Theater. Starring Denziel Washington as the debate teacher and Forrest Whiniker as the son of one of the debaters, this marvelous film tells the story of a small debate team in a small college in a small college town in Texas, 1934. Inspirational and poignant, it reveals the Jim Crow laws, the subterranean fear that was instilled deeply inside the black psyche and all so the critical importance of intact families and of the role of the father. The father sets the boundaries and determines the expectations; he commands the respect and the authority, instills the values and the morals. Without the father, all of this is lost. There were several times I was brought to tears by how adversity is overcome, how racism must be swallowed, how the role of the father is critical to a child’s development. It made me think of my own and how Blessed I was.
Even Money
DVD. All star cast in this thriller that follows the lives of nine individuals as their fates become increasingly entwined in a web of addiction and gambling, culminating at one critical moment where their lives will be lost or reclaimed. Struggling writer (Basinger) loses her family’s savings at a casino; a washed up Vegas performer magician (Danny DeVito) tries to help Kate Kate regain her money; Clyde (Forest Whitaker) owes so much money to his dangerous bookie that he asks his NBA destined nephew to throw a game. Also starring Kelsey Grammar, Tim Roth this movie is a cautionary thriller about addiction and deception that his hits a jackpot of suspense.
Easy
TV. A Sundance Film winner, this small budget film is about a girl who in another generation would have been a slut, but in today’s world sleeps around with pretty much every boy she goes out with. She plays a lovely warm sympathetic character that tends to choose losers that use and abuse her. Her sister also ends up sleeping with an old boy friend.
Let’s Get Lost
Theater. This is Bruce Weber’s haunting documentary about legendary jazz musician Chet Baker. Told through interviews with family members, wives, ex-wives, girlfriends, children and collaborators, people he inspired and manipulated and betrayed. The classic story of the brilliant artist who never practiced or studied but just could get up and played and a despicable character, that ultimately becomes his ruin.
Nanny Diaries
DVD. Starring Scarlett Johansson, this movie was a sad commentary of how children are being raised in on the Upper Eastside in New York, by the very wealthy and pampered. Sad.
27 Dresses
Theater. Starring Issie of Grey’s Anatomy, this was a silly chick flick that wanted to take itself seriously. I found it mindless and entertaining and formula and decent enough for the genre and audience that it addresses. The most interesting was walking out in back of this young couple and she was complaining how much she hated the film. She looked exactly like the bitch sister in the movie!
The Kingdom
DVD. Starring Jennifer Garner and Jamie Fox, four Marine Types go to Saudi Arabia to track down the killers of one of their agents. They have 5 day. The movie is action packed and politically correct. Good Arabs and Bad Arabs. Etc.
Ratatouille
DVD. An animated film of a rat that becomes a chief Chef in France. I had to hold in my breath at the scenes of massive rats going through a house or being in the kitchen. But it was wonderfully entertaining and extremely creative and well done. Certainly worth the Oscar nod.
The Searchers
DVD. John Ford’s Masterpiece classic with John Wayne about a cowboy, like modern day Jack Bauer, who searches for five years for his niece that was kidnapped by the Indians, and then does not want to return! Also starring a young Natalie Wood, quite beautiful.
Gone Baby Gone
Airplane. Directed by Ben Affleck and starring his brother, Casey Affleck, this bleak, dark movie about a missing child and the detectives that are hired to find her, is a haunting devastating film. I could not shake it from myself after I saw it.
Michael Clayton
Airplane. Superbly acted by Oscar nominated George Clooney, the movie follows this fixer upper at a law firm who is trying to get his life back together from bad gambling debt and divorce, when he is targeted for murder by going after a corrupt law practice.
Elizabeth 1
Airplane. Starring Cate Blanchett, this boring silly film with gorgeous costumes did not hold together.
Dan, A Real Life
Airplane. Starring Steve Carvel, this funny solidly good film tells the story of two brothers who fall in love with the same girl. He is a widower and his brother is a player and they both compete for her attention.
The Martian Boy
Airplane. Starring John Cossack and his sister, this single parent adopts a strange, bizarre kid and tries to bring him into normalcy and acceptance and love.
The Counterfeiters
Theater. Th2 2008 Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards, this Austrian first time winner picked a theme critical to its history. It found a new untold story of what Hitler did to try and destroy the English and American war economies. The Germans were portrayed brutal and there was a moral Jew played against the jailbird Jew who possessed his own code of ethics. This was a superb and powerful film.
Summer Palace
Theater. A long, at times tedious film, of one of Chinese great film directors. It focuses in on one particular girl, whose need to have sex in order to feel close to someone dominated her relationships and life and who seemed very lonely otherwise. Not the movie to see with Cary.
Filmed in China, one got a real glimpse into the dilapidation of Beging University, life as a college student, and life in general.
Factory Girl
DVD. A highly painful and disturbing film about Andy Warhol’s muse and how he used and abused her as well as did everyone else. She was a debutante and gorgeous and vulnerable and fragile and finally self-destructed by age 28. Powerful and sad.
The Brave One
DVD. Erica Bain (Jodie Foster) a popular New York radio host watched her fiancé die and nearly lost her own life to a vicious, random attack. Now she discovers a stranger within herself, an armed wanderer in the urban night, out for vengeance and at war with her own soul. Terrance Howard is a determined cop hot on her trail. It is a powerful and unforgettable movie by Neil Jordan.
Under The Same Moon
Theater. Hoping to provide a better life for her son, Rosario (Kate del Castillo) works illegally in the U.S. while her mother cares for nine-year-old Carlitos (Adrian Alonso) back in Mexico. Unexpected circumstances drive both Rosario and Carlitos to embark on their own journeys in a desperate attempt to reunite. Along the way, mother and son face challenges and obstacles but never lose hope that they will one day be together again. Director Patricia Riggen's film is not only a heartwarming family story, but also a subtle commentary on the much-debated issue of illegal immigration. Co-starring America Ferrera ("Ugly Betty"). Wonderful memorable film.
The sound track reflected the feelings and hearts of the people. I found myself crying over parts in the film.
Priceless
Jean (Gad Elmaleh), a shy young bartender, is mistaken for a millionaire by a beautiful seductress named Irene (Audrey Tautou, Amélie). When Irene discovers his true identity, she abandons him, only to find that a love-struck Jean has no intention of letting her get away. Jean's comical attempts to gain her affections gradually evolve into setting himself up as a gigolo at a luxury hotel, until Irene finally starts to warm to her persistent, persuasive suitor. Against the wildly atmospheric backdrop of the south of France, Pierre Salvadori (Après Vous) directs this sexy and thoroughly charming romantic comedy, which is a fresh re-imagining of the cinema classic Breakfast at Tiffany's.
Stop-Lossed
Theater. Decorated Iraq war hero Sgt. Brandon King (Ryan Philippe) makes a celebrated return to his small Texas hometown following his tour of duty. He tries to resume the life he left behind with the help and support of his family and his best friend, Steve Shriver (Channing Tatum), who served with him in Iraq. Along with their other war buddies, Brandon and Steve try to make peace with civilian life. Then, against Brandon’s will, the Army orders him back to duty in Iraq, which upends his world. The conflict tests everything he believes in: the bond of family, the loyalty of friendship, the limits of love and the value of honor. Co-starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Abbie Cornish. Directed by Kimberly Pierce (Boys Don't Cry). It was tense, intense and well done.
Forever
Theater. Filmmaker Heddy Honigmann takes an up-close look at Pere-Lachaise, where Jim Morrison, Piaf, Chopin, Proust are buried. As she wanders through the cemetery and interviews people who are paying respect to their heroes, you hear their stories, and the biography of the deceased, the music of Chopin; you meet the caregivers, the little old ladies, who maintain the cemeteries. It was a marvelous and meaningful film on life and death and meaning and the hold that our heroes have on us.
The Bank Job
Theater. I great based-on-true-story film of a blotched bank robbery in England where the top level police had to break into Lords of London to retrieve compromising photographs taken of Princess Margaret. It was very suspenseful and tense and great for its genre.
Young At Heart
Theater. A wonderful, poignant documentary of this elderly singing group that sings hip-hop music. Poignant and moving at times, especially when they sang this song to a group of inmates.
I loved it.
Lonely Are The Brave
TCM. (1962) A modern-day cowboy defies the law in order to live as a freeman. It stars Kirk Douglas in his prime and a young and beautiful Gina Rowland. Wow. This cowboy feels as an acronynism and you wonder that happened in film to these real men, and not these immoral, amoral weak and valueless men that are presented on screen today.
