Village Vidiot

Spalding Gray was a storyteller; this is Steven Soderbergh’s thoughtful reconstruction of Spalding Gray’s life and self. It is a non-narrative, low-key, documentary bio that looks at his stage life, his family background, and his creation of a self built around theater and his semi-autobiographical, candid, sometimes outrageous, fictionalized non-fiction monologues. These were, Gray came…

Sort of interesting little French film about a woman whose cat gets lost while she’s away on vacation. Her search for her cat corresponds to her searching for a life. The neighborhood provides what the glam world of models and makeup doesn’t. An ok, and sometimes funny film. It is very French and sometimes slow…

Sometimes funny, sometimes just sort of dumb Steve Martin-written and acted comedy about an nth -rate director making a film starring Eddie Murphy (sometimes great!) as Kurt Ramsey, a psycho action star. He doesn’t know he’s in the film. The really funny stuff involves “Mind Head” (Scientology) a bogus cult that dominates LA. That stuff…

Sometimes funny Woody Allen musical about the lives and loves of the rich, white, liberal New Yorkers he hangs out with. A couple of wonderful musical comedy numbers about love done to old standards, but a real piece of fluff all around. As usual, nice work by Alan Alda and Goldie Hawn. One funny aspect…

Sometimes funny film about a gay teacher, Kevin Kline, coming out to the community and himself even while he is about to get married. Overrated comedy with a few very nice touches as the community comes to support him

So yes, it was an homage to Hollywood musicals and movies past, and yes it was light, and yes, it was ‘clean,’ and yes everyone was young and beautiful, and yes it starred Ryan Gosling as Sebastian, the brilliant white jazz pianist committed to saving the art form, and yes it starred Emma Stone as…

So sue us, we all liked this silly Will Farrell vehicle about a human raised by the elves at the North Pole. It’s fun to watch, and dumb in the extreme. Good for all ages. Interestingly, the only ones who didn’t work in the movie (for me at least) were James Caan as Farrell’s biological…

Smart, visually pleasing adaptation of the O Wilde classic, it has great lines, but is fundamentally an empty look at empty people for whom form and money are everything. Funny, but not deep in any way. Two men who have fallen for two women who love the name Ernest. Obviously, it’s more important to be…

Slow, beautiful Chinese movie that looks at Chinese gangster culture and family in the 1930s as a metaphor about Chinese life and corruption today. Could be better, but worth seeing Subtitled

Six-part, Jane Campion mini-series set in and around Queenstown, New Zealand. This is a look at the darker side of New Zealand culture, one of meth and wild, gun-toting, homicidal, compound-dwelling families coexisting with civil society It paints a picture of New Zealand that might be Oklahoma or West Virginia. A 12-year old girl turns…

Six-part presentation of Hillary Mantel’s brilliant two-novel series (when is the third coming?) that tells an old story with a twist This retelling of the Tudor England of Henry the 8th (Damien Lewis) is seen through the eyes of Thomas Cromwell, brilliantly played by Mark Rylance who can do more with his eyes than anyone…

Silly and, in parts, very funny comedy with Jack Black and Mos Def about a Passaic, NJ video store. In depressed Passaic, Black becomes magnetized and clears all the images in the store’s video. Def, the clerk, and he set out to satisfy customers by making their own versions of the films (Sweding them). Danny…

Silly and occasionally funny redeux of the 1970s police show. A couple of laugh out loud pieces spoiled by fake seriousness to carry the plot along. Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson as S & H are funny together and Snoop Dog is cool as Huggy. Will Farrell as a truly bizarre con/coke dealer/gay voyeur is…

Set in early post-war Vienna, this noir tale of corruption and deceit stars Joseph Cotton, a young Trevor Howard in a great role as a British army MP Lt, and an astounding performance by still beautiful Orson Welles. The scene on the Ferris wheel where Cotton and Welles discuss the value of human life and…

Set in Budapest before, during, and long after WWII, this interesting German/Hungarian film chronicles the story of a loving meange a tois and the horror of the Holocaust. Lazlo runs a wonderful restaurant with Ilona when in comes Andras, a pianist of talent, who composes a song “Gloomy Monday,” that leads those inclined to end…

Set in a Bejing theme park, this slow-moving and depressing but very interesting Jiang Ke Zia study of the new China’s affect on workers. Cell phones and texting abounds in this new world of monorails, but the lives of people are vastly more tenuous than in earlier years. The theme park, a miniaturized world (who…

Set in 1957 as Sputnik circles the globe, this well-received sleeper of a historical drama chronicles the real struggle of four young boys from a West Virginia mining town to improve themselves and their chances of escaping the mines by exploring their fascination with rocketry and building their own rockets. Their interests take them off…

Sentimental comedy about the power of love, humor, and faith. Comic actor, writer, director Roberto Benigni places Italian Jews in concentration camp. Assimilated Italian Jew woos and wins Italian Catholic girl about to marry pompous bureaucrat. Their loving marriage produces a wonderful child until father and son are sent to the camps. The wife follows….

Seen at the suggestion of several friends, this gentle spoof of Start Trek and Trekkie phenomena is fun. A fine cast Tim Allen as the Shatner-clone, all ego, no sense of how to share with his costars; Sigourney Weaver as the beautiful space voyager on the ship who never does anything more than look good…

See this one on a big screen for its beauty, and that is substantial, but that said, it didn’t move either Bronwen or me, and she’s a big fan of the author. The film looks at the life of a burn patient found in the desert during WWII, and goes back and forth to show…

Sebastian Junger’s sequel documentary look at the troops he stayed with in Afghanistan’s Korengal valley. It focuses on the dynamic of men bonded and the experience of combat and war in their lives. As Junger notes in an attached TED talk, and as I think the film makes clear on its own, this is very…

Sean Penn has taken John Krakauer’s non-fiction look at young Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch), who hit the road and eventually starved to death (not really a spoiler) when he went alone into the backcountry in Alaska. He went to both learn about himself and test himself, to live without many possessions and the obsession of…

Sean Baker’s (co-writer, director, editor) excellent film focuses on the hidden homeless warehoused in the cheap motels just outside Disney’s ever-joyous Magic Kingdom. Theirs is a community of the marginal poor, one step away from the street itself, struggling to survive in the insanely purple Magic Castle Motel, a welfare hotel managed by Bobby played…

Screened for Jewish Film Festival. Very interesting interview biography with famous Soviet photographer who took pictures in WWII and post-war years. Jewish communist, a true believer, he nonetheless experienced acute discrimination due to Soviet anti-Semitism. Oddly, it ends in 1972 with his firing from Pravda for being Jewish, and you don’t find out what he’s…

Sci-fi super-anti-hero fantasy comedy stuff with lots of violence and action, this is about the birth of “Deadpool” as immortal grotesquely mutated superhero killer with a sense of dry humor and sharp swords. Leslie Uggams (yes, that Leslie Uggams) as his blind, coke-head, wackjob roommate stole my heart in this one. Otherwise, the humor began…