THE FILM:

Please Note: The images used here are promotional stills from the film and are not taken from the blu-ray.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives--which last year succeeded Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon and preceded Terence Malick's The Tree of Life in a proud lineage of Cannes Palme d'Or winners--is a film that exists, entrancingly, on several planes simultaneously. Its core story is a very simple one about the difficult but well-known familial experience of losing an aging and/or ailing relation, and it provides a sort of...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

Two people meet out on the job. Simple enough. She's an EMT, he's an ambulance chaser who works for a private social services agency that helps car crash victims fight insurance companies. She is naturally suspicious of him--his job is not one a good lawyer chooses for himself--and yet he is attracted to her, wants to prove to her that he's an okay guy. The dude convinces the girl to have coffee, the conversation goes well, and things start to take their natural course. Except they both have their secrets, and when those come to light, each will have to choose how acceptable they find the previously unknown character traits.

This is the basic set-up of Carancho, the new film from Argentinean filmmaker Pablo Trapero. Though it may sound like ...Read the entire review

Bag packed and ready to leave, Ulrik (Stellan Skarsg rd) stands blankly in front of a prison gate, having just completed a 12-year sentence. A guard appears, offering him a bottle of wine and some parting advice: don't look back. Go forth with purpose and determination! Life is about to begin again! The gate opens, and Ulrik takes about four steps before turning around, with a vaguely helpless look on his face.

A Somewhat Gentle Man is a quiet, peculiar comedy, and Ulrik is the slow and steady center around which the movie forms its wry sense of humor. Crossing the street from the prison to a roadside cafe, the score (by Halfdan E) fills itself with loud, jaunty big-band music, punctuated by trumpets, as if the journey is no less than a party for a man like Ulrik. At the bar, he hooks up with his former employer, an aging crime boss named Jensen (Bj rn Floberg). Jensen gives Ulrik money, a pla...Read the entire review

The Movie:

The name Hans Holzel may not make anyone stand up and take notice but those around during the pop boom of eighties will certainly remember him, likely under his stage name, Falco. Now the subject of a bio-pic from director Thomas Roth, well, even if this film isn't likely to cause a resurgence in popularity for the late artist, it'll at least bring him some attention.

The film begins when Holzel is a young boy in his native Austria where we see him at a piano recital, his musical talent quite obvious. Sadly, this is hampered by domestic disputes and abuse issues in the home, which causes Hans to rebel and to start skipping school. As puberty sets in and he hits his teenage years, he starts a band with a few friends, aping successful British acts like Bowie, The Rolling Stones, and more obviously The Beatles. His interests change, he experiments with post-punk sounds, an...Read the entire review

Picture Me: A Model's Diary:
Well, I made the mistake of watching one of the skimpy extras for this documentary before starting my review, and as usual, it altered my perceptions. I won't reveal exactly why this is so, except to say that what I thought was a fine behind-the-scenes documentary about modeling is in reality a very fine and revealing documentary about modeling. Movies about modeling and fashion are nothing new, in fact with reality shows like America's Next Top Model and others littering the airwaves, these things seem somewhat old hat. Credit filmmakers Ole Schell and Sara Ziff, then, with making yesterday's news breathe with vitality and interest.

OK, I will reveal the big secret, which is that aspiring filmmaker Schell and potential superstar model Ziff had simply begun chronicling Ziff's chaotic life in the name of making home movies. Sure, Ziff had, and has, a life ...Read the entire review

The Movie:
Daniel and Ana is a movie that aims to shock, and shock it does. It shocks subtly and artfully, with impeccable grace and talent, but at the end it seems that all it ever intended to do was disturb the sensibilities of the viewer.

The eponymous brother and sister Daniel and Ana (Dario Yazbek Bernal and Marimar Vega) are a happy pair of kids in a wealthy Mexican family, who are interested only in the things that well off kids the world over are. Daniel, not yet fifteen, is yearning for a new car that he can show off to his friends. Ana, several years older, is busy planning her wedding and canoodling with her fianc Rafa (Josemaria Torre-Hutt).

