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Martin Paule's Micro Movie Reviews: A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O-P-Q-R-S-T-U-V-W-X-Y-Z-

Amelie

From the creative mind of Jean Pierre Jeunet who co-directed Delicatessen and City of Lost Children comes this wonderfully upbeat confection about a young woman who becomes absorbed in making the lives of her fellow Parisians a little brighter. French actress Audrey Tautou who is the title character defines the term gamin with a wonderfully pert look and a vivacity that beams off the screen. Upon finding a box full of boyhood treasures long hidden inside a wall of her flat, Amelie sets out to find the owner and reunite him with boyhood. This becomes the pattern of her life and the basis for this visually imaginative tour de force full of digitally enhanced details and bits of magic. Interestingly, Jeunet had originally planned to have Emily Watson play Amelie. It was only due to the British actress backing out shortly before the film went into production that he found Tatou, and it is now hard to imagine anyone else coming close to her performance. 

Amandla! A Revolution in Four Part Harmony

This powerful documentary examines South Africa's apartheid era and the role music played in overthrowing it, using interviews, performances and often shocking archival footage. Despite the enormous suffering that this country has seen, what emerges in the film is the irrepressible joy of its black population‑even the songs condemning and threatening the white-minority oppressors are set to lilting melodies with beguiling rhythms.

All or Nothing

Director Mike Leigh has made a career out of illuminating the ordinary lives of the British working class. Here his subject is a London family and an extended ring of friends and neighbors who live in adjacent, soul-killing council flats. A Leigh regular, Timothy Spall, plays a disheveled and benumbed London cabby who can’t seem to get up the gumption to hit the streets early enough to bring in enough fares to fully provide for his family. His wife is a checker at Safeway, their daughter is a cleaner at a retirement home, and a layabout son specializes in putting away prodigious meals and flopping on the couch while watching the telly. These are not attractive people. Nor are they especially interesting in the usual sense. But through Leigh’s genius we are drawn into caring about this family through a sympathetic script spiked with interjections of mordant humor.   

Ali

A common failure of filmed biographies is the tendency to try and cover an entire life in a couple of screen hours, thus reducing the biopic to a series of insubstantial vignettes. Though this portrait of Muhammad Ali focuses on a ten-year span in the flamboyant boxer's life, it succumbs to the same flaw. There are simply too many events and people included to permit any real penetration into the essence of Ali. And without considerable knowledge of the champ's career, Black Muslim history, and Malcolm X's tumultuous relationship with the Muslims, viewers are likely to be mystified by many scenes. That said, director Michael Mann does know how to shoot boxing and the half-dozen bouts he details are exciting though their outcomes are already known. There are also a handful of solid performances including that of Will Smith in the lead, who inhabits his role so well we fail to notice his lack of resemblance to Ali in the same way Anthony Hopkins became Tricky Dick in Nixon thanks to a command of his craft. An unrecognizable Jon Voight in Halloween-style makeup plays Howard Cosell, the celebrated sports commentator, who had a publicly-close relationship with Ali. Though he's silly to look at, Voigt nails Cosell's voice down to its most subtle inflections. Ali is worth a look if you have interest in the subject and were around for the history depicted. Otherwise, the documentary, When We Were Kings, which details the momentous Rumble in The Jungle fight in Zaire between Ali and George Foreman is a more revealing, coherent work.

Aberdeen

Supported with a pair of brave and truthful performances by Lena Headey and Stellan Skarsgard who play daughter and father, this film caters to my particular weakness for road movies. Headey is a young, Scots coke-snorting executive who is asked by her dying mother (Charlotte Rampling in a small but indelible role) to bring their estranged father/husband to her bedside. The father (Skarsgard) is an alcoholic and former oil rig worker drinking up his life in Norway. Reluctantly he accompanies his daughter back to Scotland in a journey that becomes a nightmarish odyssey occasionally relieved by sprinklings of dark humor.  At times the viewer will become completely fed up with both of these people who have failed to mature, yet each time that happens, they recall our concern for them with glimmerings of their humanity. Ian Hart plays a truck driver who attempts to help this troubled couple along the way and emerges as the only wholly decent individual in the story. This is a difficult film to watch despite moments of lyrical beauty in the photography. Yet like a bloody traffic accident, we are compelled to look.

