USA

Synopsis:
The young, handsome, but somewhat wild Eugene Morgan wants to marry Isabel Amberson, daughter of a rich upper-class family, but she instead marries dull and steady Wilbur Minafer. Their only child, George, grows up a spoiled brat. Years later, Eugene comes back, now a mature widower and a successful automobile maker. After Wilbur dies, Eugene again asks Isabel to marry him, and she is receptive. But George resents the attentions paid to his mother, and he and his whacko aunt Fanny manage to sabotage the romance. A series of disasters befall the Ambersons and George, and he gets his come-uppance in the end. Read More »

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader wrote:
In The Fog of War, Errol Morris interviews an 84-year-old Robert S. McNamara, who served as secretary of defense under presidents Kennedy and Johnson and is widely regarded as the architect of the American war in Vietnam. There’s something undeniably masterful about the film, which also includes archival footage, but that mastery is what sticks in my craw: it’s a capacity to say as little as possible while giving the impression of saying a great deal, a skill shared by McNamara and Morris. I’m not sure what we have to gain from this — the satisfaction that we’re somehow taking care of business when we’re actually fast asleep?Read More »

Christopher and Melody are a couple in the midst of their first year of marriage. Christopher is a writer by day, but by night serves wine and food to people without discerning tastes. Melody is a teacher who finds herself exhausted with instruction, grading, and parent-teacher meetings. Less by choice than by chance (or maybe necessity), they keep opposing schedules that leave little time for one another. As a result, their interactions are abbreviated, sometimes impersonal, and over time their relationship suffers. But perhaps for the better?Read More »

Quote:
An unmoving, overheard shot of a series of photographs, slowly burning on a heating coil. On the soundtrack, there are autobiographical notes (read by Michael Snow) about each photo. However, the audio and video are jumbled, so that you’re never hearing about the picture you’re seeing. It’s a simple but effective bit of recontextualization, each image transformed not only by its immolation – a perversely hypnotic thing to behold – but also its associations (dissociated audio and video seems to be a common theme in Frampton’s work). When you watch, you can choose to match the picture onscreen with the story, or try to recall the photo he’s talking about, or keep the narration in mind when we eventually see it. Or attempt to absorb it all as a whole. The most intriguing and rewarding I’ve seen by Frampton yet.Read More »

Quote:
A table with a small cactus, a cup of coffee and a stack of paper. One by one, separated by white flashes, we see the text written on the pages. It is a screenplay, each of the 240 pages describing a single shot of a four-part film. The screenplay contains no dialogue, but concerns some sort of melancholy romantic tryst between “yourself” and “your lover”, with occasional appearances by “me” (or more frequently, “my hand”). There’s something to be said about the relationship between filmmaker and viewer, as well as a twisted take on the voyeurism of cinema. But as an experience it can be a tough slog. The most interesting part is the third “tableau”, a surreal and often comical scene consisting entirely of sexual congress while assorted bizarre things are going on outside the window. I also liked the very ending. Much of the rest of it is significantly less compelling, as the concept wears thin.Read More »

Quote:
As soon as Los was completed I added Sogobi to make it a trilogy, the urban and rural portraits needed the Californian wilderness to put them in perspective. Following the same structure Sogobi would look and listen to that wilderness. The first shot of Sogobi would relate to the last shot of Los, and the last shot of Sogobi would return to the first shot of El Valley Centro, revealing its mystery. The entire trilogy would become an interrelated puzzle.

James Benning, December 2001

Coming after the spectacular El Valley Centro and Los, Sogobi is a colossal disappointment. James Benning is the most methodical, careful and mathematically precise of film-makers, so it’s baffling that he should abandon the logical progression established in the first two parts of his California trilogy. Centro examined California’s farming heartland. Los explored the greater LA county, and skirted around the edge of the city itself. Surely the next step should have been to tackle Los Angeles in all its garish, terrible splendour, providing a filmic counterpart to Mike Davis’ books of dystopian polemicism, ‘Ecology of Fear’ and ‘City of Quartz.’Read More »

Quote:
While visiting SUNY Binghamton, Frampton asked for the two most “volatile” acting students and had them improvise an argument. It was his first time utilizing actors, and the results aren’t bad. Of course, much of the credit belongs to the two young performers, who were only given a basic starting point and did all the work themselves. The woman (Barbara DiBenedetto) in particular is on fire… kind of a shame that she has no other screen credits. So where does Frampton come in? He stutters and repeats the film, amplifying the intensity and giving a sense that this is a perpetual, ongoing argument. At first it’s just a black screen (I would assume because the audio was rolling before the camera was set up, but I don’t know) and the sound of lines and fragments of lines being repeated is merely annoying, but once it gets melded with the image it lends the piece a crazy, stilted momentum. I would say this one is better for the performances than the concept, but either way it’s worth watching.Read More »

SEVERAL of the characters in ”Dune” are psychic, which puts them in the unique position of being able to understand what goes on in the movie. The plot of ”Dune” is perilously overloaded, as is virtually everything else about it. As the first king-sized, Italian-produced science-fiction epic, ”Dune” is an ornate affair, awash in the kind of marble, mosaics, wood paneling, leather tufting and gilt trim more suitable to moguls’ offices than to far-flung planets in the year 10191. Not all of the overkill is narrative or decorative. Even the villain, a flying, pustule-covered creature, has more facial sores than he absolutely needs.Read More »

New Grenada is a planned community set in the desert where there is nothing for the kids to do, save for a rec center – which closes at 6 PM. The parents, in their zeal to attract industry to their town, have all but neglected their children. As a result, the kids begin to create their own entertainment, which involves vandalism, theft, and general hooliganism. During an incident when one of the kids brandishes an unloaded gun at town cop Ed Doberman, he is shot and killed. When the parents gather the next night to discuss the killing and the level of lawlessness among the youth, they soon find out that their kids have had all they can take.Read More »