THE FILM:

To the world at large, the words "performance art" are probably just as likely to bring to mind images of The Dude's comically timid, enthusiastic but inept dance-piece-performing neighbor in The Big Lebowski, or perhaps Steve Buscemi's overrated stand-up comic in Scorsese's Life Lessons -- stereotypes of the pretentious, otherwise failed artist dressing up their inadequacies as "performance" -- as they are to conjure an actual performance artist like Yugoslavian-born Marina Abramovic, whose work over the last 40 years has a depth and seriousness to it that rival any painting, sculpture, or...Read the entire review

When low-rent hitman Walter (J rgen Ri mann) accidentally kills the wrong person, his boss tells him he's gotta take a break. Against his better judgment, Walter takes a tip from a friend about a job up in the mountains some 2,000 miles away, on the promise that it will be "like a paid vacation." Upon arrival, his car gets stuck in the snow, his obnoxious partner Micky (Thomas Wodianka) gets on his nerves, and Berger (Reiner Sch ne), the man with the assignment, isn't there, only his wife Sibylle (Eva-Katrin Hermann). Walter and Micky are left to twiddle their thumbs waiting for Berger while Sibylle causes trouble, and events quickly spiral out of control.

Writing out the summary of Snowman's Land makes it sound sort of like In Bruges, and for a twenty or so minutes, the film has a nice understated absurdity to it. After realizing he's shot the wrong guy, Walter gets the right target in...Read the entire review

THE PROGRAM

Honestly, had I known the original translated title of the novel "The Man from Beijing" was based on was called "The Chinaman," I'd have likely saved myself three-hours of near boredom and disbelief. The novel, a product of Swedish crime novelist Henning Mankell, best known for his "Wallander" series was adapted for German TV in two, 90-minute installments much in the fashion that the original "Dragon Tattoo" trilogy was created for television before being edited for time to serve as theatrical releases. There are two more huge similarities between "The Man from Beijing" with that iconic film series, one being the series' lead actor Michael Nyqvist playing a supporting role in this film an...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

Please Note: The stills used here are taken from promotional materials, not the Blu-ray edition under review.

If you're anything like me, when a mention of a new movie about an inspirational teacher pops up, you immediately stop listening and let your eyes wander to the next title on the marquee. Yeah, yeah, I know. Children are our future, and stories that celebrate the possibilities of learning and camaraderie will make for a better tomorrow. I get it, I really do--but I'm old. I have no future.

Thankfully, all the talk that surrounded Monsieur Lazhar for the past several months (it played in Portland, where I live, until just a couple of weeks ago), finally got the better of my cynicism, and so I decided to g...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

Look, puppies are cute. This is not a unique opinion--entire corners of the Internet are devoted to the notion, and profitably--but it goes a long way towards explaining why Quill: The Life of a Guide Dog, a Japanese family film that's nearly a decade old, made its way to our shores earlier this year. Simply put, it features a lot of footage of cute puppies, and (later) of a rather amazing Golden Lab guide dog. You don't see a lot of live action foreign family films making their way here, presumably because a young audience can't read a lot of subtitles. But then again, cute dogs can trump those concerns.

Based on the novel The Life of Quill, The Seeing-Eye Dog, the film introduces us to Quill as an adorable puppy, one of a litter whose owner badly wants to be guide dogs. "Their mom is too ordinary," the trainer tells her. "The qualities we're looking fo...Read the entire review

THE FILM:

Please Note: The images used here are provided by Music Box Films and are not taken from the Blu-ray edition under review.

The British director Terence Davies is best known for his more or less directly autobiographical works -- an early trilogy of remarkable short films as well as the two masterpieces that have cemented his place among the greats, 1988's Distant Voices, Still Lives and 1992's The Long Day Closes, in addition to his wonderful, personal document...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Miss Minoes is the 2001 (or 2002) Dutch film starring Carice Van Houten (Game of Thrones, Black Book, Black Death) that's based on a popular children's book about a cat that turns into a woman. I am not familiar with the book, so any liberties that were taken with the film will have no bearing on my review. In the film, Minoes (Van Houten) is a cat that drinks from a spilled chemical bin and magically turns into a beautiful woman. It's a fish, I mean, a cat out of water story...in that regard.

