1990s

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 »

Innovative direction by Les Blair when constructing this too little known work, a collaboration with skilled players, includes the provision to the cast of only a mere outline, in lieu of a script, that ultimately expands into a 25 page scenario sans written dialogue. He motivates his actors to give dimension for the mere flinders furnished them, through pure improvisation that is grounded upon their own frames of reference. The outcome proves to be a nice job all around that ruffles some of the standards that have been adopted by cinema enthusiasts.Read More »

What is waking? What is dream? What is reality? What is fantasy? What is sanity? What is madness?

Such questions pervade “Open Your Eyes,” a psychological thriller directed by Alejandro Amenabar. “Open Your Eyes,” which darts among such relative novelties as virtual reality and cryogenics, is at bottom a retelling of the story of Job for a vain, materialistic, selfish age.

Handsomely filmed in Madrid with an attractive cast, this Spanish feature is unlikely to satisfy those who insist on linear storytelling and pat endings. But in its deliberately vexing way, “Open Your Eyes” is a film with enough intellectual meat on its stylish bones to give more adventurous moviegoers something to chew on afterward.Read More »

Synopsis:
Pablo Neruda, the famous Chilean poet, is exiled to a small island for political reasons. On the island, the unemployed son of a poor fisherman is hired as an extra postman due to the huge increase in mail that this causes. Il Postino is to hand-deliver the celebrity’s mail to him. Though poorly educated, the postman learns to love poetry and eventually befriends Neruda. Struggling to grow and express himself more fully, he suddenly falls in love and needs Neruda’s help and guidance more than ever.Read More »

A hangdog, middle-aged painter falls in love with a tender young college student after he leaves his philandering wife and his children in this romantic French drama. To console himself, the fundamentally bohemian Phillippe finds comfort in the arms of various prostitutes, especially Valeria. It is while searching for her that he meets lovely Justine, the student. Sparks fly and they move into together. Things go well until Phillippe begins pining for his children. This makes insecure Justine terribly jealous and tumult erupts until the aging artist is able to discover the true source of his anxieties.Read More »

For those who were young, living under the delusions of love and soft drugs in Paris, May 1968 – even if the guitar is still playing, they can’t hear it any longer.Read More »

Those who know Japanese cult director Takashi Miike only through his shock and gore films – Ichi the Killer and Audition are both absolute classics of the genre – will be in for a surprise with The Bird People of China. Bird People stands as absolute proof that, although Miike will likely always be best known for his more extreme films, the man has a surprising degree of depth to him and is more than capable of turning out world class serious film.Read More »

Aber den Sinn des Lebens hab’ ich immer noch nicht rausgefunden / … but I Still Haven’t Figured Out the Meaning of Life (OmeU)

Every year on his birthday, Jan Peters filmed one reel of Super-8 material; later on he turned to video. In these few minutes of film he reveals something from and about himself. Maybe it is exhibitionism – the way he chatters on, until the blotches on the film indicate the end of the reel. Enthusiastic, sometimes tired, often doubtful, he, like everyone else, quarrels with what has come about from his own actions. On top of this, Peters, the filmmaker, blurs the individual of the same name with his dense texts and images to create something quite different: Jan Peters, the fictional character.Read More »

Quote:
A man’s coerced confession to an I.R.A. bombing he did not commit results in the imprisonment of his father as well. An English lawyer fights to free them.

Roger Ebert wrote:
The Guildford Four were framed; there seems to be no doubt about that. A feckless young Irishman named Gerry Conlon and three others were charged by the British police with being the IRA terrorists who bombed a pub in Guildford, England, in 1974, and a year later they were convicted and sentenced to life.

But great doubts grew up about their guilt, it was proven that evidence in their favor had been withheld, and in 1989 their convictions were overturned.Read More »