Acid House

This edgy triptych is based on three short stories by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh who authored the book from which the film Trainspotting was adapted. They all share a mordant humor laced with bitterness and deal with the fetishes of its author: drinking, drugging, shagging, fighting and football. Buoyed by a vivid production design and spot-on locations, each story has its own character and is driven by explosive dialogue rendered in the near incomprehensible slang of the Scottish streets and rave scene. Thankfully, subtitles fairly faithfully render a translation that allows us to follow the stories while enjoying the meters and idiosyncrasies of the idiom. Recommended to adventurous viewers only. 

Auto Focus

Director Paul Schrader has fashioned an American tragedy out of a story that could easily have been a massive dose of sexploitation. This is the chronicle of sit-com actor Bob Crane (star of the anemic Hogan’s Heroes) and his descent from all-American guy into a depraved, sex-obsessed pornographer. Greg Kinnear handles the difficult lead role with subtlety while Willem Defoe is made to order as his creepy, pathetic buddy who paves the way to Crane’s demise by introducing the actor to a sleazy milieu of strip bars and sex kittens as well as to the newly-developed video tape technology that turns Crane into a DIY pornographer. The film transits from sunny ‘60s period detail suffused with an avocado, orange, and aqua color scheme to bleached-out exposures and jittery, handheld camerawork as Crane spins downward.  The actor’s obsession with sex goes far beyond gratification; he is besotted with the hundreds of women he screws and his coupling comes across as joyless rote behavior. While Schrader seems neutral in his role as witness, there is a strong undercurrent of moralism operating below the just-the-facts treatment. If you found Boogie Nights of interest, this should sit well with you; otherwise, proceed with caution. 

AKA

For its original theatrical release this story of identity theft was shown in a triptych format — three simultaneous frames were projected in a split screen manner. I find that films presented in their entirety this way are maddeningly difficult to watch. I enjoy nuance, subtlety, and detail, and with this sort of presentation I feel as though most of those qualities are impossible to catch. I gave up for this reason on Mike Figgis’s Timecode about halfway through. Thankfully, the DVD version of AKA offers us the choice of the originally-released three-in-one approach and a conventional one-shot-at-a-time alternative. The story, the semi-autobiographical memoir of director Duncan Roy, concerns an 18 year-old young man from the lower middle class who escapes his dreary home and sexually-abusive father by ingratiating himself with a wealthy London gallery owner. He is able to parlay that foothold into the upper classes through his ability to mimic their speech and manners (shades of Mr. Ripley) coupled with a credit-card swindle. Impersonating the gallery-owner’s son, he soon is rubbing shoulders with some of the wealthiest and most dissolute reaches of British nobility.  The story is highly watchable and involving even if in the end our (anti) hero and his motives, aside from a fascination for the peerage acquired from his mother, remain opaque. The Thatcher-era upper classes are depicted without exception as cocaine-addled, bitchy snakes, making it unclear why he would want to join their ranks. The film was made for very little money and three different directors of photography donated their time. Yet the finished film (putting aside the issue of the three-frame version) is pictorially quite coherent.      
 

