How far would you go to keep a roof over your family’s head and food on their plates? Would you sell a kidney? Would you work at McDonald’s? How about taking experimental medication, or having sex for money? Some of us might resort to extreme measures (just admit it already, Scott Peterson), but not Byron […]
Movie Reviews
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As sure as death and Texas
In his new movie, The Life of David Gale, Alan Parker transforms the now trite and artificial situation of the condemned inmate on death row into a complex work that suggests several different cinematic possibilities and provides a number of twists and surprises. Not surprisingly, the film deals at length with the death penalty, […]
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Vietnam before our war
Graham Greene’s novel, The Quiet American, published in 1955, has probably aroused more controversy than any of his other many works of fiction. In dealing with the first tentative intervention of the United States in Vietnam, at a time when the French fought their hopeless colonial war, the author displayed both uncanny prescience about the […]
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Generals is a God awful waste of time
Gods and Generals, the prequel to Gettysburg and the first episode in an epic but non-sequential Civil War trilogy, is only slightly shorter than the war itself. Once you factor in the trailers, the commercials, and the intermission, this will be an over-four-hour movie experience. I wouldn’t even want to make out with Jennifer Garner […]
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Something different from Almodóvar
The career of the Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar has followed a generally upward path, beginning with his first international success, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, back in 1988 (though made in 1986, his Matador appeared in this country only after the positive reception of Women). He has produced a steady flow of […]
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I’m hooked on you
If somebody told me Kim Ki-Duk’s The Isle was equal parts Takashi Miike (Audition) and Shohei Imamura (Warm Water Under a Red Bridge), I’d probably either drop dead from laughter (because it sounds so improbable), or immediately head down to the Dryden Theatre to be the first in line for the February 15 screening (because […]
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The “unintelligence” community
Following a long and often instructive tradition, The Recruit demonstrates that popular film in general — and the thriller, in particular — provide an index to the characteristic tensions and attitudes of a particular time and place. Last year’s retrograde and essentially obsolete thriller, The Bourne Identity, presented a familiar vision inherited from decades of […]
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Florida: It’s not just for voter fraud anymore
It’s not difficult to pinpoint the exact instant I stopped enjoying the fifth annual Sarasota Film Festival. The moment occurred when, kicking and screaming, I was forced onto the flight that returned me to Rochester and its subzero temperatures. Piles of sand turned to mounds of snow. Palm trees became ice-encrusted bushes. Scores and scores […]
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Headline
Sarasota Film Festival|The Intended|He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not|Spellbound|Manic|The Backyard|Tribute: A Rockumentary Movies by Jon Popick Florida: It’s not just for voter fraud anymore It’s not difficult to pinpoint the exact instant I stopped enjoying the fifth annual Sarasota Film Festival. The moment occurred when, kicking and screaming, I was forced onto the flight […]
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Personal loquacity
Some filmmakers apparently forget the elementary and obvious fact that their medium originated in nonverbal narratives and flourished in silence long before the introduction of spoken dialogue (which many critics and historians initially regarded as a retrogressive, rather than a progressive, step), and, therefore, film should always rely on its visual possibilities. Whatever its merits, […]
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Life’s a drag, then you die of poison cocoa
Mike Leigh’s All or Nothing focuses mainly on the Bassett family, who live and/or work in Southeast London. Well, maybe “live” isn’t the right verb — “exist” might be more appropriate. They seem to have a nice, normal family life, but are far too miserable to appreciate it. Phil (Timothy Spall) is the father, […]
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A voyage through Italian cinema
Ah, there’s where I left my sense of decency: A scene from ‘Salò or The 120 Days of Sodom.’ The administrators of the film program entitled “Your Voyage to Italy” — at the George Eastman House’s Dryden Theatre this month and next — could scarcely have chosen two more distinctive works to initiate the series. […]
