It takes a special kind of mindset to celebrate castration, and audiences confusing feminine empowerment with the crude hacking off of seemingly oppressive huevos are certain to get a bang out of Girlfight, the gritty debut feature from writer-director Karyn Kusama. Metaphoric or otherwise, there’s already a movie about deballing…
At first, you don’t want to admit it, because it seems somehow wrong–just too easy. After all, the woman on the other end of the phone line is not that woman seen every Sunday night on HBO, lamenting the sad, sorry state of her love affairs. She’s not an actress…
This song explains why I’m leaving home and becoming a stewardess,” says Anita Miller (Zooey Deschanel) to her well-meaning, overbearing mother, as the soundtrack begins to swell with the low hums of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. Just a few seconds earlier, Elaine Miller (Frances McDormand) had insisted she wouldn’t…
Some may find reason to embrace the romantic comedy Woman on Top as the nonsensical but sweet-tempered fantasy of two South American filmmakers who don’t understand life in this country very well but grasp all the magical powers of Brazil. After all, Brazil ranks second only to fashionable Tibet on…
Almost Famous is the movie Cameron Crowe always wanted to make–and the movie he tried to keep from making as long as he could. The writer-director insists he didn’t want to make a film about his wonder years as a Rolling Stone writer in the 1970s, because he didn’t want…
Aimée & Jaguar would be an unusual film under any circumstances, but that it was made in Germany proves somehow especially unexpected. Set in Berlin in 1943 and based on a true story, the movie concerns the love affair between two women: one a Jew passing as a Gentile while…
By day they drive their rippling torsos beneath the blinding desert sun, pausing intermittently to gaze sexily into the distance. By night they head for the open-air discos of Djibouti to get squiffy with the locals. When time allows they wash their socks, shave, and wander around in cylindrical white…
So a Jew and a Christian walk into the economically challenged valleys of Wales … No, it’s not a joke — not until the absurd, maudlin third act, anyway — but rather the essence of Solomon and Gaenor, the feature debut of British television director, documentarian, and psychotherapist Paul Morrison…
A month ago, R.J. Cutler thought he found a home for his child, one that would coddle and nurture his baby until it was ready to stand on its own two legs without wobbling or falling. A month ago, it all seemed so simple to the Oscar-nominated producer-director, who was…
Humans and their stories, my oh my. Somehow the familiar themes just keep coming around, ad infinitum. Of course most of them already have been captured and processed by Shakespeare. From the bitter young man to the crazy old king, from the flirty young thing to the malicious old crone,…
For his directorial debut, the British actor Tim Roth (The Legend of 1900, Pulp Fiction) has chosen a most disturbing subject matter: incest. And he presents an unflinching portrait of it. The War Zone isn’t easy to watch; uncompromising in its depiction of child abuse, it demands from its audience…
This is the beginning of The Way of the Gun you will not see, because it was written but never filmed: Two men, Parker and Longbaugh, urinate in an open grave in front of mourners, beat up a priest, steal organs meant for transplant, and shoot a dog. The introduction,…
On deadline to churn out an article about relationships, women’s magazine writer Kate Wells (Famke Janssen) reviews the history of her many doomed affairs, particularly her recently ended romance with artist Adam Levy (Jon Favreau). Filmmaker Valerie Breiman is a former actress who moved behind the camera with fare such…
Success is relative in Hollywood, like a third cousin twice-removed who doesn’t recognize you at family reunions, and doesn’t care to. Fame is so fleeting it has a month-by-month lease. Six years ago, Christopher McQuarrie was as famous as any screenwriter on the backlot known as Los Angeles. He had…
Turns out that when goodfellas don’t die (when they don’t get shot or blown up in a car or beaten to death with a baseball bat) they move to South Beach. They drive tour buses for the elderly, take orders at Burger King, give dime-a-dance lessons to old women in…
I’m not the celebrity type,” says Vincent D’Onofrio, and he does not lie. His is a household name in very few neighborhoods; it appears in film credits buried just beneath those of actors more famous, or just luckier. Rare is the filmgoer who utters the words, “Dude, let’s go check…
Too often baseball players are reduced to statistics, hollow numbers that resonate with the fetishist who drifts off to sleep counting home runs and career batting averages. Baseball demands such precision: It’s a team sport, yes, but ultimately it’s man against man, record against record, history against history. Look no…
Be cool, get chicks.” While that’s paraphrased and boiled down, it’s nonetheless the essential creed of Dex (Donal Logue), the corpulent connoisseur of carnality who lumbers through this debut feature from Jenniphr Goodman as if he’s Paul Bunyan and every woman in sight is a tree. Overweight and underemployed, Dex…
“I’m not the celebrity type,” says Vincent D’Onofrio, and he does not lie. His is a household name in very few neighborhoods; it appears in film credits buried just beneath those of actors more famous, or just luckier. Rare is the filmgoer who utters the words, “Dude, let’s go check…
This just in: Religious fundamentalism can be oppressive to women! That’s the less than startling message in the Israeli film Kadosh, which manages to draw out its obvious point for nearly three hours of monotony. Despite some solid performances and lovely visuals, Amos Gitai’s latest effort can’t overcome its static,…
When John Waters is at his best, as he is in his latest, Cecil B. Demented, he can drive you in in a way few filmmakers have ever managed to do. But recognizing that fact can sometimes be difficult in today’s market-driven context. In fact for the first half-hour or…
I have never read The Odyssey, A Tale of Two Cities, Pride and Prejudice, or, for that matter, the Bible. But I have read, from cover to cover, Occupation: Skateboarder, the just-published autobiography from Tony Hawk. I have never seen most of the films of Yasujiro Ozu, Robert Bresson, or…