Assassination of Richard Nixon

Antwone Fisher

Denzel Washington made his directorial debut with this inspirational, largely true story of a navy seaman prone to fits of rage whose life is changed when he reluctantly undergoes counseling at the hands of a navy psychiatrist (Washington). Fisher, played by promising newcomer Derek Luke, slowly reveals his story: he was born in prison where his mother was doing time for shooting his father to death. What followed was a life of abusive foster homes and a pattern of abandonment. At the urging of the shrink he goes in search of his birth family.  The film sometimes grows too syrupy and Washington’s directorial style avoids all risks, but there are many scenes of great emotional power. Have some Kleenexes standing by…

Artificial Intelligence: AI

Stanley Kubrick had originally intended to make this film about a robot boy who is given the capacity to love. He ended up giving the project to Steven Spielberg to direct feeling that the story more closely matched Spielberg’s sensibilities. In this he was correct though the resulting merger of Kubrick’s darker, more cynical take on life with Spielberg’s sunnier disposition is an uncomfortable one that produced a film that is a nice try rather than a masterpiece. Essentially a retelling of the Pinocchio story, there is much to enjoy in this film though in the end, Spielberg’s tendency to overtly manipulate our emotions undermines the story. Still, the film is often an exercise in technical brilliance and some scenes resound with genuine artistry. Sadly, the last half-hour of its running time seems to be an unnecessary denouement that undermines what is otherwise a wonderful story. 
 

Ararat

Atom Egoyan has created some astonishing films during his relatively brief career including the powerful The Sweet Hereafter and the challenging Exotica. Ararat is his most ambitious work to date, if perhaps also his most flawed. Egoyan is an Armenian-Canadian who in this film examines his peoples’ tortured history at the hands of the Ottoman Empire Turks and in particular the genocide that erased nearly two-thirds of all Armenians in 1915. The conceit Egoyan uses is a film-within-the-film that deals with those same events as they arise during the making of a movie about the Armenian holocaust. Woven around that are several contemporary story lines that intersect and veer off from each other. It is the historic story that lacks a visceral punch. Instead of involving us in the way I suspect Egoyan intends, the retelling of the holocaust comes across as rather dry and academic—something you might find on the History Channel. The contemporary stories are all engaging, yet their relationship with one another finally feels contrived. Though the totality may be something less than its parts, those parts are still well worth a look with an interest in the subject matter. 
 

In America

Unlike most filmed stories about immigrants coming to the U.S. in times past, director Jim Sheridan’s (My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father) movie is set in the present. It deals with the experiences of an Irish family that illegally slips into the U.S. via Canada, still struggling with the ghost of a son who died recently. The family is played by an extraordinarily talented cast with Paddy Considine, reminiscent of a young Stephen Rea as the father, Samantha Morton as the mother, and real-life sisters Sarah and Emma Bolger playing the daughters Christy and Ariel. Much of the film is told from the viewpoint of 11 year-old Christy who wields a cheap video camera much of the time through which she captures much of the family’s traumas and victories. The story follows the family through their difficult immersion process living in a nightmarishly run-down Manhattan apartment building crawling with junkies and other denizens including a tenant who constantly gives forth with blood-curdling screams. The father unsuccessfully attempts to get work as actor while the mother puts bread on the table by working at an ice cream shop. At every turn the city throws curves at the family, threatening to tear it asunder. Wonderfully humane and strongly recommended.  
 

The Apartment

Billy Wilder’s sophisticated comedy was made in 1960, on the cusp of the sexual revolution. As such, it touches on themes that just a year or two earlier would have been strictly verboten. Jack Lemmon plays an office worker in a huge insurance company who advances his career by loaning out his bachelor pad to two-timing company executives who “entertain” girlfriends there. Among the execs, the most egregious philanderer is Jeff Sheldrake (Fred McMurray) who uses the apartment for trysts with an unlucky-in-love elevator operator (a wonderfully pert Shirey MacLaine), a woman that Lemmon has his eye on. Wilder’s script and direction are sure-handed and the leads have great chemistry. 
 

The Arousers

This rather obscure B feature 1970 stars Tab Hunter as a wacko who has trouble relating to women and becomes a serial murderer. Full of strange tics and offering a surprisingly strong characterization by the star, it was largely shot on location on a now-defunct pier in Venice, California. 
 

Artemesia

A biographical portrait of Artemesia Gentilischi, one of the first female painters of the Italian Rennaissance, its lush and presumably authentic production design and involving proto-feminist story are engaging.

