches writing and has, in his class, a disturbed and…

A nice (not great, but nice) and engaging remake of the 1974 classic Disney dog flick/novel, this follows a young boy through the joy and tragedy of owning a pair of wonderful hunting hounds. Set in hardscrabble rural Oklahoma in 1935, a boy earns enough to buy a pair of coon-hunting hounds and becomes very…

A marvelous Chinese/Hong Kong film about a couple (man and woman) who get together and have an affair when they learn their spouses are trysting their business trips away together. This is a stately, beautifully photographed and chaste drama about love unrealized and opportunities lost due to propriety and obligation. A lovely film. See this…

A lovely, sad, funny, humane Italian story (pure fiction) about a postman and Pablo Neruda. Handled with grace, it skirts the borders of mawkishness but stays calm and, unlike “Cinema Paradiso,” avoids excessive melodrama. See this film!. Subtitled

A look at Auschwitz today through the eyes of Sven, a fictional German youth serving his national service by working at Auschwitz helping out. It is a remarkable film by Robert Thalheim, the auteur/director who spoke at the screening. A film about the contradictions of living history and the commercialized holocaust shot in hell itself….

A good, troubling, and linear thriller about the effect of finding $44 million on four normal (and abnormal) folks in the Midwest. A tale of deceit, despair, loss, self-delusion and self-destruction. Painful to watch but worth staying with this one. Well acted by Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton (will he always play retarded rurals?), and…

A good, entertaining presentation about the Irish struggle to overthrow English rule and the internal struggles over liberation and the creation of the Irish Republic. Well acted by Liam Nesson and Adain Quinn. Alan Rickman as DeValera, the weak pretentious self-serving villain, starts well, but becomes too wimpy/crazy to be real. Julia Roberts does nothing…

A good prequel for the series it follows the origins and identities of Kirk, Spock, Uhuru, Checkov and Sulu in an alternate universe transformed by the future. The actors bear an uncanny resemblance to the old gang and are loose and comfortable in front of the cameras in ways the older group never was. Nimoy…

A good nature documentary about the emperor penguins of Antarctica. These individuals and this community struggle to reproduce in one of the most hostile environments in the world. Well photographed and narrated by Morgan Freeman, although they are anthropomorphized too much. Still, see this one

A good if hokey piece of work about two old men who become real uncles to a young boy in Texas. Fun stuff with Robert Duvall and Michael Caine (especially Duvall) doing very good work. Way too pat, politically incorrect, and fun to watch, it’s nonetheless romantic, full of silliness and racial stereotypes, and good…

A good film to see on the ‘Glorious Fourth’. We both liked (?) and appreciated this Oscar-winning Best Film from last year documenting the travails of Solomon Northrup. (Chiwetel Ejiofor), an African-American free man stolen through nefarious means and sold into the sickness of racial slavery in the Deep South, a land of cotton and…

A good Czech film about skirt-chasing bachelor who makes a marriage of convenience with a Russian woman as the collapse is happening in Eastern Europe. She then splits on him and leaves him with her 5-year old son. Works on a variety of levels. He’s a musician who can’t have serious relationships, who becomes an…

A good Australian movie about 20-somethings. Nice turn about “true love”.

A funny and fine French film about a shy young woman who sets out to help the people who are around her. I can’t think of names off the top of my head, but the star is gorgeous and wonderful, and the cast is really fine. A very humane tone. See this one!

A fun, easy film about gen-x men and women in western Massachusetts with very good acting. Nicely done bits by Matt Dillon and John Cusak.

A fun claymation piece about chickens escaping from a chicken farm. Evil humans, good chickens. Voices by well-known actors. “Great Escape” and “Treblinka” by chickens. Wonderful technical effects in the claymation. B- like the film, although she was sort of scared at first

A fun and interesting film by Jim Jarmusch starring Bill Murray as a man of many silences. Some people have raved about this film but, while we enjoyed it, I think it’s been praised a bit too much because Murray got stiffed with other Oscar awards. Anyway, when his girlfriend leave him, Don Johnston—Don Juan…