Tibbe (Theo Maassen) is the hapless journalist who gets no respect and is never taken seriously due to his awkwardness. He's also unable to crack any stories for the newspaper that he works for. His only friend is Bibi (Sarah Bannier), his landlord's daughter. Together, they hang out and ride around town and grab ice cream at the local ice cream shop. Read the entire review

The Films/Miniseries:

THE FILM:

In attempting to sidestep the wary expectation of musty, library-bound decrepitude that is the burden of any literary biopic or period piece (and this film is both), the people responsible for Young Goethe in Love (i.e., director Philipp Stolzl and cowriters Christoph Muller and Alexander Dyoyna) have steered it to the opposite extreme, making the kind of bargain that their subject -- one of the Faust legend's best-known and most important bards -- would recognize all too well. They've pulled out all the stops in order not to scare off the kids, and they have in the process almost entirely betrayed anything valid or worthwhile they could have made of the project (and even backhandedly insulted the pandered-to, supposedly post-literate young ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

It was only a matter of time before Hollywood or those outside of Hollywood and for that matter, the United States, set their sights on French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his meteoric rise as the most recent and current President of France. The Conquest or as it's aptly titled La Conqu te in French is literally everything that title implies and more.

Nicolas Sarkozy (Denis Podalydes) is on his way to accepting the Presidency of France, but his wife Cecilia (Florence Pernel) is nowhere in sight and his insecurities begin to creep in. It's been a hectic five years leading up to this moment and his significant other is about to leave him hanging at his own inauguration.

Such is the life of the most powerful man in all of France. The previous five years were filled with nothing, but backstabbing, gossip, treachery, etc., but it was all in the name of reaching ...Read the entire review

Based on a series of Belgian comic books, The Heir Apparent: Largo Winch (or just Largo Winch in countries where the character is popular) is a globe-trotting action-thriller filled with car chases, steamy romance, and diabolical double-crosses. Largo (Tomer Sisley) is a dashing young man with a penchant for the extreme and doing things the hard way; after initiating a high-speed escape from a prison he's already being let out of, he discovers that he's just inherited a multi-billion dollar empire. It sounds like fun, but that's exactly the tone the film is oddly lacking.

Take Largo himself, for example. There's no denying that Sisley has a detatched cool that seems to fit the character, but that indeterminate level of emotional enthusiasm is the only note that director J r me Salle ever asks Sisley to play, over and over again, for the entire 108 minute runtime. Largo beats up some thu...Read the entire review

The Movies:

Written and directed by comic book impresario Joann Sfar in 2010 (making this his directorial debut feature), Gainsbourg - a Heroic Life (or, if you prefer the original language title, Gainsbourg -Vie Heroique) takes on the fairly unfilmable life of the late, great French musician, singer, songwriter and ladies man Serge Gainsbourg. The film begins during the German occupation of France during the Second World War where a young man named Lucien Ginsburg (Kacien Mottet Klein) studies art and hopes to be a painter despite the incessant pestering from his father that he learn to play the piano. Eventually the young boy grows up (at which point he's played by Eric Elmosnino) and makes a meager living as a piano player in a nightclub, and once his music career takes off, he gives up painting.

Through chance, Lucien makes some valuable connections within the Frenc...Read the entire review

Entering the arena of political biopics is the recent French film The Conquest, a dramatized take on Nicolas Sarkozy's ascent to the Presidency. Written by Patrick Rotman and directed by Xavier Durringer, it chronicles the period between 2002 and 2007, from the moment that his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, tried to sideline the ambitious Sarkozy by making him the Minister of the Interior instead of Prime Minister to the election day five years later when Chirac was out and Sarkozy moved in.

Denis Podalyd s (Park Benches) stars as the politician. He plays Sarkozy as a gruff little man, stooped in the shoulders, constantly glowering, and gesticulating like a Scorsese gangster. The Conquest...Read the entire review

Mozart's Sister(otherwise known as Nannerl,la soeur de Mozart) is a combination bio-pic with historicalfiction. The hard part is to know where to draw the line... or where thelineeven exists in the first place. The story focuses on Nannerl, a teenagegirl,who wants to c...Read the entire review

THE FILM:

Please Note: The images used here are promotional stills and are not taken from the Blu-ray edition under review.

What a fitting, masterful close to an illustrious, impassioned, and cheeky career is the late Ra l Ruiz's last film, Mysteries of Lisbon! The expatriate Chilean filmmaker, who left his homeland after the fascist Pinochet coup in 1973 and worked in Europe over the latter part of his career until his death last year, had a filmography comprising more than 100 movies, and this film fortuitously has all the confident ambition and accomplishment it needs (and then some) to feel like a summation and a peak. It is as huge and teeming with life as one of the thicker Charles Dickenses or Victor Hugos (and was...Read the entire review

Kinshasa, Africa. The city is plagued with a gas crisis. Cars sit in driveways with empty tanks, and city streets are lined with service stations covered with cardboard signs indicating dry pumps. Sensing a chance to get incredibly rich for a minimal amount of work, Riva (Patsha Bay) steals an entire shipment of gasoline and hides it with his associate G.O., who plan to ride the wave of supply and demand and then sell at the last minute, maximizing their profit. While Riva waits to cash in, he meets up with his friend J.M. (Alex Herabo) and hits the town, but between his big-ticket heist and interest in red-haired beauty Nora (Manie Malone), girlfriend of a local mobster named Azor (Diplome Amekindra), it's not long before he's stirred up a potentially deadly amount of trouble.

