Village Vidiot

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…

Say what you want about Mr Allen, Woody sure can write and direct an interesting film. Well acted, fascinating, and funny look at a dark character, a writer who’s had three wives and six shrinks. A pill popping, booze swigging, whorring, philandering, talented writer. Very funny stuff. It has the look of self-criticism, but may…

Saw this interesting, sweet and fundamentally manic fantasy about two smart but unhappy and socially inept 13-yos, one a “Khaki Scout” the other the daughter of unhappily married lawyers (Francis McDormand and Bill Murray) who find one another and run away. Scoutmaster Eduard Norton sets out to find them as does Sherriff Bruce Willis (having…

Sarah Polley (director of the fine “Away From Her”) choreographs and directs this look at her own family. Interviews and memoir readings with and her father, interviews with her brothers and sisters, home movies of her late mother and her friends, and home movie-like reenactments filmed by Polley recreate and follow her effort to find…

Saoirse Ronan stars as Christine (Lady Bird). McPherson a high school senior at a Catholic girls high school who desperately wants to escape Sacramento and flee to the ‘cultured’ climes of NY or Boston for college. This is a very well-acted, upbeat but unsentimental look at her coming of age as she battles her mother…

Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves in this nice little magical romance about a man and woman communicating and falling in love by sending letters to one another over from two years in the past and future. It seems to me as though the man’s father’s ghost is mediating (so to speak) through the magic mailbox…

Sadly, the

Sad, fascinating movie about an overweight pizza chef in upstate New York. Fine acting by the whole cast, but especially Debbie Harry and an amazing bit by Taylor Pruitt Vance. Liv Tylor and. Shelly Winters are also fine. Wonderfully sad film about family and loneliness. Very good. See this film!

Sad to say, nowhere near as interesting or playful as “Hellboy”. This sequel didn’t have the verve or intensity Skip it

Roy Perlstein is 30, single, and a comic actor struggling to break into the big time. He lives with his sister, Gail, a filmmaker, since breaking up with his non-Jewish girlfriend after two years because, …, well, she just wasn’t Jewish and he couldn’t handle it. His successful, well-to-do and utterly intrusive parents are busting…

Ron Woodruff. (Matthew McConaughey-Oscar for Best Actor) a Texas wild man, electrician, bull-rider, carouser learns he’s contracted HIV (an anachronism in 1985, that wasn’t known) and is given 30 days to live. Seeking AZT, he journey’s to Mexico and meets a doctor who convinces him to turn to treatments for the disease and its symptoms…

Rocky Horror for 2001. Very funny, loud look at gender bending for the 21st century. Based on the off-Broadway play, this looks at a failed m2f transsexual German operation patient as he/she tries to adjust to life as an American wife/impoverished divorcee/rock star/seducer/failure/success. Fun lyrics, fun visuals, interesting take on post-cold war world. Well acted…

Robert Redford stars in this one-man study by JC Chandor (writer/director) of an older man at sea (literally) struggling to survive as he loses his radio, takes water, is adrift in terrible storms, and must eventually abandon ship. There is no dialogue. It works because of Redford Some have argued that real craft these days…

Robert McNamara is the subject of this auto-bio-documentary from Errol Morris. Morris interviewed McNamara about his life, WWII, Vietnam, and much, much more. Words of wisdom?. Sometimes. Honesty? Sometimes. Fascinating?. Always. Horrifying? Frequently. The war criminal as thoughtful policy wonk?. The loyal follower who knows the policy is doomed and acts out of love? The…

Robert Duvall and Kevin Costner are fine in this slow moving western about independence, justice, and evil. Great gunfight, but too trite for its own good. And Duvall really is good. Costner’s relationship with Annette Benning doesn’t fit or work, but the movie is worth watching for Duvall’s total control, Costner’s delivery of trite lines,…

Robert Downey, Jr, Val Kilmer, Michelle Monaghan, quick witted, perhaps too quick witted, neo-noir piece about LA with a crook masquerading as an actor, a gay private detective, an actress and a producer running around one another. Very good dialogue but false through and through. Rather like LA itself. Too many side plays to be…