This early short from director Jane Campion concerns a group of teenage girls in the 1960s.
Her Very Own I recently watched “In the Cut,” and found its connectives strange and exciting. So I went to this to see them when young and raw. Supposedly, this is Campion’s first long form film. It didn’t quite work as a film the first time because...
A grieving couple retreats to their cabin 'Eden' in the woods, hoping to repair their broken hearts and troubled marriage. But nature takes its course and things go from bad to worse.
Contagious Brokenness Down the road from me is a coven of Christian filmmakers. It is a school and the purpose is to make films that evangelise. This fascinates me; generally their stories are about fighting the devil, a narrative that encompasses both what is in the...
Lyla and Louis, a singer and a musician, fall in love, but are soon compelled to separate. Lyla is forced to give up her newborn but unknown to her, he grows up to become a musical genius.
Yellow Bricks Heard There are three kinds of film that I value and treat differently: those who truly leverage dance, space or sound. I have not yet found one that exploits mathematical space, and would add that when it appears, probably from Ruiz and Greenaway who...
Aviation enthusiast Josephine rescues her suitor, Chubby, from an angry mob with the help of Slim and his airplane.
Dimensional It wasn’t until Tarkovsky that we got a truly dimensional awareness in our camera, and not until “Finding Nemo” that it hit the mainstream. There was a hiccup there with the first “Star Wars” and “Soy Cuba”, but it faded fast. Not that we didn’t always...
Brash hoodlum Tom Connors enters Sing Sing cocksure of himself and disrespectful toward authority, but his tough but compassionate warden changes him.
Graphic As I write this, “Shawshank Redemption” is IMDB’s number two top movie of all time. I find that absolutely fascinating. The prison movie isn’t quite a genre to itself because the story possibilities vary so. But there is a definite collection of cinematic devices that are...
In the not so distant future, Theodore, a lonely writer, purchases a newly developed operating system designed to meet the user's every need. To Theodore's surprise, a romantic relationship develops between him and his operating system. This unconventional love story blends science fiction and romance in a sweet tale that explores the nature of love and the ways that technology isolates and connects us all.
<strong>Wild Things One recipe for a whole narrative is to create a world, a character and a situation, each affecting the others while containing them. It is a hard, hard thing to do cinematically, but look at what has been done here. The world is conveyed...
In 1941 Hawaii, a private is cruelly punished for not boxing on his unit's team, while his captain's wife and second in command are falling in love.
The Rule of Threes My own estimation is that this is a pretty poor movie cinematically, with the exeption of the then-shocking juicy exuberance of the beach scene. But it is crackling good storytelling and that overcomes the wooden direction and uninspired acting. I’m a believer in the...
Dimensions This comment is of a threeD viewing in a well appointed theatre. Quite apart from all else, this is the best blocking of a 3D film I have ever experienced. If you can, have this experience in a proper setting. We used to have to...
A man who specializes in debunking paranormal occurrences checks into the fabled room 1408 in the Dolphin Hotel. Soon after settling in, he confronts genuine terror.
Shined Up I decided to watch this after Polanski’s “The Tenant” and that was probably a bad choice, because that film is precious. This one consists of three elements, typical of the King formula. The first is the expression of terror, shaped safely so that you can watch...
It’s the early morning hours in Stockholm, and the light is pale. A young woman is heading home after a night out. As she is waiting for the bus, a man sits down next to her. Her mind starts racing. When she gets home she can’t stop thinking about what could have happened. She lets her imagination carry her away – and this film takes us right inside her ecstatic fantasy.
Mass Transit This short is just barely listed in IMDB, with no reviews or ratings. It has no dialogue. The ‘story’ is simple: a young woman sits next to a guy at a bus stop and has a fantasy about having sex with him. On the...