Gritty violence, neck-snapping twists of fate, and sprawling, epic scope are among the hallmarks of the gangster genre, but ...Read the entire review

If movies about famous people are to be believed, the old saying is true: the stars that burn brightest burn briefest. In the case of French songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, the fires of his genius were pretty intense, and he had an excellent artistic run; however, judging by the recent film about him, Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life, his trajectory followed the predictable arc of struggle, success, and screwing it all up.

Eric Elmosnino plays the singer. Gainsbourg was infamous for his unconventional looks--big ears, big eyes, big nose--something he wasn't afraid to play up, especially as he developed a Cassanova-like public image. Indeed, in A Heroic Life, we see the young Serge, back when he was Lucien Ginsburg (and portrayed by an excellent child actor named Kacey...Read the entire review

THE FILM:

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

Set in provincial France in the late 1970s, and addressing the migration of women from home to workplace and on up through the glass ceiling, Potiche is the second proudly artificial period melodrama-verging-on-musical that French auteur Fran ois Ozon has made with Catherine Deneuve in the lead; its predecessor was 2002's delectable, similarly feminism-lite-themed 8 Women, with which Potiche shares its giddily color-coded, satirical, light-as-a-feather nature. But the film harks back even further in Ozon's career, to 2000's Read the entire review

AntonChekhov is one of the greatest writers to engage readers inintellectual debateand personal contemplation. Through his many acclaimed and cherishedworks hehas found a dedicated fan-base that will always be able to recognizehispowerful words and the deep meanings that can be found behind them. AntonChekhov's The Duel is a film adaptation of one of the writer'snovellas andone which capably captures a sense of Chekhov's unique style.

Thestory israther complicated to dissect as there are many layers and yet thecentral ideaof the story i...Read the entire review

THE FILM

What goes up must come down, but the life and times of felon Jacques Mesrine provide a splendidly cinematic finishing move with "Mesrine: Public Enemy #1." The second half of an explosive bio-pic, the closing chapter carries a bleak tone, resembling a death row march, but the volcanic filmmaking remains in a state of alert, observing the titular crook swell up with defiance and excessive bravado while the cops make a push to hunt down and end Mesrine's criminal reign.

Fully entrenched in his unlawful ways, Mesrine (Vincent Cassel) finds renewed motivation as the world press builds his legend, gifting his bank robbing exploits front-page headlines and television coverage. While the notoriety sends Mesrine back to prison, he finds an escape artist named Besse (Mathieu Amalric) to help him plan another breakout, further enraging law enforcement officials. Losing ...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

Americans may have invented the gangster picture, but the French took to it like the proverbial duck l'orange to sparkling water. As noir faded over here, it erupted on the banks of the Seine thanks to directors like expatriate Jules Dassin and homegrown-hero Jean-Pierre Melville. Though the French have yet to make their Godfather (as far as I know), Mesrine just may be their Goodfellas.

Tall praise, I know, but having just experienced the first half of this two-part movie, Mesrine: Killer Instinct, I'm feeling pretty energized in the way that only watching a bloody thriller about charismatic sociopaths can inspire.

Vincent Cassel (Read the entire review

THE FILM

The first installment in a trilogy of Swedish mysteries based on the novels by Stieg Larsson, "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" is a touch on the lengthy side, but remains a corker of a whodunit. Imposingly violent, tightly plotted, and the superbly acted, the picture is an intriguing introduction to these acidic characters and world of abuse, taking viewers on quite a ride as it establishes an arresting tone of alarm and budding intimacy.

A disgraced journalist, Mikael (Michael Nyqvist) has been sentenced to a short stint in prison for questionably libelous crimes. Left without a job and a life, Mikael is encouraged to take a case brought to him by a wealthy patriarch of a powerful Swedish family. Asked to find a teenage girl who disappeared 40 years ago, Mikael jumps headfirst into t...Read the entire review

THE FILM

It started with a bang and it ends with a whimper. Stieg Larsson's "Millennium Trilogy" comes to a substandard close with "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest," a lifeless, talky series wrap up that induces more of a sense of submission than finality, stumbling through a complicated terrain of exposition without a desirable wallop of blistering suspense. Instead, the film naps, leaning on intricate plotting and established characterizations to generate inspiration.

Restricted to a hospital bed after brain surgery to remove a bullet, Lisbeth (Noomi Rapace) is trapped, while the journalistic craftiness of partner Mikael (Michael Nyqvist) has permitted her access to a cell phone to text out her life story as she awaits trial. Looking to mount a devastating cover piece on Lisbeth for the Millennium Magazine, hoping to help in her exoneration, Mikael comes across ...Read the entire review