What almost saves THE PROPOSAL from itself is a pair of performances by Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds that have a bold and bracing bite of snarkiness to them. Alas, the formulaic nature of the script requires that they both warm up to each other and in the process, while their characters find true love,… Read More »
THE SANTA CLAUSE 2
You have to admire the folks behind THE SANTA CLAUSE II. In this sequel-happy world, they didn’t rush right out to cash in on the success of the original. Instead, they waited eight whole years for a good premise before venturing back, and when you consider that in kids’ years that’s a whole generation, it was a… Read More »
3
3 is a German variation on the classic French bedroom farce. As such, in addition to the leaping from metaphorical bed to metaphorical bed with all the attendant cross-purposes and miscommunications, there are also robust and tantalizing morsels of semiotics, synchronicity, existential identity, with a romantic spirit at work that not only invokes, but also… Read More »
ADORE
ADORE, adapted from Doris Lessing’s novel The Grandmothers, is a compelling, dangerous meditation on the stifling nature of convention, and the fluid nature of emotional bonding when societal norms are put aside. At the center are two lifelong friends, Lil (Naomi Watts) and Roz (Robin Wright), best friends since childhood. They are not, as the… Read More »
THE APPOINTED (HAMEYU)
Daniel Wachsmann’s 1990 film, THE APPOINTED, melds the mystical and the profane creating an enigmatic tale of love and destiny, Set in the biblical world of the Kabbalah as lived in contemporary Israel, it is the story of Shemya, the prodigal son and grandson of rabbis who tries and fails to remove himself from his… Read More »
THE GURU
THE GURU is a fluffy confection that mixes the exuberance of Bollywood with measured lunacy of 30s screwball comedies and adds just a dash of The Joy of Sex to leaven the mixture with a millennial sensibility. Our hero is Ramu, an Indian dance teacher who was marked as a child by seeing John Travolta… Read More »
CHARLOTTE SOMETIMES
A woman rises naked from the bed of her lover, dresses, walks outside and up the stairs of her duplex to spend the rest of the night, platonically, with another man. With that opening sequence of CHARLOTTE SOMETIMES, Eric Byler engages his audience from the first frame of film in a way that is irresistible.… Read More »
TEKNOLUST
One of my favorite lines in Lyne Hershman-Leeson’s TEKNOLUST concerns the side effects of knowledge. They’re dangerous because they’re unpredictable. Once you learn something, paradigms shift, assumptions evaporate, and you’re forced to look at the world in a whole new way and maybe even re-think your whole life. Scary stuff. The film ponders the nature… Read More »
MOSTLY MARTHA
As Martha, the heroine-chef of the German film, MOSTLY MARTHA, explains it, she’s not obsessive. She’s precise. Being the chef at a trendy restaurant in Hamburg requires split-second timing and an attention to detail that to the untrained eye might seem obsessive, but isn’t. At least according to Martha. Of course, she’s explaining this to her therapist, the… Read More »
LOVE, ACTUALLY
LOVE, ACTUALLY takes upon itself the daunting task of presenting to us love in all its manifestations. Theres the fairy tale, the tragedy, the farce, the friendships and the betrayals all rolled up into a set of interwoven tales that charm but never pander, giving us the bitter with the sweet, the whimsy with the… Read More »
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- Next Page »