The Asphalt Jungle

The meticulous detailing of a criminal plot and its execution set the pattern for countless caper films to follow. The movie is gritty, well acted and has a documentary feel that was quite novel in 1950, when it was released. Still well worth a look today. 

 
The Agronomist

Jonathan Demme has created a fine documentary in fashioning this portrait of Jean Dominique, a tireless activist who spent decades fighting for change in his native Haiti. Despite the seriousness of his quest, Dominique is a vivacious and funny man who kept up a cheerful attack on the series of demagogues who have left his country in ruins. The film is at once heartbreaking and inspirational.

Animal Factory

Though it lacks the focus of his directorial debut Trees Lounge (also reviewed here) Steve Buscemi’s sophomore film has plenty of punch.  Essentially it is the story of Ron Decker (Edward Furlong) a young drug dealer sentenced to hard time who is befriended and protected by a hardened penitentiary veteran (Willem Dafoe). The setting seems remarkably realistic as do the details of life behind bars. While Defoe is gripping in his role, Furlong comes across as indistinct, and at times downright annoying making it hard to see what in the relationship for Defoe.

Adaptation

Sometimes a bit too clever for its own good, this mobius strip of a story concerns real-life screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (played by Nicolas Cage) who is stymied in his attempts to adapt a story about an orchid thief to the screen. He begins writing himself into the plot replete with a myriad of hang-ups, especially in the love department.  Meanwhile Charlie’s brother (also played by Cage) optimistically careens into the picture taking the story in new directions. Wildly creative and also maddeningly self-indulgent, it is nearly always an engaging experience that is recommended to fans of Kaufman’s other screenwriting efforts: Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Being John Malkovich.

An Autumn Tale

One of Eric Rohmer’s very best films, it offer the gentle humor and chattiness that are this French director’s trademarks. The story concerns two 40-something women who are lifelong friends. The one who is happily married attempts to get her pal, a vineyard owner who is going through a patch of depression, fixed up with a man. Wry and subtle.  If you liked Pauline at the Beach or Claire’s Knee, be sure to seek this out.

 
American Folk Blues Festival 1962 - 1966

For anyone with an interest in blues and American roots music, the release of the two-DVD set represents a terrific find. During the early ‘60s, German promoters organized a series of tours by a stellar roster of American blues performers including Howling Wolf, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Sonny Boy Williamson, T-Bone Walker, John Lee Hooker, and many more. Many of the acts were filmed for German TV and these performances have now resurfaced in their glory. It is interesting to note how the Europeans gave these artists the deluxe treatment that they were entitled to while these same musicians were virtually unknown or respected at home. Many British rockers who helped form the British Invasion of the mid-‘60s had their interest in blues sparked by the tours presented here. An unearthed gem.

DVDs To Your Doorstep!

L'Age D'Or
And now for something completely different. Surrealist Spanish director Luis
Bunuel shocked audiences around the world in 1930 by thumbing his nose at an
assortment of bourgeois values: the church, morality and complacency. To
summarize the plot is nearly impossible and probably pointless as the film is
really a series of set pieces designed to offend and shock, which it does
flagrantly and with great relish.

After Pilkington
This odd little made-for-TV British film delves into marital infidelity,
madness and murder, all quite effectively. An Oxford professor meets a
colleague's wife only to realize that she was the object of his affections
long ago when they were children. Against a backdrop of the strange
disappearance of an archaeologist, the story plays out with fierce speed and
remarkable characterizations. A sleeper worth searching out.

Almost Famous
Cameron Crowes' autobiographical story of an innocent teenage boy hitting the
road with a 70s rock band while writing a piece for Rolling Stone magazine,
is a delight from start to finish. Crowe richly deserved the Oscar his
screenplay earned. There is fine casting here with newcomer Patrick Fugit as
the budding writer, Kate Hudson as an experienced but tender groupie, and
Billy Crudup as the leader of the touring rockers. Also excellent are Frances
McDormand as Fugit's protective but liberated mother and Phillip Seymour
Hoffman portraying the acerbic, real-life rock critic, Lester Bangs. This is
a crackerjack recreation of the rock milieu in a time when the pop music biz
was a bit less self-conscious and mercenary than is its current state.
 

