The Gathering Christie invented so much, and much of that has found its way into the film vocabulary. As with Conan Doyle, one can hardly work on her material without taking chances. Part of the risk is readers who will be upset with the translation to...
In coastal Cornwall, England, during the early 19th Century, a young woman who's come there to visit her aunt, discovers that she's married an inkeeper who's a member of a gang of criminals who arrange shipwrecking and murder for profit.
Piracy Hitchcock eventually made some transcendent films. But that would be way later than this period, where he did his work as instructed and on time. His contribution to cinema was the invention of the camera whose awareness deviated from the narrative bound in the actors. In...
On the way to meet with an independent artist in the South, newlywed art dealer Madeleine is convinced by her husband, George, that they should stop to meet his family in North Carolina. Madeleine's affluent lifestyle clashes with the family, but she befriends George's wide-eyed and pregnant sister-in-law, Ashley, who is nearing her due date. Through the family, Madeleine gains greater insight into George's character.
July This is ostensibly a movie in the old, Cassavetes tradition. I’m not a fan of Cassavetes, because he wasn’t very good at being himself. But what he indicated was a certain honesty, a sure translucency of character, beings so open that we inhabit them instead...
A dark thriller about a successful businesswoman and her young assistant who toy with a slow-witted businessman while stuck at an airport hotel.
The Disconnected. So much of life consists of invisible missed opportunities. Usually, they are invisible because what we see appears so competent that it seems only natural that it be as it is. This is such an opportunity. Our two characters here are presented competently. Everything else...
Starts out with a tribe of African cannibals imitating Native Americans. After this, they do the new Warner Bros. Looney Tunes theme "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down." Then a sloppy stuttering salesman knocks on their doors, and they bring him in and put him in a pot of boiling water. The queen of the tribe wants to see the man. She falls in love with him. They get married, but when the salesman sees he has to kiss the bride, he decides he'd be better off being dinner for a tribe of hungry cannibals.
Bamboozled I usually see these “banned” things and react variously. I think Amos and Andy, for instance is ennobling, and the often respected “Song of the South” disgusting in it racial typing. This one seems pretty offensive too, especially at the beginning where multi-hued cannibals prance around...
All hilarity breaks loose in this heartwarming coming-of-age comedy when three generations of Fiedlers collide in a crazy family reunion. As they prepare for the biggest Bar Mitzvah on the block, they begin to see that they're much more alike than they'd originally thought.
Unsacred Feather Suppose you are a fairly powerful man in TeeVee, and have some standing in the movie world. Suppose also that you have been a poor father to a son that is fairly incompetent at life. He wants to become a filmmaker, and you have...
Tara and Maya are two inseparable friends in India. Their tastes, habits, and hobbies are the same. Years later, the two have matured, but have maintained their friendship. Tara gets married to the local prince, Raj Singh, who soon succeeds the throne as the sole heir. After the marriage, Raj gets bored of Tara and starts seeking another female to satisfy his sexual needs. He notices Maya and is instantly attracted to her. He has her included as one of his courtesans, and is intimate with her. Watch what happens when Tara finds out and the extent she will go to keep her marriage intact.
Club Exotica One of the several foibles of the United States is that we have no indigenous sexual exotica. All sexual archetypes are inherited from predecessor cultures (excepting the competing African-American cultures), which is one reason -- I believe -- that US popular culture is so...
Shifty Sometimes you can see the notes of the writer in a film. It is as if he or she sat down with the intent of accomplishing certain things and wrote a story. But instead of the story, we still see the unerased list of goals....
An upper-crust family dinner is interrupted by a police inspector who brings news that a girl known to everyone present has died in suspicious circumstances. It seems that any or all of them could have had a hand in her death. But who is the mysterious Inspector and what can he want of them?
Inspecting the Story If you want to understand film, the first thing on the list is narrative structure, specifically cinematically structured narrative. If I were teaching in film school, I would introduce this subject in a semester’s worth of detective narrative. Nowhere are more tricks pulled, more...
Rookie cop, Amelia Donaghy reluctantly teams with Lincoln Rhyme – formerly the department's top homicide detective but now paralyzed as a result of a spinal injury – to catch a grisly serial killer dubbed 'The Bone Collector'. The murderer's special signature is to leave tantalizing clues based on the grim remains of his crimes.
About Being About This thoroughly mundane film is based on a story woven around a very intelligent idea. Many films these days are written by writers writing about writing. And so it is here. The detective story is a modern invention, invented by Poe and popularized by...