The Life Before Her Eyes
Theater. The movie is an intense Columbine imitation film, of two best friends, who make a choice as to live. The Survivor is nearly destroyed by guilt. Throughout the film, you think that it is Rachel Wood, the wild one, and the one who wants to live and experience life that is the survivor. Yet, at the end, is the twist, that it is the Ann Carpenter who lives. She ends up living the unlived life of her friend, which brings her only despair and desperation. Uma Thurman and Evan Rachel Wood star in this drama about the loss of youth, investigating how a single moment in time can define an entire life. Based on Laura Kasischke’s novel, the story hinges on a pivotal confrontation: two high school girls held captive by a gunman and forced to make the terrifying choice as to who will live and who will die. Director Vadim Perelman (House of Sand and Fog) explores the reverberations stemming from the collision of past and future, reality and dream. Life can end in an instant—yet the echoes of possible futures remain inescapable. Moving backwards and forwards in time, it combines the dramatic intensity of Sophie’s Choice with the eerie mystery of a ghost story like The Others.
Note By Note: The Making of Steinway L1037
Theater. The most thoroughly handcrafted instruments in the world, Steinway pianos are an unique and full of personality as the world-class musicians who play them. However, their makers are a dying breed: skilled cabinetmakers, gifted tuners, and thorough hand-crafters. It explores the relationship between musician and instrument, chronicles the manufacturing process, and illustrates what makes each Steinway unique in this age of mass production. Each piano’s journey is complex-spanning 12 months, 12,000 parts, 450 craftsmen, and countless hours of fine-tuned labor. It reminds us of the extraordinary dialogue between artist and instrument, crafted out of human hands but borne of the materials of nature.
Death At A Funeral
DVD. As the mourners and guests at a British country manor struggle valiantly to keep a stiff upper lip, a dignified ceremony devolves into a hilarious, no-holds-barred debacle of misplaced cadavers, indecent exposure and shocking family secrets. This was a wonderful comedy that I found myself laughing out loud in the company of only myself and with no crowd to spur me on.
I absolutely love it. It was funny and witty, fast paced and clever. A superb film.
Charlie Wilson’s War
DVD. This movie stars Julia Roberts, Tom Hanks, and Seymour Hoffman. It is based on the outrageous true story of how one congressman conspired to bring about the largest covert operation in history. It gives clues as to how we fight our wars in the future. It was well done and well acted, yet. I was relieved that I saw it as a video and not as a full feature film.
When She Found Me
Theater. It stars Helen Hunt. She looked old and so ugly. The staccato delivery of every character drove it nuts. It was awful. I walked out.
Jellyfish
Theater. Winner of the Camera d’Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. Poignant, often witty and exceedingly cinematic. Jellyfish follows three very different Tel Aviv women whose intersecting stories weave an unlikely portrait of modern Israeli life. The movie possessed a haunting depth and metaphor of the theme of abandonment and loss of innocence and trust. The little girl emerges from the depths of the sea that is actually the waitress as a little girl. She is real and she isn’t real. But by going back to that moment when her father deserted her and her mother and left her in the sea, she is able to transcend and move beyond the point to when she lost her voice and no one heard her.
Kissed by Winter
Beautifully set in Norway’s snowy wilds, a woman doctor runs away from the profound loss of her son, who she blames herself for not diagnosing his illness, and finds a way to forgive herself through love. This movie was a phenomenal piece of acting and intensity and sadness. Great.
Feast of Love
DVD. An awful insipid stupid, unbelievable movie about “love.” Bradley’s wife runs off because she turns out to be a lesbian, a Professor, Morgan Freeman, who does not judge but gives advice on the love he sees being displayed around him, the drug boyfriend with the crazy knife wielding father who stalks his m man/child/pretty boy son - the whole thing was ridiculous!
Over Her Dead Body
DVD. Starring Eva Longoria Parker. Too awful to write about.
Fugitive Pieces
Theater. This movie was one of the finest pieces of art films that I have seen in a long time. It is a wonderful adaptation from the book, if not better from the book. It is about a boy who escapes the Nazis when then come to kill his family and he is found buried in the dirt by a Greek anthropologist who rescues and saves him and take him to Greece where he is slowly rehabilitated, becomes a writer, yet is haunted by demons and ghosts from his sister Bella to his family. He is unable to form relationships and it is through the love of a woman that he finally finds peace and safety. Exquisite and poignant and marvelous.
Crimes of Passions
DVD. Two workers who are secret lover team up in an attempt to score a huge sexual harassment settlement against their employer, a major corporation. When the detective assigned to the case discovers their scheme and try to blackmail them, the two are caught in a twisted web of deceit and betrayal.
Reprise
Theater. A Norwegian film that opened to rave reviews by my favorite critics. I found it tedious and boring and indulgent and cold. It was hard for me to believe that they were capable of making love as they seemed to cold to be able to do that. It is about friends that go with competitive jealously as they are both writers, one attempts suicide, there is conversation of their class difference because the girls are from another side of town, a girl whose face is never seen until the end and you do not know what this gimmick is used – why the raves?
Roman Holiday
TV. What a marvelous, unparalleled classic of romance and honor and integrity and realness.
Hepburn was in a class by herself as is Gregory Peck. The last scene, where she does not reappear and he walks down the long hall, realizing that they will never see each other again, is one of the great scenes in film work. I loved this movie, no matter how many times I see it.
Before The Rains
Theater. This movie, done by Indian director Santosh Sivan, is set in 1930s southern India against the backdrop of a growing nationalist movement. Rahul Bose stars as an idealistic young Indian man who finds himself torn between his ambitions for the future and his loyalty to the past when people in his village learn of an affair between his British boss and a village woman. It was like reading an enjoyable novel, I did not get involved with the characters, but the English boss reminded me much of Bill Clinton. He screws the woman, and like Monica, discards her like dirt; he was weak and cowardly knowing his slave would be the scapegoat for his actions.
Theater. Decorated Iraq war hero Sgt. Brandon King (Ryan Philippe) makes a celebrated return to his small Texas hometown following his tour of duty. He tries to resume the life he left behind with the help and support of his family and his best friend, Steve Shriver (Channing Tatum), who served with him in Iraq. Along with their other war buddies, Brandon and Steve try to make peace with civilian life. Then, against Brandon’s will, the Army orders him back to duty in Iraq, which upends his world. The conflict tests everything he believes in: the bond of family, the loyalty of friendship, the limits of love and the value of honor. Co-starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Abbie Cornish. Directed by Kimberly Pierce (Boys Don't Cry). It was tense, intense and well done.
Forever
Theater. Filmmaker Heddy Honigmann takes an up-close look at Pere-Lachaise, where Jim Morrison, Piaf, Chopin, Proust are buried. As she wanders through the cemetery and interviews people who are paying respect to their heroes, you hear their stories, and the biography of the deceased, the music of Chopin; you meet the caregivers, the little old ladies, who maintain the cemeteries. It was a marvelous and meaningful film on life and death and meaning and the hold that our heroes have on us.
The Bank Job
Theater. I great based-on-true-story film of a blotched bank robbery in England where the top level police had to break into Lords of London to retrieve compromising photographs taken of Princess Margaret. It was very suspenseful and tense and great for its genre.
Young At Heart
Theater. A wonderful, poignant documentary of this elderly singing group that sings hip-hop music. Poignant and moving at times, especially when they sang this song to a group of inmates.
I loved it.
Lonely Are The Brave
TCM. (1962) A modern-day cowboy defies the law in order to live as a freeman. It stars Kirk Douglas in his prime and a young and beautiful Gina Rowland. Wow. This cowboy feels as an acronynism and you wonder that happened in film to these real men, and not these immoral, amoral weak and valueless men that are presented on screen today.
The Life Before Her Eyes
Theater. The movie is an intense Columbine imitation film, of two best friends, who make a choice as to live. The Survivor is nearly destroyed by guilt. Throughout the film, you think that it is Rachel Wood, the wild one, and the one who wants to live and experience life that is the survivor. Yet, at the end, is the twist, that it is the Ann Carpenter who lives. She ends up living the unlived life of her friend, which brings her only despair and desperation. Uma Thurman and Evan Rachel Wood star in this drama about the loss of youth, investigating how a single moment in time can define an entire life. Based on Laura Kasischke’s novel, the story hinges on a pivotal confrontation: two high school girls held captive by a gunman and forced to make the terrifying choice as to who will live and who will die. Director Vadim Perelman (House of Sand and Fog) explores the reverberations stemming from the collision of past and future, reality and dream. Life can end in an instant—yet the echoes of possible futures remain inescapable. Moving backwards and forwards in time, it combines the dramatic intensity of Sophie’s Choice with the eerie mystery of a ghost story like The Others.