And then, there's the kidnapping. Daniel is driving Ana on some wedding related errand, they stop for a moment to find their way, and two men jump into the car with guns. The men know their names. They blindfold them, stuff them in...Read the entire review

Love Shack:
Without checking r sum s or anything, I'll plow on into my standard spiel about how mockumentaries are about the easiest way for directors starting out to get a movie into the can (except for horror movies, but that's an entirely different kettle of celluloid). Love Shack treads that well-worn path while skewering behind the scenes aspects of the porn industry. So maybe we knock off a point or two for originality, or taking the easy route, or something. But then we ladle on a whole bunch more points because this Shack is rocking with sharp wit, loads of laughs and a dizzy, true love atmosphere able to win over even the most jaded critic.

Why is the mockumentary such a seemingly easy movie-making method? From my perspective, it looks like another way to simply hang a bunch of short-form sketches on the barest of plot, and if things don't cohere there are numerous op...Read the entire review

THE FILM

Brotherhood walks on thin ice in Matt Bissonnette's "Passenger Side," an aimless indie production that hands much of its dramatic burden over to stars Adam Scott and Joel Bissonnette. Leisurely, but sporadically pointed, the picture is a conventional journey of estrangement, capturing a fractured relationship on a day-long car ride, where souls are poured out and secrets are revealed. It's nothing ingenious, but those in the mood for a touch of visual poetry to their familial torment might find plenty to enjoy about this modest drama.

Reluctantly agreeing to act as a chauffeur for his deadbeat brother Tobey (Joel Bissonnette), Michael (Adam Scott) prepares himself for a day of deception. A recovering drug addict, Tobey's been struggling with his disease for some time, burning off any sibling goodwill with Michael, though the ex-junkie remains hopeful for future ...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

Writer/director Florian Gallenberger's John Rabe tells the story of little-known historical figures who took a major part in the relief efforts during the Nanking Massacre in 1937. The event, alternately known as "The Rape of Nanking," is one of the most contentious tragedies of the second World War. The Japanese government to this day refuses to acknowledge that the massacre happened, but evidence shows that following the destruction of Shanghai, Japanese troops moved into Nanking and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens and raped untold numbers of the women. It's a brutality that has never fully been answered for.

At the time, many foreign countries had embassies and other concerns in Nanking. German national John Rabe (pl...Read the entire review

Among several thousand other great things in Terry Zwigoff's Ghost World, I'm most often reminded of the black-and-white short film shown in Enid's art class. It's a perfect summary of everything stupid, pretentious and meaningless about filmmaking, but in case you need a longer, more elaborate example, try Adam Sherman's Happiness Runs, a hypnotically slow, DeviantArt-ready "true story" about a bunch of lost and lonely kids stranded on a weird, mostly unexplained hippie commune.

Mark L. Young plays Victor, a relatively normal but extremely angry kid who hates his mother (Andie MacDowell) for being consistently suckered in by the town leaders (Mark Boone Junior, and, intermittently, Rutger Hauer). He's got a plan to leave, but he can't quite bring himself to set the ball rolling without his dream girl Becky (Hanna Hall) agreeing to come with him. While he waits for his eternally mercuri...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

Emily Abt's Toe to Toe has got a lot of problems, but its primary difficulty is that it doesn't seem to have any idea what it wants to be. A coming-of-age drama? A tale of high school rivalry? A Bend It Like Beckham rip-off? An examination of Muslim issues? An exploration of race and class in suburban D.C.? An indictment of teen sexuality? A big hip-hop dance-off? Only Abt knows, and she's not telling. What comes across in the final product is a turgid melodrama, a narrative that is simultaneously hyper-busy and a total slog.

The focus is on two girls, both lacrosse players at a suburban D.C. high school. Tosha (Sonequa Martin) is the black girl from the poor neighborhood, working hard on the field and in the classroom in hopes of getting into Princeton. Rich, white Jesse (Lo...Read the entire review

The Movie
With all due respect to Frances McDormand and Kate Hudson (well, mostly the former), I always felt that Jennifer Connelly was gypped out of a supporting actress Oscar nomination in 2001 for Requiem for a Dream. In fact, I think she was gypped out of a win (sorry, Marcia!). There's a scene late in the film where her character looks almost numb to the pain inflicted upon her both physically and emotionally, a sequence that resonated with me long after the modern masterpiece ended. I was reminded of that haunting sequence near the end of 9 to 5: Days in Porn, a documentary from German filmmaker Jens Hoff...Read the entire review

THE FILM

If "Drool" revealed itself to me by accident late one night on cable, I would probably think it was some long lost Harmony Korine picture, watching with a perverse curiosity to see how deep into absurdity the feature would plunge. However, "Drool" is not a Korine picture, which is a crying shame. Instead, the feature is a crude stroll into ill-advised indie filmmaking, hitting all the tenets of no-budget expression without a needed dose of insanity. It's a wily picture, but self-consciously so, making the pinched idiosyncrasy utterly insufferable at times.

