“Schmeerguntz” is one long raucous belch in the face of the American Home. A society which hides its animal functions beneath a shiny public surface deserves to have such films as Schmeerguntz shown everywhere – in every PTA, every Rotary Club, every club in the land. For it is brash enough, brazen enough and funny enough to purge the soul of every harried American married woman.”
– Ernest Callenbach, Film QuarterlyRead More »
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Stand Clear of the Closing Doors is the story of Ricky (Jesus Sanchez-Velez), an autistic 13-year-old who runs away from home and discovers a new world on the NYC subway. His mother Mariana (Andrea Suarez Paz), an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, starts a panicked search of their neighborhood in Rockaway Beach with the help of a local shopkeeper. But as days pass with no sign of her son, and with Hurricane Sandy bearing down, the divisions the family has tried to ignore are brought to light. Stand Clear of the Closing Doors is a beautiful and moving New York City story, and one with an eye-opening view of life on the autism spectrum.Read More »
One of the few bona fide counter-cultural films to be produced by a major studio, The Swimmer is a sun-scorched and surreal suburban satire that boasts a fine performance from Burt Lancaster (Castle Keep, Buffalo Bill and the Indians) as Ned Merrill, the all-American man who one day determines to swim home to his Connecticut mansion via a series of pools in his neighbourhood.
Directed by Frank Perry (Diary of a Mad Housewife) imbues Eleanor Perry’s (David and Lisa, Ladybug Ladybug) adaptation of John Cheever’s short story with stunning expressionistic flourishes, creating a true masterpiece of cinema.Read More »
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Reporter ‘Stew’ Smith meets beautiful Ann Schuyler, a rich socialite, while covering the story of a scandal involving Ann’s family. Ann takes a liking to the wisecracking Smith and the couple eventually elope. Stew’s roots as a street smart reporter don’t prepare him well for mixing with Ann’s high society friends and he starts spending more time with his ‘pal’, female reporter Gallagher. Everything comes to a head when Ann and her family return home to their mansion one evening and find that Stew has invited all his ‘pals’ over for an impromptu drinking party.Read More »
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Newly assigned to duty in the coast guard at Newport Beach, a young ensign finds himself involved in romantic complications, as well as with jewel thieves, whose antics contribute to moments of hysteria and hilarity.Read More »
The film COMMITTED, which Sheila McLaughlin realized together with Lynne Tillman, is not a biography of actress Frances Farmer but rather a fictional analysis of the same. It deals with the disturbed relationship between Farmer and her mother, the sociopolitical climate in the USA of the 30s and 40s, the role of psychiatry as an increasingly powerful determinant in this period and the destructive love story between a woman (actress) and a man (director). COMMITTED is conducted as a Film noir and a period piece – the latter of which is unusual for an independent film.Read More »
A group of young couples and other singles arrive at an experimental ‘encounter group’ to try and solve their sexual hangups. Anything goes and everyone tries something new. Fun fact: Academy Award winning editor Michael Kahn’s third thing he ever edited! Various young people have assembled to discuss and try to resolve their sexual issues. The setting is the private home of a doctor who administers the therapies. There’s the guy who is insecure about his penis size. There’s another guy who harbors rape fantasies. There’s a bickering couple and a wife who is rather frigid and of course, the prerequisite lesbian who feels compelled to get “cured” but ends up adding a few numbers of straight women to her black book. The sex here is more clinical-both cinematically and in a literal sense as everyone learns to shed their inhibitions and express and enact their wildest fantasies.Read More »
Buster Keaton’s 1928 silent movie Steamboat Bill, Jr, now on rerelease, is most famous for that staggeringly clever and ambitious shot of the house front with the strategically positioned open window collapsing on top of our hero, leaving him unscathed. It is a sublime vision of innocence being protected by comically benign forces – famously pastiched by British artist and Oscar-winning film-maker Steve McQueen in his 1999 video piece Deadpan. Steamboat Bill, Jr is a Romeo-and-Juliet drama and also a gently tender story of a man coming to respect and love his son. Bill Sr (Ernest Torrence) is the captain of a tatty old pleasure boat who hasn’t seen his son since the boy was a baby. He’s hoping for a strapping lad to help out with the business.Read More »
After changing the face of science fiction cinema forever with Alien and Blade Runner, director Ridley Scott turned his visionary eye to the fantasy genre, teaming with writer William Hjortsberg (Angel Heart) to create a breathtaking cinematic fairytale with one of the screen’s most astonishingly rendered depictions of Evil.Read More »