Note By Note: The Making of Steinway L1037
Theater. The most thoroughly handcrafted instruments in the world, Steinway pianos are an unique and full of personality as the world-class musicians who play them. However, their makers are a dying breed: skilled cabinetmakers, gifted tuners, and thorough hand-crafters. It explores the relationship between musician and instrument, chronicles the manufacturing process, and illustrates what makes each Steinway unique in this age of mass production. Each piano’s journey is complex-spanning 12 months, 12,000 parts, 450 craftsmen, and countless hours of fine-tuned labor. It reminds us of the extraordinary dialogue between artist and instrument, crafted out of human hands but borne of the materials of nature.
Death At A Funeral
DVD. As the mourners and guests at a British country manor struggle valiantly to keep a stiff upper lip, a dignified ceremony devolves into a hilarious, no-holds-barred debacle of misplaced cadavers, indecent exposure and shocking family secrets. This was a wonderful comedy that I found myself laughing out loud in the company of only myself and with no crowd to spur me on.
I absolutely love it. It was funny and witty, fast paced and clever. A superb film.
Charlie Wilson’s War
DVD. This movie stars Julia Roberts, Tom Hanks, and Seymour Hoffman. It is based on the outrageous true story of how one congressman conspired to bring about the largest covert operation in history. It gives clues as to how we fight our wars in the future. It was well done and well acted, yet. I was relieved that I saw it as a video and not as a full feature film.
When She Found Me
Theater. It stars Helen Hunt. She looked old and so ugly. The staccato delivery of every character drove it nuts. It was awful. I walked out.
Jellyfish
Theater. Winner of the Camera d’Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. Poignant, often witty and exceedingly cinematic. Jellyfish follows three very different Tel Aviv women whose intersecting stories weave an unlikely portrait of modern Israeli life. The movie possessed a haunting depth and metaphor of the theme of abandonment and loss of innocence and trust. The little girl emerges from the depths of the sea that is actually the waitress as a little girl. She is real and she isn’t real. But by going back to that moment when her father deserted her and her mother and left her in the sea, she is able to transcend and move beyond the point to when she lost her voice and no one heard her.
Kissed by Winter
Beautifully set in Norway’s snowy wilds, a woman doctor runs away from the profound loss of her son, who she blames herself for not diagnosing his illness, and finds a way to forgive herself through love. This movie was a phenomenal piece of acting and intensity and sadness. Great.
Feast of Love
DVD. An awful insipid stupid, unbelievable movie about “love.” Bradley’s wife runs off because she turns out to be a lesbian, a Professor, Morgan Freeman, who does not judge but gives advice on the love he sees being displayed around him, the drug boyfriend with the crazy knife wielding father who stalks his m man/child/pretty boy son - the whole thing was ridiculous!
Over Her Dead Body
DVD. Starring Eva Longoria Parker. Too awful to write about.
Fugitive Pieces
Theater. This movie was one of the finest pieces of art films that I have seen in a long time. It is a wonderful adaptation from the book, if not better from the book. It is about a boy who escapes the Nazis when then come to kill his family and he is found buried in the dirt by a Greek anthropologist who rescues and saves him and take him to Greece where he is slowly rehabilitated, becomes a writer, yet is haunted by demons and ghosts from his sister Bella to his family. He is unable to form relationships and it is through the love of a woman that he finally finds peace and safety. Exquisite and poignant and marvelous.
Crimes of Passions
DVD. Two workers who are secret lover team up in an attempt to score a huge sexual harassment settlement against their employer, a major corporation. When the detective assigned to the case discovers their scheme and try to blackmail them, the two are caught in a twisted web of deceit and betrayal.
Reprise
Theater. A Norwegian film that opened to rave reviews by my favorite critics. I found it tedious and boring and indulgent and cold. It was hard for me to believe that they were capable of making love as they seemed to cold to be able to do that. It is about friends that go with competitive jealously as they are both writers, one attempts suicide, there is conversation of their class difference because the girls are from another side of town, a girl whose face is never seen until the end and you do not know what this gimmick is used – why the raves?
Roman Holiday
TV. What a marvelous, unparalleled classic of romance and honor and integrity and realness.
Hepburn was in a class by herself as is Gregory Peck. The last scene, where she does not reappear and he walks down the long hall, realizing that they will never see each other again, is one of the great scenes in film work. I loved this movie, no matter how many times I see it.
Before The Rains
Theater. This movie, done by Indian director Santosh Sivan, is set in 1930s southern India against the backdrop of a growing nationalist movement. Rahul Bose stars as an idealistic young Indian man who finds himself torn between his ambitions for the future and his loyalty to the past when people in his village learn of an affair between his British boss and a village woman. It was like reading an enjoyable novel, I did not get involved with the characters, but the English boss reminded me much of Bill Clinton. He screws the woman, and like Monica, discards her like dirt; he was weak and cowardly knowing his slave would be the scapegoat for his actions.
Roman De Gare
Theater. In the still of the night, three lives are about to cross - a woman abandoned, a stranger awaiting his chance, and a best-selling author who imagines the thriller of the year. Deceptively layered and intriguingly misleading, director Claude Lelouch (Oscar winner for A Man and a Woman) creates an unlikely couple caught up in a game with high stakes—and deadly consequences. The thriller takes its title from the name given to pulp fictions sold in France.
The suspense is carried off well. The ending, where the author throws herself over the rail, is not believable.
Surf Wise
Theater. Like many American outsider-adventurers, Dorian "Doc" Paskowitz set out to realize a utopian dream. Abandoning a successful medical practice, he sought self-fulfillment by taking up the nomadic life of a surfer. But unlike other American searchers like Thoreau or Kerouac, Paskowitz took his wife and nine children along for the ride, all eleven of them living in a 24-foot camper. Together, they lived a life that would be unfathomable to most, but enviable to anyone who ever relinquished their dreams for a straight job. The Paskowitz Family proves that America may be running out of frontiers, but it hasn't run out of frontiersmen. Written and directed by Doug Pray. I found the under currents of the film, deeply disturbing. Doc gave his children no education or training to survive in the real world, they all floundered and seemed lost taking odd jobs to survive. He may have lived his dream but his children were ill equipped to live theirs. And, their close family did not see each other for 10 years as adults. There was too much competition, and too much refusal to see each child as an individual. Sad.
Refusenik
Theater. This movie is the first documentary to chronicle the thirty-year international movement to free Soviet Jews. What started as a small grassroots movement bold enough to take on a Cold War superpower blossomed into an international human rights crusade that engaged the disempowered and world leaders alike. Told through the eyes of activists on both sides of the Iron Curtain, many of who survived punishment in Soviet Gulag labor camps, the film is a tapestry of first-person accounts of heroism, sacrifice, and, ultimately liberation. I wept by the end of the film to see so many sacrifices so deeply for ideals that I hold so dear. I was a part of this movement and to see it unfold on screen was deeply moving.
Tuyas Marriage
Theater. Tuya, hardworking and hardheaded, is a Mongolian desert herder who refuses to be settled in a town in accordance with the new industrialization policy. She is kept busy with two kids, a disabled husband and 100 sheep to care for, but one day she hurts her back. The only way for the family to survive is for her to divorce her husband on papers and look for a new spouse who can take care of the whole family. A series of suitors lines up, but it is not easy to find a man who fits the bill. This warm, endearing tale, featuring stunning cinematography, won the top prize of the 2007 Berlin International Film Festival. I loved the movie. It brought me to tears when they all sat as a family after the father’s suicide attempt in the hospital, their poverty, their daily struggle of survival, their endurance to stay together as a family, the strength and courage that it took to continue, was deep and profound.
Sex and The City
Theater. Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, Samantha return to where they left off four years ago only to have their fairy tale endings undone or at the very least questioned. I felt all the girls ended up with their man, labels and loaded, except Samantha. Historically, the fallen woman in literature and plays and film never end up winning at the end and Samantha is no exception.
Mongol
Theater. Shot in Mongolia, using local actors and directed by Russians, the film was long and boring and tried to be romantic. It depicted the Mongolians as brutal and unforgiving and definitely not politically correct. It was the supposedly the life of Ganges Kahn
The Edge of Heaven
Theater. Joel Morgenstern recommended this film, which he said, was a film that deserved to be seen. I beg to differ from him. I found the film sloppy and had that independent film quality to give it an authenticity when in reality it lacked it. The movie was about a retired Turkish widower living in Bremen asks a Turkish prostitute to come live with him. When she does, his son tries to track down her daughter in Turkey. It touches on the divide between the two cultures. I found it long and politically correct and sad.
Definitely, Maybe
Airplane. Starring Abigail Breslan, the movie is about a narcissistic father who presents three different “mothers” to Abigail so that she can decide which mother she thinks is her own.
