Going against all the reviews and the word-in-the-street, we actually liked the book of Mamma Mia! when we saw it on the stage in London. The daughter’s relationship with her mother, as she searched for her father and approached her wedding, with the separation that entailed, was touching, maybe because we were looking ahead to […]
Before it sank under the weight of its implausibilities, I was hoping that this French psycho-thriller would, Cache-like, leave its mystery unsolved and leave us drifting in a world of unknowable terror. Instead, it went the Fugitive route and had its pediatrician hero, Alex, outrunning and outwitting the entire Paris police force and, worse, gave […]
I’m a Werner Herzog fan and admire his quest to explore the outer limits of humanity, but this movie of Antarctica came off as little more than a personal travelogue. Try as he might, the people he interviewed were unexceptional, except for what they were doing: each, in a different realm, was examining a fundamental […]
This was one of those documentaries where you wonder, how did the filmmaker know to pick this person to cover, and then, how did the filmmaker get access to film this scene – in this case, when the personnel manager fires Jerry, the arrogant loner who is talented but doesn’t fit the Chinese team model. […]
Well intentioned, I’m told, but rather disappointing. I couldn’t figure out who was who for the first 20 minutes, then after that, nothing made much sense. The battle in Iraq was well filmed but made no tactical sense: why would this platoon of Marines follow a racing car of bad guys into their neighborhood street, […]
A remarkably consistent short story of a high school senior-age boy who, apparently, feels nothing and shows less. As a study in affectlessness it is superb. If you’re looking for a resolution, or most of the things one has come to expect in a movie in the way of plot, it leaves you hanging. Director […]
Very stylish, very cinematic, very Balzac-ian – not that I know what that means. The characters were absurd, but serious and wore such beautiful clothes. The story was all about love. The languor was overwhelming. It was all so French. Gerard Depardieu’s son looked just as you would expect. I rather enjoyed it on its […]
A beautiful film made from a beautiful book. The characters were fully developed as real people, and the conflicts that arose, and drove the story, came from conflicting personalities running into each other. Amir was who he was, not a bad person, but because of his weakness he hurt another. The figure who held the […]
This is what a film festival film should be: a tender, but by no means whitewashed, look at a foreign culture and a heartwarming story with a satisfying twist at the end. The director said he hoped it would make me want to visit India, but that was furthest from my mind after watching 90 […]
Supposedly this tells the “back story” of Genghis Khan – his slave years before he ruled half the known world. It shows him moving from one attempted assassination to the next, with followers falling by the wayside each time. Nowhere do we see what would seem to be more important: how we found warriors to […]
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