Stuck in a loveless marriage to a rubber factory brute named Cheb (Oded Fehr, "The Mummy"), Anora (Laura Harring, "Mulholland Dr.") is lost in a rural Oklahoma haze, with two abusive children (Ashley Duggan Smith and Christopher Newhouse) helping her depression along. Moving next door is Imogene (Jill Marie J...Read the entire review

The Movie:

While a lot of people have forgotten about roller derby or remember it only as a distant blip on the radar of oddball seventies pop culture, a resurgence in popularity has been putting the sport back in the public eye over the years. Lainy Bagwell and Lacey Leavitt film, Blood On The Flat Track does a pretty solid job of putting into perspective why it's gaining momentum and what drives the girls who compete on the various teams that make up the various leagues do what they do. The focus here is on the ladies who complete in the Rat City Rollers league in Seattle, Washington.

As you'd guess, the movie documents the league's humble beginnings and then traces them to where they're at now. Attendance is up, more girls are wanting to join up and compete, and the bouts are now happening at a larger arena space after they outgrew the smaller space where they got th...Read the entire review

Part of me wanted to appreciate "Toe to Toe" for the way it aches to portray teenage life as more than just sassmouth and cartoon cliques. The rest of me wanted to take can of gas and a book of matches to the negative, preventing the film from ever being exhibited again. A demented, amateurish after school special, "Toe to Toe" is only useful as a means to observe a first-rate actress in the making. The rest is pure rubbish, delivered with all the subtlety of an air horn.

Tosha (Sonequa Martin) is an African-American girl struggling to survive her urban existence by attending a prep school, playing lacrosse, and dreaming of a college career at Princeton. Into her world comes Jesse (Louisa Krause), a Caucasian girl of privilege and hip-hop sensibility who uses sexuality as a wa...Read the entire review

Emily Abt's Toe to Toe has got a lot of problems, but its primary difficulty is that it doesn't seem to have any idea what it wants to be. A coming-of-age drama? A tale of high school rivalry? A Bend It Like Beckham rip-off? An examination of Muslim issues? An exploration of race and class in suburban D.C.? An indictment of teen sexuality? A big hip-hop dance-off? Only Abt knows, and she's not telling. What comes across in the final product is a turgid melodrama, a narrative that is simultaneously hyper-busy and a total slog.

The focus is on two girls, both lacrosse players at a suburban D.C. high school. Tosha (Sonequa Martin) is the black girl from the poor neighborhood, working hard on the field and in the classroom in hopes of getting into Princeton. Rich, white Jesse (Louisa Krause) is the ne...Read the entire review

It took me several days to figure out why Peter and Vandy doesn't quite work, but I think I've finally got it: the vision of its creator doesn't mesh with the execution of the film. Writer/director/producer Jay DiPietro has created another quintessential "21st century romantic comedy", one where the valleys of a relationship get as much time as the peaks. Specifically, his goal appears to be illustrating how the bad moods, nitpicking and fighting can be a natural, acceptable part of co-existing; a worthwhile struggle in order to get to the good moments. It's hard to pinpoint a single element that isn't working in DiPietro's favor, but something about his movie doesn't gel when the whole thing is put together.

One of the film's more interesting elements is that Peter (Jason Ritter) and Vandy (Jess Weixler), even by the end, are still practically strangers to the audience. We don't learn about <...Read the entire review

The Movie
If you find yourself asleep--or yelling at the screen--at the end of Give Me Your Hand, you only have yourself to blame. Knowing that it's French is ample warning, and for many viewers I imagine the film (a.k.a. Donne-moi la main) will be too slow, empty and (sometimes) annoying to enjoy. There's minimal dialogue--the first words (a prophetic "We're lost...") aren't spoken until more than six minutes into the film, which is filled with long stretches of quiet. There's also very little character development (we don't even learn the names of the two protagonists until 35 and 52 min...Read the entire review