The movie was entertaining enough but the message was poor- what makes the father happy. What about his daughter’s happiness?
Bottle Shock
Theater. A wine movie film based on a true story, of a wine growing family that is near foreclosure because they cannot sell the wine, when an English Frenchman starts a contest that blows California wines out of the water and beat the French at their own best vintage. The movie was one visual cliché and imitative story line after another. It was false and silly and politically correct with the Hispanic laborer listening to Maria Callas and the son being noble and moral in his intentions, articulate and profound, who speaks like this? From the car passing the winery and backing up, to the blond girlfriend strutting around, to cutting the wine bottle with a blade in an office! Puhleeze, get me outta here. It was boring and awful.
The Trap
Theater for Reel Talk with Stephen Farber. This is a marvelous Serbian film that was short listed for the Oscars. Taking the theme of Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, does a man who commits an evil deed and does not get caught, pay a price through guilt or redemption? Intense, brilliantly photographed, the movie was about a poor but decent family, a good man, whose son is suddenly stricken with a fatal disease and if $50,000. is not raised, the boy will die. The father is driven to desperation to murder and then is betrayed and not paid the reward. He ultimately is destroyed by his guilt.
Encounters with the End of the World at the Antarctica
Theater. The dazzling underwater photography of the most violent place on earth, this film explores through the scientists all the different research that is going on down there. The film journeys us through the sea and the sky and the labs. The articulate, philosophical explorers of this region express their search of the brain and the universe and the beginning of time.
Live and Become
Theater. A story of an Ethiopian body who is airlifted from a Sudanese refugee camp to Israel in 1984 Operation Moses. Shlomo is plagued by two big secrets: He is neither a Jew nor an orphan, just an African Christian boy who survived and wants, somehow to fulfill his Ethiopian mother’s parting request that he should “go, live, and become.” However, Shlomo feels his mother sends him away because of his brother’s death. The movie was way too long and tedious and boring and felt has if everything and the kitchen sink, in terms of historical reference points, were thrown in. The ending ended with a primal scream.
Tell No One
Theater. A French murder mystery that kept me on the edge of my seat. It is about this doctor who loved his wife from childhood and when she was murdered, he nearly when out of his mind with grief. Fast-forward 8 years and he gets a mysterious email that gives him information that his wife is really a live. However, the police have reopened the case and now accuse him of murdering his wife. He calls Bruno, his thug friend from the underworld, who protects him (we should all have a friend like Bruno) and eventually he finds out the truth. It was terrific.
In Search of A Midnight Kiss
Theater. This wonderful coming of age of film of two people who do not want to be alone on New Year’s Eve and banter back and forth with 2008 contemporary dialogue where everything is about fucking and nothing is about romance until he makes a really crude comment that makes her find him repulsive and he suddenly realizes that he has gone too far. The acting was phenomenal and afterwards when we met the stars, they were ordinary kids trying to make it in Hollywood. The photography was superb. It was all done in black and white. And when songs were sung, the images reflected the words in the song. Marvelous film.
Flawless
DVD. 1960’s London: Demi Moore is a bright and driven executive at the London Diamond Corporation who finds herself discouraged as male colleagues are repeatedly promoted ahead of her despite her greater experience. Michael Caine is Hobbs, the overlooked nighttime janitor with an intimate knowledge of the security and a score to settle with the Corporation. They decide to pull of an ingenious heist. It was pretty awful.
Charlie Bartlett
DVD. The kids at Western Summit High have issues and Charlie is coming to their rescue. With a briefcase full of prescription pills and head of pop psychology, this rebel with a cause brings hilarious help to the student body and unending grief to the principal. Robert Downy Jr. It was a stupid film with adults acting badly and students dying for guidance and supervision.
Frozen River
Theater. A marvelous film of a desperate single mother whose life is on the margins and takes part in sneaking illegal off of the Canadian border in order to make money. The desperation. The fear. The hand to mouth existence, the one man away from welfare, the collapse of anyone thing and life is over, is so captured in this extraordinary film. It was so gripping that I forgot that I was watching a movie.
My Father My Lord
Theater. This extraordinary gem of an Israeli film is about a deeply religious ultra Orthodox little boy who is doted upon by his loving yet strict father and mother. It is only 74 minutes long, moves slowly, yet deliberately as the story unfolds with deep meaning and metaphor. As when they study the binding of Isaac and the sacrifice and when the father pushes the mother bird out of the next unwillingly, making the little birds die, just like his son at the end of the film. The dropping of the books from the balcony onto his head is the last testament and sorrow by the mother. It was powerful, moving and devastating. So real, it felt too real in its depth of feeling.
The Last Mistress
Theater. Set in 1835, this French film is about a paramour with title but no money who is married off to the most eligible girl in all of Paris by her grandmother. He is passionately in love with a Carmen like woman who is his mistress for ten years. He cannot get enough of her and the passionate love scenes are the most graphic and sexual I ever remember seeing on screen. He marries the pure one but cannot let go of the one that he is really in love with. Saw it with Gita!
The Dark Knight
Theater. This was the 3rd but best installment of Bat Man. It runs 2 hours and forty-five minutes. The special effects, the war between good and evil, terrorism and fanatic Islamism an d the right values plays out very well between these black and white characters. Heath Leger was magnificent and it was a real tragedy that he lost his life after playing this role. Maybe he inhabited the evil aspect too deeply within his soul.
Swing Vote
Theater. Starring Kevin Costner who I found very sexy, this funny movie is about a guy who never thought a moment in his life, who drinks too much, and can barely take care of himself, let alone his daughter and who is forced into his 15 minutes of fame, when it is up to him to decide the President of the United States of America. I thought it was funny and enjoyable and I thought the young girl, who played Molly, Madeline Carroll was outstanding.
Mama Mia!
Theater. (Twice) This wonderful entertaining summer flick, which the fabulous music by Abba kept me riveted! I loved it! I found it hugely funny, the tall black haired friend of Meryl Streep was fabulous and Meryl Streep has to be the best actress of my generation. Is there anything she cannot do?
Boys of Brazil. 1978
T.V. A wonderful film with Lawrence Olivier who plays Lieberman, a Nazi Hunter and Gregory Peck who plays Men gale, who genetically creates Hitler clones. Great acting and dialogue.
America Teen
Theater. A moving documentary that follows six seniors who live and go to high school in Warsaw, Indiana. It takes place today but it felt exactly like my experience when I went to high school. I most related to Hannah and admired her pluck and her courage and drive.
Sixty-Six
Theater. It's 1966, and the only thing that excites 12-year-old British boy Bernie more than his upcoming Bar Mitzvah is the World Cup. But when England wins their way into the finals -- which just happen to be on the day of his Bar Mitzvah -- Bernie begins to worry. Helena Bonham Carter and Stephen Rea costar. "Darkly funny, poignant and engaging...sucks us into a world filled with anticipation, disappointment and hope." (Urban Cinefile) This masterpiece of a film was poignant and funny and moving and profound. The working class family was just like Cary’s. The struggles and successes and treatment of each other was so real and genuine, there was such authentic emotional honesty that it took my breath away.
Brideshead Revisited
Theater. A yellow highlight two-hour high light of the wonderful book. The TV 15 part series was so much better that it was hard to sit through this knowing that the series went into the depth and breath and scope that was completely missing from the movie.
Towelhead
Theater. Directed by the Director of American Beauty, this movie delves into the same theme. The them of physical, emotional and spiritual abuse of a young, beautiful coming-of-maturity teen-age girl. It was deeply disturbing on every level. Every adult behaved very badly. The father was a product of his Arab culture and background. The mother was infantile and selfish. The neighbors were brutes.
Bella
DVD. An awful movie with weird transitions of a Spanish waiter who works for his brother, and ditches him in his hour of need, to help an unwed pregnant woman who allows him to act without responsibility. I couldn’t stand it.
Elegy
Theater. The movie stars Penelope Cruz and Sir Ben Kingsley. It is about a star struck Cuban student who falls in love with her Professor. He is unable to commit, self-absorbed, a serial monogamist and pretty much of a despicable character, especially the way he treats his son.
Penelope was marvelous. Kingsley was the same as he is in all of his films. Cold and detached.
Traitor
Theater. The movie began in Yemen, about a black man who is working for the CIA, infiltrating Muslim terrorist cells. He is a good Muslim, that is the only way this kind of movie would have ever been made. It is about cell networks around the globe that want to wreck terror upon US citizens. Suspenseful and good though I was bored in parts.
