A beautifully elegiac film about loved ones’ departing life and human beings’ finding their callings, enhanced by a side-story of cello-playing that fed into an ennobling soundtrack. I hope, however, that the Japanese ritual of “encoffinment” was an allegory. If so, it was justified. If not, then the movie has a lot of improbabilities to […]
A rich farrago of witty repartee, courtesy, I suppose, of Noel Coward’s original script. The American living by her wits, and considerable beauty, plopped in the middle of the decaying English aristocracy is, by now, a well-worn, time-honored conceit, but nonetheless open to japes and gibes, the latter most expertly delivered by Kristin Scott Thomas. […]
Stunning moviemaking that, seen on the heels of Gomorrah and Valentino, gave a pretty bleak but colorful picture of Italy. All those marbled floors, high ceilings and columned terrazzos, heavily made-up women and men with deep tans and coiffed hair, who would kiss you and murder you equally without expression. Any doubts that there was […]
Much – nay, most – of the fun in this movie came from a recognition of who the characters would become on the TV series of 40 years ago. If it sounds like I’ve got my verb tense confused, it’s only some time travel I borrowed from the film, specifically Leonard Nimoy’s Spock. The story […]
I spent much of the film wondering about the title: were the mother, father and son the “three monkeys,” or was this an allusion to a Turkish proverb, like “hear no evil,” etc.? Finding no answer, I was left to admire the acting and the character study: Dostoevsky came to mind. The cinematography contributed to […]
Ho-hum. This would’ve been a better series of newspaper columns than it was a movie; and as with all “based-on-a-true-stories,” you wondered what touches a screenwriter starting ab initio would’ve bothered including. The religious fundamentalism of the first cellist? The parlous state of the newspaper? The involvement of the L.A. mayor? None of these added […]
A movie I’d never heard of about a band I’d never heard of, and I thoroughly enjoyed them both. Shown at the Minneapolis Film Festival, this work started as a promotional video that grew, at Cloud Cult’s request, into the whole story of Greg Minowa and his personal quest to make music. It combined home […]
After a great game – and this was inarguably a great game – what’s more fun than sitting around dissecting the key plays? Now imagine having the chance to do that with all the key players who were involved in that game! Well, that’s only part of the pleasure of this film, which shows the […]
Provocative, haunting and utterly realistic, this movie was like a Gomorrah of the classroom. I walked away not rating the movie so much as judging the individual students, the teachers, the French school system, education in general and even our contemporary society. Unlike Freedom Writers, Stand and Deliver or even Half Nelson, there was no […]
A shallow movie about a shallow man. There is not much pleasure in watching a movie intended to enshrine a vain, prissy prima donna, and what could compensate – the dresses he designed – is also given short shrift: there is really only one dress we get to see at any length. Air kisses all […]
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