Asher to Ashes I came to this quite by accident. I was looking for recent appearances by Jane Asher on a compilation ‘Gentlemen Prefer French and Saunders.‘ There is a bit, it turns out, at the end of the ‘bonus‘ collection on the DVD taken from...
The career of a classical ballet dancer is short and often riddled with injuries, and it takes a special kind of artist to submit to the discipline and strenuous regimen needed to dance with a world-class company. Follows the young and gifted Katja Björner through years of intensive training at the Royal Swedish Ballet School as she develops into an international ballet star.
Balance, Shoes Filmmakers have three impossible challenges. How do you film lovemaking? How do you film dynamics of a group at a table? How do you film dance? This last is particularly interesting from a viewer’s perspective. Because the others are so familiar, you just need a...
In the peaceful town of Snowfield, Colorado something evil has wiped out the community. And now, its up to a group of people to stop it, or at least get out of Snowfield alive.
Primeval Roles Whatever confluence of forces that were at work, when I saw ‘Lawrence of Arabia‘ I was dumbstruck. The sweep of the desert and its lonely complexities mapped thoroughly with the internal landscape this man revealed. Lonely, sexually obsessed but incompetent, determined to press through...
Professor Phillip Brainard, an absent minded professor, works with his assistant Weebo, trying to create a substance that's a new source of energy and that will save Medfield College where his sweetheart Sara is the president. He has missed his wedding twice, and on the afternoon of his third wedding, Professor Brainard creates flubber, which allows objects to fly through the air.
Cinematic Inner Minds 17 years on. Not a bad time to evaluate a film for merit. Supposing it doesn‘t work — this one doesn‘t — we have a chance to reflect on its place in history. Yes we have the beloved Robin Williams in his least...
Rebelling against his dreary life in a small Arizona town, salesman Nick abandons his girlfriend, Beth, and strikes out onto the highway in search of... something else. Encouraged by her best friend, Carol, Beth reluctantly accepts the romantic attentions of Sid, a local housepainter.
Drifting Love Sometimes — and I think it is often with sculptural films — the essence of the movie is concentrated in a few elements. There is a lot of surrounding story here, but it is there for only two things. These are things that need...
During a car accident, Vincent Eastman watches his whole life flash before his eyes, and he doesn't like what he sees. While maintaining the semblance of a marriage with his wife, Sally, Vincent has been carrying on with a mistress, Olivia. She's everything Sally isn't -- warm, passionate, carefree. So why can't he choose between the two, especially when his indecision is taking its toll on his daughter?
West Coast Architecture I admit to a weakness for any film that attempts to be architectural in some fundamental way. Even the failures — and they are mostly failures — are usually interesting. And this one features a redhead as well, a cinematic device that is...
Solomon and Tummler are two teenagers killing time in Xenia, Ohio, a small town that has never recovered from the tornado that ravaged the community in the 1970s.
She's Been Dead a Long Time ‘Man with the Movie Camera' meets ‘La Notte' meets ‘Harvey' through ‘Donnie Darko' -- and is as effective as any of them. And as tuned to video as other masters are to film. I was really impressed, and that's saying...
A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as her last chance.
The Daughter's Revenge Angelica Huston is the rare child of the film business who really does have talent. That talent, a cinematic poise and a grand frame destined her to be somebody important. But her work has been infrequent and often quirky. One imagines that life is...
Alice follows a white rabbit down a rabbit-hole into a whimsical Wonderland, where she meets characters like the delightful Cheshire Cat, the clumsy White Knight, a rude caterpillar, and the hot-tempered Queen of Hearts and can grow ten feet tall or shrink to three inches. But will she ever be able to return home?
Veronica Boff The ‘Alice’ stories are several things at once: a remarkable fantasy, a collection of intriguing jokes and puzzles, a Bulwer-Lytton influenced cabalistic journey, and off-hand satire. It is deep no matter what direction you plumb, and that's the magic of it. But most all, it...
When the secret notebook of a young girl who fancies herself a spy is found by her friends, her speculations make her very unpopular! Can she win her friends back?
Is About Itself This little film has been roundly criticised for being disjointed and amateurish. Well, it is disjointed: part of it is surreal allegory, part realistic morality play. Part of it moves with a natural rhythm while other parts seem to have been transplanted from...