Mister Foe
Theater. Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot) is Hallam Foe, a troubled young man whose knack for voyeurism paradoxically reveals his darkest fears, and his most peculiar desires. Driven to expose the true cause of his mother's death, he instead finds himself searching the rooftops of the city of Edinburgh for love. Featuring a lively soundtrack with Franz Ferdinand, Sons and Daughters and Orange Juice, among others, the romantic drama is a darkly twisted, entertaining work of magical realism from David Mackenzie (Asylum, Young Adam, Somersault), one of the leading lights of the new Scottish cinema. Co-starring Sophia Myles, Ciarán Hinds, Jamie Sives, Ewen Bremner and Claire Forlani.
The Secret
Theater. Based on real events, this French film is about the back-story of the great “Christian” Nazi hunter in France. Only as an adult, does he discover that his parents were the reason that his father’s first wife did not survive the war. She martyred herself and Simon, the athletic child, to the Nazi’s when she realized that her husband never really loved her, but had fallen in love with her beautiful swimmer cousin. She did not join her husband and made a deadly decision. This decision haunted and tortured her husband and his second wife for the rest of their lives and was their secret that doomed their son to discover his roots.
The Duchess
Theater. Long before the concept existed, the Duchess of Devonshire, Georgiana Spencer (Keira Knightly), was the original “It Girl.” Like her direct descendant Princess Diana, she was ravishing, glamorous and adored by an entire country. Determined to be a player in the wider affairs of the world, she proved that she could out-gamble, out-drink and outwit most of the aristocratic men who surrounded her. She helped usher in sweeping changes to England as a leader of the forward-thinking Whig Party. But even as her power and popularity grew, she was haunted by the fact that the only man in England she seemingly could not seduce was her very own husband, the Duke (Ralph Fiennes). And when she tried to find her own way to be true to her heart and loyal to her duty, the resulting controversies and convoluted liaisons would leave all of London talking. Co-starring Dominic Cooper, Hayley Atwell and Charlotte Rampling.
It was a wonderful moving time period piece that touched me. You felt Georgiana’s complete despair and powerlessness, her wretched loveless marriage, and her inability to change her fate. Today, you are able to see how Diana reinvented herself and survived, despite the Palaces attempt to destroy her. I enjoyed the movie immensely. All women were in the audience.
Yella
Theater. Narrowly escaping her volatile ex-husband, Yella (Nina Hoss) flees her small hometown in former East Germany for a new life in the West. “YELLA is the kind of movie that tantalizes the mind with possibilities without solving the puzzle.” (N.Y. Times) “Christian Petzold's disquieting German thriller feels modest while you're watching it, but makes a stronger-than-expected impact.” (N.Y. Daily News) The tense film grabs you from the beginning as you realize Yella is running from her stalking husband. She is terrified and finds love with another, until you realize that the beginning of the movie is really the end, that the story line itself is the flashback and leads up to the point where her stalking husband drive over the bridge.
Appaloosa
Theater. A wonderful well developed western starring and directing Ed Harris. He plays the role of the town Marshall with his sidekick. They interact and play off of each other beautifully.
Rene Zwelliger plays the not to pretty love object. Evil and good are clear. The old time western is full of childhood memories and I thought how much my father would have loved this movie.
Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist
Theater. I expected more. Starring Michael Cera, who was the love interest in Juno, I thought this film would be as good but I was disappointed. It takes place over one long night on the streets of Chicago as friends search for a band and Nick and Norah get to know each other.
It feels predictable and too young for me to care about but only judge inside myself.
Rachel’s Wedding
Theater. A marvelous heavy serious independent film about two sisters, Rachel who is getting married and Kim who just got out of Rehab after being in for 9 months. Anne Holloway plays her with brilliance and vulnerability and sorrow, fragile by the permanent damage she has done to herself and to her family, being high on drugs thereby killing her baby brother. It is a secret and burden that has destroyed her and her family. Her mother, Debra Winger, has a cameo performance but in that performance is masterful and brilliant in the cold and unforgiving parent and full of vengeance and fury toward Kim. It is a devastating and brilliant film. Both women deserve an Oscar.
Married Life
DVD. Harry and Pat have a nice respectable marriage. But when Harry falls in love with a beautiful young lady, he decides he must kill his wife, because divorce would cause her so much pain. Richard, (Pierce Bronson) is Harry’s caddish best friend who realizes he must have Harry’s lovely mistress for himself. Love and friendship are contemplated with noir-style suspense and wry humor in this sly comedy that reveals there is nothing as devastating, or as divine, as married life. This was a very enjoyable and entertaining film that kept me absorbed. A gem.
Kim Kittredge: An American Girl
Airplane. This was a lovely, sentimental film starring Abigail Breslin. It made me cry. The movie takes place during the Depression. It shows the effect that poverty had on families, how a father who cannot find work affects themselves and their families. I thought of my mother and how the Depression so altered her ability to give money and to let go of money. A great film.
Son of Rambo
Airplane. A lovely gem of a film of two boys whose unlikely friendship allows them to make a video film. This English independent movie speaks of the nature of friendship, loyalty and family. One boy is religious and the other boy is not but they cross paths and are forever united.
What Happens in Vegas
Airplane. This insipid and stupid Hollywood picture starring Anniston Krutcher and Cameron Diaz is another typical film made in Hollywood. Two people marry in a drunken stupor and then are forced to stay married and deal with their mistake. Dumb and I hated how women are treated and attacked and maligned inn this film. I found it very offensive.
Theater. A moving documentary that follows six seniors who live and go to high school in Warsaw, Indiana. It takes place today but it felt exactly like my experience when I went to high school. I most related to Hannah and admired her pluck and her courage and drive.
Sixty-Six
Theater. It's 1966, and the only thing that excites 12-year-old British boy Bernie more than his upcoming Bar Mitzvah is the World Cup. But when England wins their way into the finals -- which just happen to be on the day of his Bar Mitzvah -- Bernie begins to worry. Helena Bonham Carter and Stephen Rea costar. "Darkly funny, poignant and engaging...sucks us into a world filled with anticipation, disappointment and hope." (Urban Cinefile) This masterpiece of a film was poignant and funny and moving and profound. The working class family was just like Cary’s. The struggles and successes and treatment of each other was so real and genuine, there was such authentic emotional honesty that it took my breath away.
Brideshead Revisited
Theater. A yellow highlight two-hour high light of the wonderful book. The TV 15 part series was so much better that it was hard to sit through this knowing that the series went into the depth and breath and scope that was completely missing from the movie.
Towelhead
Theater. Directed by the Director of American Beauty, this movie delves into the same theme. The them of physical, emotional and spiritual abuse of a young, beautiful coming-of-maturity teen-age girl. It was deeply disturbing on every level. Every adult behaved very badly. The father was a product of his Arab culture and background. The mother was infantile and selfish. The neighbors were brutes.
Bella
DVD. An awful movie with weird transitions of a Spanish waiter who works for his brother, and ditches him in his hour of need, to help an unwed pregnant woman who allows him to act without responsibility. I couldn’t stand it.
Elegy
Theater. The movie stars Penelope Cruz and Sir Ben Kingsley. It is about a star struck Cuban student who falls in love with her Professor. He is unable to commit, self-absorbed, a serial monogamist and pretty much of a despicable character, especially the way he treats his son.
Penelope was marvelous. Kingsley was the same as he is in all of his films. Cold and detached.
Traitor
Theater. The movie began in Yemen, about a black man who is working for the CIA, infiltrating Muslim terrorist cells. He is a good Muslim, that is the only way this kind of movie would have ever been made. It is about cell networks around the globe that want to wreck terror upon US citizens. Suspenseful and good though I was bored in parts.
Mister Foe
Theater. Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot) is Hallam Foe, a troubled young man whose knack for voyeurism paradoxically reveals his darkest fears, and his most peculiar desires. Driven to expose the true cause of his mother's death, he instead finds himself searching the rooftops of the city of Edinburgh for love. Featuring a lively soundtrack with Franz Ferdinand, Sons and Daughters and Orange Juice, among others, the romantic drama is a darkly twisted, entertaining work of magical realism from David Mackenzie (Asylum, Young Adam, Somersault), one of the leading lights of the new Scottish cinema. Co-starring Sophia Myles, Ciarán Hinds, Jamie Sives, Ewen Bremner and Claire Forlani.
The Secret
Theater. Based on real events, this French film is about the back-story of the great “Christian” Nazi hunter in France. Only as an adult, does he discover that his parents were the reason that his father’s first wife did not survive the war. She martyred herself and Simon, the athletic child, to the Nazi’s when she realized that her husband never really loved her, but had fallen in love with her beautiful swimmer cousin. She did not join her husband and made a deadly decision. This decision haunted and tortured her husband and his second wife for the rest of their lives and was their secret that doomed their son to discover his roots.
