Secrets, rumors and betrayals surround the upcoming marriage between a young dissolute man and virtuous woman of the French aristocracy.
Gaddafi's Italian you open to can be bigger and more fulfilling if you are careful to make those things few. Some films you can let permeate your soul, and others you must keep at a distance. Part of the experience of film, unavoidably, is how...
An Unworthy Opponent a film presents itself to you as a character, whole in definition, with whom you have to deal. This is possible either because the film has a soul that the artist has created, or because the filmmaker borrows one by hijacking a...
Based on the best-selling novel by Alessandro Baricco, this visually stunning film tells the story of a French trader who finds unexpected love far away from home.
The Folded Letter yet another movie with a delicious idea, but mediocre execution. The thing is boring in a pretty way and vaguely calls up romantic notions of singular love. You may not make it until the end, but I urge you to, because the...
Herzog and cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger go to Antarctica to meet people who live and work there, and to capture footage of the continent's unique locations. Herzog's voiceover narration explains that his film will not be a typical Antarctica film about "fluffy penguins", but will explore the dreams of the people and the landscape.
Death in the Ice is no denying the man. He has already changed me, and others. Interestingly, it seems that this is less by design than by accidents that occur because he chooses to put his camera in places where the cosmos is unstable. Sometimes it...
Antoine Sforza, a thirty-year-old young man, left his village ten years before in order to start a new life in the big city, but now that his father, a traveling grocer, is in hospital after a stroke, he more or less reluctantly accepts to come back to replace him in his daily rounds.
Background Clouds films are just ribbon. They do not intend anything beyond being a simple palliative. You’ll find these in the ‘feel good‘ section. In this case, we have our man, unhappy with himself and with father and girlfriend problems. By the end he will...
A God-fearing bluesman takes to a wild young woman who, as a victim of childhood sexual abuse, is looking everywhere for love, but never quite finding it.
Too Costly films cost the viewer something. We have to relinquish certain core parts of ourselves in a negotiation with the filmmaker, as a contract to collaborate with him/her in a shared adventure. Never, ever is this cost slight; in fact the ability to place...
The Adventure of the Speckled Bandwidth was assaulted by multiple episodes of this on a transatlantic flight, and got sick. It is typical TeeVee fare in the way it reduces possibly complex dynamics of all kinds to billboard simplicity. Abstraction is always the game with theatrical...
The possibility of Oscar gold holds the cast and crew of an independent film in its grip after the performance of its virtually unknown, veteran star generates awards buzz.
The Posey Poses has a very narrow vision, so the game is seeing the various ways he can surround it. He and all his friends are performers with at best b-list careers, and mostly less successful. They all have some talent and commitment but find...
A drama focused on the friendship between a high-functioning autistic woman and a man who is traumatized after a fatal car accident.
Brain Freeze the folding is just too contrived. It panders, insults with its obviousness. Here we have a professional man, who in a car accident loses the child he has but has never met. The story arranges for compound suffering. Then we have the loss of...
Guy and his sister grow up on an island. His domineering mother keeps watch over everything from the tip of a lighthouse, his eccentric father experiments in the basement laboratory. Then there are the orphans, on whose heads the adoptive parents later find puzzling wounds. Another brother and sister pair is sent to the island: the Lightball Kids, two detectives that are meant to bring light into the darkness. The brothers and sisters are all yanked into the emotional roller coaster of first love, while something cryptic comes to light in the parents' house.
Jalapeno Water the problem: Maddin is an impressive filmmaker. He is important and has made at least two films that are important to me. But he is not a very interesting person. So when he applies his mastery to making a personal film - a...