A footman seduces a count's daughter. Adaptation of August Strindberg's famous play.
A Man and his Mistress what love does, when yearning crosses boundaries and makes someone see another as better than they really are. Here, it ends in suicide. I'm talking about Mike Figgis' view of girlfriend Saffron. A reliably trenchant play: a competent footman; a very...
Set during Japan's Shogun era, this film looks at life in a samurai compound where young warriors are trained in swordfighting. A number of interpersonal conflicts are brewing in the training room, all centering around a handsome young samurai named Sozaburo Kano. The school's stern master can choose to intervene, or to let Kano decide his own path.
Beautiful Face of the Senses" was an insidiously effective film: it tricked us into an obsession over sex with its frank and open explicitness. Thus, we became part of the story about sexual obsession. This does something similar, in a masterpiece of sorts in audience manipulation....
Otto and Ana are kids when they meet each other. Their names are palindromes. They meet by chance, people are related by chance. A story of circular lives, with circular names, and a circular place where the day never ends in the midnight sun. There are things that never end, and Love is one of them.
Geometric Cosmologies is so beautiful, it hurts. Tender. It is a lacy filigree in what it is, essentially a story about longing, urges and space. But that filigree extends to the nature of the space that surrounds the story on screen. And the motion of weaving...
All bets are off when shady homicide cop Rick Santoro witnesses a murder during a boxing match. It's up to him and lifelong friend, Naval intelligence agent Kevin Dunne to uncover the conspiracy behind the killing. At every turn, Santoro makes increasingly shocking discoveries that even he can't turn a blind eye to.
The Eye That Lies is a wonderful experience. Never mind that the acting is poor and the story weak — that was never the point. This film was made because DePalma knows how to make his camera dance and wanted to make a film based...
Daryl Zero is a private investigator and—along with his assistant, Steve Arlo—he solves impossible crimes and puzzles. Although Daryl's a master investigator, he doesn't know what to do with himself when he's not working; he has no social skills, writes bad music and drives Steve crazy.
Son of What are only a few ways into a story. One of these is to embrace the narrator and carry the viewer through their eyes and the engagement of the world that gives us love. Here, Kasdan does this while referencing Holmes, where this...
A young married couple faces a serious break-up when the husband is caught committing adultery with a prostitute.
Prophylactic Intolerance all want to be teenagers and some films are built to pander to that drive. The teenage condition is one in which all things are subservient to sex, but sex isn’t something you do. It isn’t something that is a component of a relationship...
Matko is a small time hustler, living by the Danube with his 17-year-old son Zare. After a failed business deal he owes money to the much more successful gangster Dadan. Dadan has a sister, Afrodita, that he desperately wants to see get married so they strike a deal: Zare is to marry her.
Sunflower Seductions was recommended by a friend, as the best film she knows. This is an intelligent woman, so I endured some frustrating months trying to find it in the US, finally to see it on an overseas trip. It wasn’t a great experience for me,...
Class another example that just plodding through a novel has little to do with making a tenable film. This one just thrashes through the story with nary a nod to cinematic necessities. But it does have Derek Jacobi, an actor with so much presence it...
Bettie Page - famous for her pin up modeling - and other glamour girls appear in bondage photos and short films. These unique classics are the first film sources of today's fetish and S&M scene and appear nowadays surreal, tender and joyful.
The Previous Edge all things, there is an inside and an outside and that defines edges. Not edges between, but edges beyond which you can see the difference. There are, I suppose many domains of which this can be said of sex, and the various rituals...
A dangerous love affair inspires a director to create the most spectacular and boldly seductive dance film ever made.
Making Film Dance love this stuff. This film has weaknesses, but the ambition is so grand one can forgive, at least in deciding to watch. The general problem is mixing film and dance. Rarely, oh so rarely is it done well. The stock choices are two:...