The Duchess
Theater. Long before the concept existed, the Duchess of Devonshire, Georgiana Spencer (Keira Knightly), was the original “It Girl.” Like her direct descendant Princess Diana, she was ravishing, glamorous and adored by an entire country. Determined to be a player in the wider affairs of the world, she proved that she could out-gamble, out-drink and outwit most of the aristocratic men who surrounded her. She helped usher in sweeping changes to England as a leader of the forward-thinking Whig Party. But even as her power and popularity grew, she was haunted by the fact that the only man in England she seemingly could not seduce was her very own husband, the Duke (Ralph Fiennes). And when she tried to find her own way to be true to her heart and loyal to her duty, the resulting controversies and convoluted liaisons would leave all of London talking. Co-starring Dominic Cooper, Hayley Atwell and Charlotte Rampling.
It was a wonderful moving time period piece that touched me. You felt Georgiana’s complete despair and powerlessness, her wretched loveless marriage, and her inability to change her fate. Today, you are able to see how Diana reinvented herself and survived, despite the Palaces attempt to destroy her. I enjoyed the movie immensely. All women were in the audience.
Yella
Theater. Narrowly escaping her volatile ex-husband, Yella (Nina Hoss) flees her small hometown in former East Germany for a new life in the West. “YELLA is the kind of movie that tantalizes the mind with possibilities without solving the puzzle.” (N.Y. Times) “Christian Petzold's disquieting German thriller feels modest while you're watching it, but makes a stronger-than-expected impact.” (N.Y. Daily News) The tense film grabs you from the beginning as you realize Yella is running from her stalking husband. She is terrified and finds love with another, until you realize that the beginning of the movie is really the end, that the story line itself is the flashback and leads up to the point where her stalking husband drive over the bridge.
Appaloosa
Theater. A wonderful well developed western starring and directing Ed Harris. He plays the role of the town Marshall with his sidekick. They interact and play off of each other beautifully.
Rene Zwelliger plays the not to pretty love object. Evil and good are clear. The old time western is full of childhood memories and I thought how much my father would have loved this movie.
Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist
Theater. I expected more. Starring Michael Cera, who was the love interest in Juno, I thought this film would be as good but I was disappointed. It takes place over one long night on the streets of Chicago as friends search for a band and Nick and Norah get to know each other.
It feels predictable and too young for me to care about but only judge inside myself.
Rachel’s Wedding
Theater. A marvelous heavy serious independent film about two sisters, Rachel who is getting married and Kim who just got out of Rehab after being in for 9 months. Anne Holloway plays her with brilliance and vulnerability and sorrow, fragile by the permanent damage she has done to herself and to her family, being high on drugs thereby killing her baby brother. It is a secret and burden that has destroyed her and her family. Her mother, Debra Winger, has a cameo performance but in that performance is masterful and brilliant in the cold and unforgiving parent and full of vengeance and fury toward Kim. It is a devastating and brilliant film. Both women deserve an Oscar.
Married Life
DVD. Harry and Pat have a nice respectable marriage. But when Harry falls in love with a beautiful young lady, he decides he must kill his wife, because divorce would cause her so much pain. Richard, (Pierce Bronson) is Harry’s caddish best friend who realizes he must have Harry’s lovely mistress for himself. Love and friendship are contemplated with noir-style suspense and wry humor in this sly comedy that reveals there is nothing as devastating, or as divine, as married life. This was a very enjoyable and entertaining film that kept me absorbed. A gem.
Kim Kittredge: An American Girl
Airplane. This was a lovely, sentimental film starring Abigail Breslin. It made me cry. The movie takes place during the Depression. It shows the effect that poverty had on families, how a father who cannot find work affects themselves and their families. I thought of my mother and how the Depression so altered her ability to give money and to let go of money. A great film.
Son of Rambo
Airplane. A lovely gem of a film of two boys whose unlikely friendship allows them to make a video film. This English independent movie speaks of the nature of friendship, loyalty and family. One boy is religious and the other boy is not but they cross paths and are forever united.
What Happens in Vegas
Airplane. This insipid and stupid Hollywood picture starring Anniston Krutcher and Cameron Diaz is another typical film made in Hollywood. Two people marry in a drunken stupor and then are forced to stay married and deal with their mistake. Dumb and I hated how women are treated and attacked and maligned inn this film. I found it very offensive.
Miss Pettigrew
After being dismissed from her job as a governess in her native England, a middle-age woman (Fargo) attempts to start a new career. Instead, of a modest change, she’s capitulated into a glamorous world as a social secretary for an American singer and actress. (Amy Adams) It is a touching and moving movie of ambition, persona, lost dreams and disappointments and loss and how it changes and molds us throughout our lives.
Then She Found Me
Starring Helen Hunt and Bette Midler, this New York schoolteacher is going through a mid life crisis in rapid succession. Her husband leaves her. Her adoptive mother dies. Her biological time clock is at 39 years old. And, then out of nowhere, here biological mother appears. The movie is truly independent, sad, and fine, at the end of the picture.
Made of Honor
Starring Mr. McDreamy this stupid and insipid Hollywood film that copied and repeated every possible cliché was made. Our hero decided to chase his friend only after she became engaged to another and then he realized how much he loved and needed her. Boring.
Changeling
Theater. This movie directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Angelina Jolie, was heavy and grim and hard and real. Jolie was magnificent in it. She is a truly great actress. But the story line and subject was hard to take. I wanted out of it. I find it interesting how Eastwood keeps making films of the same subject. Brutally murdered kids and grief that is rendered unbearable on their parents. “Christine Collins thinks her prayers are met when her kidnapped son is returned. But amidst the frenzy of the photo-op reunion, she realizes this child is not hers. As she pushes authorities to keep looking, she learns that in Prohibition-era Los Angeles, women don't challenge the system and live to tell their story. Slandered as delusional and unfit, Christine finds an ally in activist Reverend Briegleb (John Malkovich), who helps her fight the city to look for her missing boy. Based on an actual incident that rocked California's legal system, the provocative thriller Changeling tells the shocking tale of a mother's quest to find her son, and those who won't stop until they silence her.”
Caramel
DVD. A film by Nadine Labaki, this is the first Lebanese film that received international recognition. It takes places in a Beirut beauty salon that is the treasured meeting place for several generations of women, from various walks of life, to talk, seek advice and confide in one another. There is a wonderful intimacy to it. Sexuality is only implied, never seen, which I found refreshing and ironically liberating. It allowed the imagination to work overtime!
The Secret Life of Bees
Theater. A tender and lovely film that stars a great cast. Dakota Fanning. Queen Latvia. Jennifer Hudson. It is about a 14 year old white girl who has a big hole inside her heart because she seeks a mother’s love so much. She escapes to a bee farm, headed up by black women, where she heals and learned to forgive and love. I remembered that I read the book.
I’ve Loved You For So Long
Theater. Newly released from prison, after serving a 15-year sentence for murdering her 6-year-old son, Juliet, (Kristen Scott Thomas,) finds solace and friendship with her much younger sister that she barely knew. This French film was long and tedious and the ending made no sense at all. She killed her son out of mercy and to relieve him from his pain as a doctor. She would never have gotten 15 years and why was it such a secret that he was sick in the first place!
The whole premise did not make sense.
The Boy In The Striped Pajamas
Theater. A phenomenal and devastating film of a German boy whose father is a Commander of a concentration camp. He befriends a Jewish boy, and though he hears nothing but hate toward Jews, his curiosity brings him to discover what is on the other side of the house. The profound tragedy at the end of the film leaves you mourning for this good German child and the permanent sorrow and grief his death brings his parents. Ironically, more than for the Jews and the Jewish boy.
Captain Abu Raed
Theater. An extraordinary film of friendship and sacrifice, hardship and survival. The film is a Jordanian film that won all the awards in Independent Film Festivals. Its language is Arabic.
It is not a political film. The haunting story and the devastating conclusion stays with you long after you leave the theater. It is about an old man who seeks friendship with young children in his neighborhood because of unbearable loss and loneliness. Not accidentally, he pulls a pilots hat out of the garbage and from this singular gesture, develops the entire film. He saves the life of a young boy that has long reaching ramifications. It is a superb film.
Empire of The Sun
DVD. Starring a young Christian Bale! And directed by Steven Spielberg, this extraordinary movie depicts the loss the innocence, how it destroys the child, completely, how the love of planes keeps him afloat and how survival against all odds works. It is a classic.
Synecdoche, New York
Theater. This movie starts Philip Seymour Hoffman and has a phenomenal cast of cameo performances. I stayed until 3/4 of the way finish until I could not stand it any longer. It started to get weirder and weirder and boring and psychedelic and ridiculous. I do not even know if the director knew where the story was going. It felt like a mental break down.
