Sort by
Listing Movies
Display Movies
Billy Elliott (2000)
Inside every one of us is a special talent waiting to come out. The trick is finding it.
Filmmaker(s): Stephen Daldry

County Durham, England, 1984. The miners' strike has started and the police have started coming up from Bethnal Green, starting a class war with the lower classes suffering. Caught in the middle of the conflict is 11-year old Billy Elliot, who, after leaving his boxing club for the day, stumbles upon a ballet class and finds out that he's naturally talented. He practices with his teacher Mrs. Wilkinson for an upcoming audition in Newcastle-upon Tyne for the royal Ballet school in London.

Battle Dancer is a replacement comment. Though the dance was passable here, the story is so vapid and unembellished, I sat there looking for another movie. And I found one, battling to get out. It was clever and true, overlooked because of the mediocrity placed in...


Published August 27, 2023
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
Tagged: , ,
Cheeky (2000)
Filmmaker(s): Tinto Brass

While scouting out apartments in London for her Venetian boyfriend, Carla rents an apartment that overlooks the Thames. There she meet the lesbian hyper-horny real estate agent Moira.

Nonchalant Openness films are simply about the appeal of one character. That's all that matters. There seem to be two types: those that depend on the charm of attractive women, and those that have to work some other engagement. Often that's the acting challenge. I'm thinking in...


Published August 3, 2023
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
Tagged: , ,
The Big Picture (1989)
Film school prepared Nick for everything... everything but Hollywood.
Filmmaker(s): Christopher Guest

Hollywood beckons for recent film school grad Nick Chapman, who is out to capitalize on the momentum from his national award-winning student film. Studio executive Allen Habel seduces Nick with a dream deal to make his first feature, but once production gets rolling, corporate reality begins to intervene: Nick is unable to control a series of compromises to his high-minded vision, and it's all he can do to maintain his integrity in the midst of filmmaking chaos.

Guest Travels in Search of an Ironic Formula the child of intelligent film critics, Guest was poised to start a career in midstream, already aware of the dominance of irony in film. He would go on to develop and shamelessly exploit a specific, detailed formula...


Published July 27, 2023
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
Tagged: , ,
Bicycle Thieves (1948)
The Prize Picture They Want to Censor!
Filmmaker(s): Vittorio De Sica

Unemployed Antonio is elated when he finally finds work hanging posters around war-torn Rome. However on his first day, his bicycle—essential to his work—gets stolen. His job is doomed unless he can find the thief. With the help of his son, Antonio combs the city, becoming desperate for justice.

Stolen is a film about a child, one who is both IN the film and watches it. Hard as it is to imagine today, the world of film was had ideas on the surface, and lively controversies. Men took risks and sometimes survived. Here is an experiment...


Published July 27, 2023
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
Tagged: , ,
Beyond the Sea (2004)
In the era of cool, Bobby Darin was the soundtrack.
Filmmaker(s): Kevin Spacey

Based on the life and career of legendary entertainer, Bobby Darin, the biopic moves back and forth between his childhood and adulthood, to tell the tale of his life.

Keyser’s Desire it or not, watching film is an accretive process: each film provides a context and more for the next. One of those threads of continuity is the unfortunate fact that we see the same faces in many presumably different roles, as if there...


Published July 27, 2023
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
Tagged: , ,
Bewitched (2005)
Be warned. Be ready.
Filmmaker(s): Nora Ephron

Thinking he can overshadow an unknown actress in the part, an egocentric actor unknowingly gets a witch cast in an upcoming television remake of the classic show "Bewitched".

Tricky narrative is all the rage among Hollywood writers now. And the Ephrons are hip, so they go along and here we have a simply folded story. Simple folding, the kind anyone can do, is based on the simple device of a show within the show,...


Published July 27, 2023
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
Tagged: , ,
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2021)
Everybody loves Marcel.
Filmmaker(s): Dean Fleischer Camp

Marcel is an adorable one-inch-tall shell who ekes out a colorful existence with his grandmother Connie and their pet lint, Alan. Once part of a sprawling community of shells, they now live alone as the sole survivors of a mysterious tragedy. When a documentarian discovers them amongst the clutter of his Airbnb, his resulting short film brings Marcel millions of passionate fans, as well as unprecedented dangers and a new hope at finding his long-lost family.

Self with Shoes On I understand it, this was conceived in the breakup of a marriage. The voice and most of the script is by the disappointed wife, and the surrounding framing by the presumably inadequate husband. The actual events had some videos posted to YouTube,...


Published July 14, 2023
| Categorised as New Comments, Twos |
Tagged: , ,
Better Living Through Circuitry (1999)
A Digital Odyssey into Electronic Dance Culture
Filmmaker(s): Jon Reiss

A documentary about the Electronic Dance movement of the '90s. It is the first such full-length film on the topic. It was produced by Cleopatra Pictures and Entertainment Group, presided by Cleopatra Records founder Brian Perera. The film features interviews with BT, The Crystal Method, Electric Skychurch, Genesis P-Orridge, Frankie Bones, DJ Spooky, Roni Size, and DJ Keoki.

Honest Music, Dishonest Business trends are often shaped by strange overlaps in market forces. You have to have a steady stream of “artists” who are compelled to do their thing, driven primarily by an urge to express. We have that in this music, because the...


Published July 14, 2023
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
Tagged: , ,
Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
Three wonderful loves in the best picture of the year!
Filmmaker(s): William Wyler

It's the hope that sustains the spirit of every GI: the dream of the day when he will finally return home. For three WWII veterans, the day has arrived. But for each man, the dream is about to become a nightmare.

Slow Meditation on Observation treacly story hides some masterful filmmaking. Film is all about observation, except the observed usually contrive to make the observer feel unobtrusive. During this period, intelligent filmmakers were playing with the form so that often films were not only engineered observations but the...


Published July 14, 2023
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
Tagged: , ,
Before Midnight (1933)
Lurking FINGERS of DEATH reached out of the dim and ghostly past!
Filmmaker(s): Lambert Hillyer

A detective tries to figure out who killed a man who predicted his own death.

The Written Mystery early thirties was a time of great experimentation with the detective narrative, leading eventually to noir. This is one of those experiments, and a rather fine one. It has a framing device where an old cop is telling a young one about the...


Published June 30, 2023
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
Tagged: , ,
preloader image