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This is another of the Pete Smith Specialities, which was co-written and directed by Dave O’Brien, who plays the poor fool with the hiccoughs. He tries various “remedies” to “cure” himself (some of which Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition might have applauded) to no avail. It’s all great fun, for everyone but the poor twit. O’Brien frequently played a character not likely to be joining Mensa any time soon in these shorts. This runs on TCM as filler fairly often and virtually every March as part of the “31 Days of Oscar”. Most recommended.Read More »

Synopsis
On a streamer bound for Algeria, Pierre Hofer meets and is enchanted by the beautiful Claudie Duvernet, who is travelling to Algeria to collect her vast inheritance. Claudie is being pursued by some unscrupulous relatives, including the cruel Manuel, who intend to rob her of her new-found fortune. Fortunately, Pierre is on hand to thwart their schemes…Read More »

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Chinese comedy superstar Huang Bo (“Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons”) makes a good first stab at directing with “The Island,” an entertaining if overlong dramedy about company workers splitting into rival factions after being shipwrecked on a desert island. This mix of broad humor, survivalist drama and romance opens brightly and ends with a bang but stutters a little in the middle. Huang’s name and a cast including box-office draws Shu Qi and Wang Baoqiang should ensure strong domestic business, while the universally accessible “Lord of the Flies”-like premise ought to help attract audiences in offshore markets. “The Island” opens in China, North America, and several other international territories on Aug. 10.Read More »

Wes Craven’s first film was a crude but shocking horror opus that, like George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968), became a grind house hit largely because it went much further than terror films before it had been willing to go. Often compared to Ingmar Bergman’s stark medieval rape drama The Virgin Spring (1960) (though one wonders whether this was influence or just coincidence), Last House on the Left follows a group of teenage girls heading into the city when they hook up with a gang of drug-addled ne’er-do-wells and are brutally murdered. The killers find their way to the home of one of their victim’s parents, where both father and mother exact a horrible revenge. Like Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre two years later, Last House on the Left was an unrelievedly dark vision of contemporary horror that inspired many future films which copied its effects without achieving its visceral impact. — Mark Deming (AMG)Read More »

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R-1 (Ein Formspiel)

“The title R-1, EIN FORMSPIEL VON OSKAR FISCHINGER survives on two different films, one composed entirely of STAFFS … and one composed of small fragments of many different experiments – wax, model planets, atoms, etc. – including a great deal of STAFFS footage. For convenience, I will use the title R-1 to refer to this second, mixed film which appears to be a revised version of the first ….Read More »

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Montreal-based actor-turned-filmmaker prodigy Xavier Dolan’s third feature is a terrific character study for its first two hours — and then there’s the third one. That’s starting to be a routine for the young director: Dolan’s gently affecting debut, “I Killed My Mother,” was a remarkably insightful portrait of a young gay man’s relationship to his mother, but his two follow-ups have suffered from an overindulgence in style in spite of their many strengths. In the case of “Laurence, Anyways,” Melvil Poupaud delivers a stirring performance in the title role as a high school teacher who confesses to his hip girlfriend Fred (Suzanne Clément) that he has a penchant for cross-dressing. The story tracks Fred’s transition from anger to acceptance as the couple attempts to keep their relationship intact. Dolan’s screenplay is sharply attuned the nuances of human behavior, and strikes an intelligent note between intimacy and a grandly expressionistic vision that dramatizes the emotion of the scenario with boisterous music cues, fantasy sequences and a lavish color scheme.Read More »

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The Wild Pear Tree is a gentle, humane, beautifully made and magnificently acted movie from the Turkish film-maker and former Palme winner Nuri Bilge Ceylan: garrulous, humorous and lugubrious in his unmistakable and very engaging style. It’s an unhurried, elegiac address to the idea of childhood and your home town – and how returning to both has a bittersweet savour. As in his previous film, Winter Sleep, he draws on the spirit of Chekhov. But his style is all his own: not Chekhovian, but Ceylanian. There are scenes in which people placidly watch TV: largely histrionic soaps whose contrast to the film itself is a type of comedy the director playfully allows us to notice. In fact, The Wild Pear Tree is not unlike a telenovela of family life, taken at a very high-minded, andante pace.Read More »

Suburban Connecticut, 1973. While the Watergate hearings blast from the TV, the wayward Hood and Carver families try to navigate a Thanksgiving break simmering with unspoken resentments, sexual experimentation, and cultural confusion. With crystalline clarity, characteristic subtlety, and even a dose of wicked humor, Academy Award–winning director Ang Lee adapts Rick Moody’s acclaimed novel of American malaise into a trenchant, tragic portrait of lost souls. Featuring a tremendous cast of established actors (Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Sigourney Weaver) and up-and-coming stars (Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood, Katie Holmes), The Ice Storm is one of the finest films of the nineties.Read More »

The Milky Way is an interesting film from Brazil. Heitor, a literature professor, meets and falls in love with Julia, a young actress. During the course of the movie we see scenes from their relationship where they both love and fight each other. Through the film Heitor is driving around the busy streets of Sao Paulo trying to reach and reconcile once more with Julia. This provides an opportunity for the director to interject characters from Sao Paulo’s street environment in to the picture, from child beggars to crazy men with guns. The chaotic nature of life in Sao Paulo is contrasted with serene shots of Brazilian country side to further reinforce the impact of environment on personal relationships. The first encounter between Heitor & Julis takes place at a show by an experimental theatre company. In its way, The Milky Way can also be called an experimental and non conventional movie for those who are looking for something a little off the mainstream track of films. Read More »