Quantum of Solace
Theater. The last of the James Bond films and the first to be written without a screenplay from a book. It showed. It was without a plot or dialogue and after the car chase scene and the boat scene I said to Cary, all that it is missing is an airplane scene! But it did not disappoint. It had that too. The movie was tedious and boring and predictable and there was none of the charm of the earlier James Bond movies, not even “ Bond. Sir. James Bond.”
Slumdog Millionaire
Theater. Twice. This movie is an absolute Masterpiece, a global classic. It will go down in film history to study and analyze. It was so phenomenal that I was high afterwards, bouncing off the wall. I knew I had seen greatness. I went in cold without reading any reviews and interviews and was thrilled that I had. I was completely caught off guard by the tightness of the film, the perfection, the attention to detail, and the pace, how everything in the movie was tied together and brought together for a reason. Lucky. Genius. Cheating. As It Is Written. Like Chapters in a book. Unforgettable.
flashbacks of a fool
DVD. Daniel Craig plays a washed-up Hollywood star adrift in a haze of sex, drugs and squandered fame. But when he receives news of the sudden death of his childhood best friend, Joe flashes back to his younger self in his small English seaside village and the summer of innocence and tragedy that would change his life forever by the tragic death of a child while he was making love to a neighbor.
Vantage Point
DVD. During a historic counter-terrorism summit in Spain, the President of the US is truck down by an assassin’s bullet. Strangely like what happened in Mumbai the day after we saw the movie. Eight strangers have a perfect view of the kill, but what did they the really see? As the minutes leading up to the fatal shot are replayed through the eyes of each witness, the reality of the assassination takes place. Forest Whitaker is marvelous. Rashmon.
Sleepwalking
DVD. Great stars all in cameo roles. This movie is about a moving drama that develops between James and his young niece, Tara. The girl’s mother abandons her and James feels responsible for her. Old wounds from his own turbulent childhood begin to reopen, and he ends up killing his mean and cruel unloving father. It is a sad movie of people who get by day by day. Surviving, barely.
Meet The Browns
DVD. Tyler Perry’s film of black life with the black humor and stereotype. It is nice that it is not violent with bad language. Desperate, out of work Brenda goes to Georgia to reclaim her past and possible inheritance and falls in love along the way. Boring and cliché. Watched only half. She has 3 children from 3 different fathers, which doesn’t bat an eyelash.
Transsiberian
DVD. Very gripping and well acted. Great film. A train journey from Beijing to Moscow turns into a thrilling chase of deception, drug trafficking and murder when Americans Roy and Jessie (Emily Mortimer) and a pair of fellow travelers are targeted by ex-KGB deceive Grinko. (Ben Kingsley.) It is about a bad cop, drug smuggling, money seeking and it is gripping!
Days of Heaven
DVD. Gorgeous photography. After accidentally killing a man, hot-tempered farmhand Bill flees to Texas with his girlfriend Abby and his younger sister who is the annoying narrator. They pose as brother and sister and the property owner, falls in love with Abby and marry her. Issues of jealousy, anger, loyalty arises as the three deal with their confused emotional and volatile situations. It was one of the most visually stunning films of its time. (1978) Wonderful film, although Cary kept dissing it.
Australia
Theater. This movie stars Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman. I found it a boring, predictable epic that stole parts and segments from all other films known to man to put t this one together. It almost became a cliché of films. What did it not have? The romanticism of the Aborigines.
The burning of Atlanta from Gone With The Wind. Nicole was too thin and modern for this time period. The falling in love with the earth-man. The bad husband, which gave her justification. On and on. It was so predictable, it was almost funny.
The Reader
Theater. A German teenager, Michael (David Kross), has an affair with an older woman (the always superb Kate Winslet) in 1958; years later, he finds her again, on trial for the crimes she committed as a guard at Auschwitz. Knowing that she is illiterate, he communicates with her in prison by sending her taped readings of classics of German literature. Ralph Fiennes plays Michael as an adult. Stephen Daldry directed; David Hare adapted the novel by Bernhard Schlink.It was a marvelous film, heavy and sad and dark. I felt she destroyed his life, completely. He was never able to make attachments again. I like how things were implied, not spelled out. Perfectly cast and powerful. Loved it. Loved the dialogue.
The Class
Theater. This movie won the Palm d’ Ore of the Cannes Film Festival (the Best Picture of the year) and Cary and I walked out on it. I found it like a false high school documentary, which it wasn’t, boring, and I did not care for any of the kids at all. They were hard and mean and rough.
Supposedly, the movie creeps up on you, but after two hours, it still had not, and I was bored out of my mind.
The Bucket
TV. This movie starred Jack Nickelson and Morgan Freeman. It was a C plus or a B minus. Clique and silly in parts, trying to hard in other parts, it succeeded only in the voice over and an attempt of wisdom and insight at the very end. Meanwhile, you had to sit through the movie.
Last Chance Harvey
Theater. An absolutely wonderful, delightful and satisfying film of finding relationship at the end of your life. Filled with disappointments and failures and dreams unrealized, these two great actors, Emma Thompson and Dustin Hoffman, find each other and make each other whole. It was without sentiment and silly dialogue and phony situations, except for trying on the dresses, and being in the elevator, those were false notes, but other than that, it was a very fine film.
Valkyrie
Theater. This movie stars Tom Cruise who I feel does an adequate job. The first half of the movie works but the second half becomes hooky and silly and it feels as if college kids have been sitting around trying to come up with a plot and story. Cary said the second half never took place. Recommend it? No.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Theater. This movie stars Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. It was tedious and long and pretentious and full of itself. Brad Pitt made 25 million for “acting” glum and depressed. He had nothing to say because he was one of the most boring characters ever to grace film. I found the entire film contrived and stupid and was utterly bored and detached. It is about a baby born old and dies an infant. It would take a heroic effort to make it work and the directors failed miserably. 3 hours.
Wendy and Lucy
Theater. A marvelous intimate gem of an independent film. I loved it. Starring Michelle Williams, it is about a young girl who belongs nowhere, has nowhere to go, and is all alone in the world with her dog, Lucy. There is a deep strain of melancholy and sadness and aloneness that touched and moved me deeply. It felt haunting and real and left me with a deeply satisfying film experience.
Waltzing With Bashir
Theater. This film is Israel’s Entry into the Foreign Film of the Oscars. I loved it. It is an animated film of Crying For Imma ten years later. I felt it depicted war in a very real and dangerous way, and the fact that Israel did such close self-examination of itself to this day, reflects the conscience and soul of the nation. What other country, including America cross-examines itself the way Israel does? None.
Then She Found Me
Starring Helen Hunt and Bette Midler, this New York schoolteacher is going through a mid life crisis in rapid succession. Her husband leaves her. Her adoptive mother dies. Her biological time clock is at 39 years old. And, then out of nowhere, here biological mother appears. The movie is truly independent, sad, and fine, at the end of the picture.
Made of Honor
Starring Mr. McDreamy this stupid and insipid Hollywood film that copied and repeated every possible cliché was made. Our hero decided to chase his friend only after she became engaged to another and then he realized how much he loved and needed her. Boring.
Changeling
Theater. This movie directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Angelina Jolie, was heavy and grim and hard and real. Jolie was magnificent in it. She is a truly great actress. But the story line and subject was hard to take. I wanted out of it. I find it interesting how Eastwood keeps making films of the same subject. Brutally murdered kids and grief that is rendered unbearable on their parents. “Christine Collins thinks her prayers are met when her kidnapped son is returned. But amidst the frenzy of the photo-op reunion, she realizes this child is not hers. As she pushes authorities to keep looking, she learns that in Prohibition-era Los Angeles, women don't challenge the system and live to tell their story. Slandered as delusional and unfit, Christine finds an ally in activist Reverend Briegleb (John Malkovich), who helps her fight the city to look for her missing boy. Based on an actual incident that rocked California's legal system, the provocative thriller Changeling tells the shocking tale of a mother's quest to find her son, and those who won't stop until they silence her.”
Caramel
DVD. A film by Nadine Labaki, this is the first Lebanese film that received international recognition. It takes places in a Beirut beauty salon that is the treasured meeting place for several generations of women, from various walks of life, to talk, seek advice and confide in one another. There is a wonderful intimacy to it. Sexuality is only implied, never seen, which I found refreshing and ironically liberating. It allowed the imagination to work overtime!
The Secret Life of Bees
Theater. A tender and lovely film that stars a great cast. Dakota Fanning. Queen Latvia. Jennifer Hudson. It is about a 14 year old white girl who has a big hole inside her heart because she seeks a mother’s love so much. She escapes to a bee farm, headed up by black women, where she heals and learned to forgive and love. I remembered that I read the book.
