A woman with a body writing fetish seeks to find a combined lover and calligrapher.
Stop Making Sense I think Greenaway makes very smart films, and I'm really glad he's around. His intellect is always tuned to ideas about the visual, so we get a double measure: his images and his commentary on those same images. You should see this film...
Jakob arrives at the Institute Benjamenta (run by brother and sister Johannes and Lisa Benjamenta) to learn to become a servant. With seven other men, he studies under Lisa: absurd lessons of movement, drawing circles, and servility. He asks for a better room. No other students arrive and none leave for employment. Johannes is unhappy, imperious, and detached from the school's operation. Lisa is beautiful, at first tightly controlled, then on the verge of breakdown. There's a whiff of incest. Jakob is drawn to Lisa, and perhaps she to him. As winter sets in, she becomes catatonic. Things get worse; Johannes notes that all this has happened since Jakob came. Is there any cause and effect?
The Cloven Film is a constant war between the forces of narrative. On one side are the forces of personality: we simply like to think in terms of characters in situations. Few things are as rich as the human face, and nothing as compelling as curiosity...
Leo is a middle-aged writer of popular romantic novels who writes under a pseudonym, but despises her own work. At home, her husband, who works overseas, is distant both physically and emotionally. As she reevaluates her life and writing, Leo is led to an unexpected relationship with Angel, a sensitive newspaper editor.
Pedro's Layered Neuroses I’d travel half a day to see one of his films properly projected. Even though some of his fantasies are hard to connect to, he would never fail to deliver on the cinematic front. Most viewers think the story here too melodramatic and...
A young man and woman meet on a train in Europe, and wind up spending one evening together in Vienna. Unfortunately, both know that this will probably be their only night together.
The Movie Not Married I think the memory of this is better than the movie itself. I recently saw the sequel. It was one of the most delicate and perfect things I know so far as that shell of romance which is outside of intimacy. That was...
A high school basketball player’s life turns upside down after free-falling into the harrowing world of drug addiction.
Visions of the Other Side Unless you are just filling space until you die, you're going to want something out of experiences like this. The idea is supposed to be that someone can guide us to alternative worlds and report back with something useful or at...
Assassin Robert Rath arrives at a funeral to kill a prominent mobster, only to witness a rival hired gun complete the job for him -- with grisly results. Horrified by the murder of innocent bystanders, Rath decides to take one last job and then return to civilian life. But finding his way out of the world of contract killing grows ever more dangerous as Rath falls for his female target and becomes a marked man himself.
Chunky Mix This project fascinates me. Donner is legendary for taking “chunks” out of genres, attaching them to characters, and jamming them together to make hits. Sometimes it works, and sometimes the experiment gets out of hand. This one is a failure, but an interesting one. Start...
After World War II, Antonia and her daughter, Danielle, go back to their Dutch hometown, where Antonia's late mother has bestowed a small farm upon her. There, Antonia settles down and joins a tightly-knit but unusual community. Those around her include quirky friend Crooked Finger, would-be suitor Bas and, eventually for Antonia, a granddaughter and great-granddaughter who help create a strong family of empowered women.
Lined Up Some movies are there just to make you feel good about your self. And among those, most do so by showing you values you admire. Characters inhabit those values so we admire them as well. But the whole thing is engineered to parade Hallmark...
Someone does a nasty hatchet job on a San Francisco big shot and the Assistant D.A. takes charge of the investigation. Through a web of blackmail and prostitution involving the Governor, an old lover of the lawman emerges as a prime suspect and he has to deal with his personal feelings as well as the case.
Sprung Rites I think this may have been successful in its day, simply because of the sex. There is the appearance of some sex acts on the screen presented in a couple voyuerist contexts, but I think the target was a much deeper appeal: a whole...
Michel Negroponte, a documentary filmmaker, meets Maggie one day in Central Park. Maggie claims to be married to the god Jupiter and the daughter of actor Robert Ryan. Michel gets to know Maggie over the next couple of years, and attempts to use her often outlandish stories as clues to reconstruct her past.
Neptune’s Movie There is a story in this documentary, one about a very appealing woman. She’s so open we immediately give our heart before we realise how sick she is. She’s a mess, usually homeless, always hallucinating, fanatically fixated on her many dogs. That story is...
In 1965, passionate musician Glenn Holland takes a day job as a high school music teacher, convinced it's just a small obstacle on the road to his true calling: writing a historic opus. As the decades roll by with the composition unwritten but generations of students inspired through his teaching, Holland must redefine his life's purpose.
The Character Lab Ostensibly, this film is an emotional account of a place where strong characters are created. But what I find interesting is the story behind the characters in the film. Disney has the most advanced character lab in the world, a place which scientifically explores...