I’ve Loved You For So Long
Theater. Newly released from prison, after serving a 15-year sentence for murdering her 6-year-old son, Juliet, (Kristen Scott Thomas,) finds solace and friendship with her much younger sister that she barely knew. This French film was long and tedious and the ending made no sense at all. She killed her son out of mercy and to relieve him from his pain as a doctor. She would never have gotten 15 years and why was it such a secret that he was sick in the first place!
The whole premise did not make sense.
The Boy In The Striped Pajamas
Theater. A phenomenal and devastating film of a German boy whose father is a Commander of a concentration camp. He befriends a Jewish boy, and though he hears nothing but hate toward Jews, his curiosity brings him to discover what is on the other side of the house. The profound tragedy at the end of the film leaves you mourning for this good German child and the permanent sorrow and grief his death brings his parents. Ironically, more than for the Jews and the Jewish boy.
Captain Abu Raed
Theater. An extraordinary film of friendship and sacrifice, hardship and survival. The film is a Jordanian film that won all the awards in Independent Film Festivals. Its language is Arabic.
It is not a political film. The haunting story and the devastating conclusion stays with you long after you leave the theater. It is about an old man who seeks friendship with young children in his neighborhood because of unbearable loss and loneliness. Not accidentally, he pulls a pilots hat out of the garbage and from this singular gesture, develops the entire film. He saves the life of a young boy that has long reaching ramifications. It is a superb film.
Empire of The Sun
DVD. Starring a young Christian Bale! And directed by Steven Spielberg, this extraordinary movie depicts the loss the innocence, how it destroys the child, completely, how the love of planes keeps him afloat and how survival against all odds works. It is a classic.
Synecdoche, New York
Theater. This movie starts Philip Seymour Hoffman and has a phenomenal cast of cameo performances. I stayed until 3/4 of the way finish until I could not stand it any longer. It started to get weirder and weirder and boring and psychedelic and ridiculous. I do not even know if the director knew where the story was going. It felt like a mental break down.
Quantum of Solace
Theater. The last of the James Bond films and the first to be written without a screenplay from a book. It showed. It was without a plot or dialogue and after the car chase scene and the boat scene I said to Cary, all that it is missing is an airplane scene! But it did not disappoint. It had that too. The movie was tedious and boring and predictable and there was none of the charm of the earlier James Bond movies, not even “ Bond. Sir. James Bond.”
Slumdog Millionaire
Theater. Twice. This movie is an absolute Masterpiece, a global classic. It will go down in film history to study and analyze. It was so phenomenal that I was high afterwards, bouncing off the wall. I knew I had seen greatness. I went in cold without reading any reviews and interviews and was thrilled that I had. I was completely caught off guard by the tightness of the film, the perfection, the attention to detail, and the pace, how everything in the movie was tied together and brought together for a reason. Lucky. Genius. Cheating. As It Is Written. Like Chapters in a book. Unforgettable.
flashbacks of a fool
DVD. Daniel Craig plays a washed-up Hollywood star adrift in a haze of sex, drugs and squandered fame. But when he receives news of the sudden death of his childhood best friend, Joe flashes back to his younger self in his small English seaside village and the summer of innocence and tragedy that would change his life forever by the tragic death of a child while he was making love to a neighbor.
Vantage Point
DVD. During a historic counter-terrorism summit in Spain, the President of the US is truck down by an assassin’s bullet. Strangely like what happened in Mumbai the day after we saw the movie. Eight strangers have a perfect view of the kill, but what did they the really see? As the minutes leading up to the fatal shot are replayed through the eyes of each witness, the reality of the assassination takes place. Forest Whitaker is marvelous. Rashmon.
Sleepwalking
DVD. Great stars all in cameo roles. This movie is about a moving drama that develops between James and his young niece, Tara. The girl’s mother abandons her and James feels responsible for her. Old wounds from his own turbulent childhood begin to reopen, and he ends up killing his mean and cruel unloving father. It is a sad movie of people who get by day by day. Surviving, barely.
Meet The Browns
DVD. Tyler Perry’s film of black life with the black humor and stereotype. It is nice that it is not violent with bad language. Desperate, out of work Brenda goes to Georgia to reclaim her past and possible inheritance and falls in love along the way. Boring and cliché. Watched only half. She has 3 children from 3 different fathers, which doesn’t bat an eyelash.
Transsiberian
DVD. Very gripping and well acted. Great film. A train journey from Beijing to Moscow turns into a thrilling chase of deception, drug trafficking and murder when Americans Roy and Jessie (Emily Mortimer) and a pair of fellow travelers are targeted by ex-KGB deceive Grinko. (Ben Kingsley.) It is about a bad cop, drug smuggling, money seeking and it is gripping!
Days of Heaven
DVD. Gorgeous photography. After accidentally killing a man, hot-tempered farmhand Bill flees to Texas with his girlfriend Abby and his younger sister who is the annoying narrator. They pose as brother and sister and the property owner, falls in love with Abby and marry her. Issues of jealousy, anger, loyalty arises as the three deal with their confused emotional and volatile situations. It was one of the most visually stunning films of its time. (1978) Wonderful film, although Cary kept dissing it.
Australia
Theater. This movie stars Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman. I found it a boring, predictable epic that stole parts and segments from all other films known to man to put t this one together. It almost became a cliché of films. What did it not have? The romanticism of the Aborigines.
The burning of Atlanta from Gone With The Wind. Nicole was too thin and modern for this time period. The falling in love with the earth-man. The bad husband, which gave her justification. On and on. It was so predictable, it was almost funny.
The Reader
Theater. A German teenager, Michael (David Kross), has an affair with an older woman (the always superb Kate Winslet) in 1958; years later, he finds her again, on trial for the crimes she committed as a guard at Auschwitz. Knowing that she is illiterate, he communicates with her in prison by sending her taped readings of classics of German literature. Ralph Fiennes plays Michael as an adult. Stephen Daldry directed; David Hare adapted the novel by Bernhard Schlink.It was a marvelous film, heavy and sad and dark. I felt she destroyed his life, completely. He was never able to make attachments again. I like how things were implied, not spelled out. Perfectly cast and powerful. Loved it. Loved the dialogue.
The Class
Theater. This movie won the Palm d’ Ore of the Cannes Film Festival (the Best Picture of the year) and Cary and I walked out on it. I found it like a false high school documentary, which it wasn’t, boring, and I did not care for any of the kids at all. They were hard and mean and rough.
Supposedly, the movie creeps up on you, but after two hours, it still had not, and I was bored out of my mind.
The Bucket
TV. This movie starred Jack Nickelson and Morgan Freeman. It was a C plus or a B minus. Clique and silly in parts, trying to hard in other parts, it succeeded only in the voice over and an attempt of wisdom and insight at the very end. Meanwhile, you had to sit through the movie.
Last Chance Harvey
Theater. An absolutely wonderful, delightful and satisfying film of finding relationship at the end of your life. Filled with disappointments and failures and dreams unrealized, these two great actors, Emma Thompson and Dustin Hoffman, find each other and make each other whole. It was without sentiment and silly dialogue and phony situations, except for trying on the dresses, and being in the elevator, those were false notes, but other than that, it was a very fine film.
Valkyrie
Theater. This movie stars Tom Cruise who I feel does an adequate job. The first half of the movie works but the second half becomes hooky and silly and it feels as if college kids have been sitting around trying to come up with a plot and story. Cary said the second half never took place. Recommend it? No.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Theater. This movie stars Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. It was tedious and long and pretentious and full of itself. Brad Pitt made 25 million for “acting” glum and depressed. He had nothing to say because he was one of the most boring characters ever to grace film. I found the entire film contrived and stupid and was utterly bored and detached. It is about a baby born old and dies an infant. It would take a heroic effort to make it work and the directors failed miserably. 3 hours.
Wendy and Lucy
Theater. A marvelous intimate gem of an independent film. I loved it. Starring Michelle Williams, it is about a young girl who belongs nowhere, has nowhere to go, and is all alone in the world with her dog, Lucy. There is a deep strain of melancholy and sadness and aloneness that touched and moved me deeply. It felt haunting and real and left me with a deeply satisfying film experience.
Waltzing With Bashir
Theater. This film is Israel’s Entry into the Foreign Film of the Oscars. I loved it. It is an animated film of Crying For Imma ten years later. I felt it depicted war in a very real and dangerous way, and the fact that Israel did such close self-examination of itself to this day, reflects the conscience and soul of the nation. What other country, including America cross-examines itself the way Israel does? None.