An Affair of Love aka Un Liaison Pornographique
Neither the sanitized and generalized English title, nor the overly
salacious French one properly suggests the subject matter and tone of this
interesting examination of sexuality and friendship. A woman (the two
key characters are simply known as He and She) places an ad seeking a
sexual partner. An attractive, shy man turns up and they proceed to
have a series of sexual encounters without commitment. But this is no
Last Tango in Paris. Though they know nothing about each other, a
natural friendship arises and they fall in like. He is apparently the
more ardent of the two; he begins wanting more. She is more
restrained. Told in flashback form as the couple individually describe
the affair to an unseen interviewer, we learn early on that they
ultimately did split up. But exactly why, we never learn. Each seems to
have secrets which we never become privy to. The leads, Nathalie Baye and
Sergio Lopez are both excellent; Lopez in particular exudes
a reticent charm that is altogether beguiling.

Amores Perros aka Love's A Bitch
This stunning directorial debut from Mexico goes for the jugular
literally and figuratively in a kinetic arrangement of three
intersecting stories that begins with a grinding car crash. The stories have
as their common denominator, dogs.  The first concerns a love triangle
between two brothers and the wife of the older brother. The younger brother
turns to dog fighting to raise money with which to spirit away his thuggish
brother's brutalized wife. The next, and most surreal story, is that of a TV
executive and his mistress who he ensconces in an apartment with a faulty
floor. While she is recuperating from massive injuries, her dog disappears
into a yawning hole that develops in the floor. She is haunted by the creature's
piteous whining as it is perhaps being eaten by rats. The third storyline operates
in the background  and bridges the other two. It involves a former guerrilla
who has become a hobo hit man and nurturer to an entourage of stray
dogs. He is the sole character whom we can root for; the rest are a
pretty despicable lot. This is a raw, visceral film, which despite a
disclaimer at the beginning stating no animals were harmed, will be difficult for dog
lovers especially, to bear. A documentary about the making of the film spends
considerable time detailing recounting the means by which the engrossing
and repellent dog fight scenes were filmed without harm to the animals.
 

Alice and Martin aka Alice et Martin

When we first meet Martin, the product of an illicit affair, he is ten
years-old and is being pressured by his single hairdresser mother to go and
live with his father with whom he has had no contact. The film abruptly
flashes forward ten years and we see Martin dashing from his father's home in
disarray. After desperately seeking survival in the French countryside, he
goes to live in Paris with his gay half brother and the brother's platonic
roommate, Alice (Juliette Binoche). He is fascinated by Alice who initially
spurns his approaches. Martin becomes a fashion model, and in time Alice
falls in love with him. It is only at the midway point in the film that
director Andre Techine explains the cause of Martin's flight, just hinted at
in the early going. Though that reason is easy enough to guess, Techine,
through the peculiar structure of the story, demands our attention if we are
to fully realize the relationships and undercurrents that drive his
narrative. This is a work of great restraint with right-on cinematography
that never manipulates our emotions. Ultimately an examination of what
happens to people struggling in unstable families and surroundings, it
incorporates Techine's twin concerns: obsession and guilt.
 

American Beauty
Just about every middle aged guy in America's should connect with some
aspect(s) of Lester Burnham's life. Kevin Spacey's portrayal as forty-ish
man going through a midlife crisis with a vengeance is bang-on. The rest of
the cast is uniformly fine also. This is a somewhat kinder, gentler take on
American suburban living than Happiness (reviewed earlier) which shares
its preoccupation with domestic dysfunction, though in the latter's case, the
outlook is decidedly darker.

Angel Baby (1995)
Kate and Harry, a pair of schizophrenics struggling with their demons,
meet in an outpatient clinic and fall madly, clingingly in love. Harry is
the more stable of the two; Kate is in the sway of Astral, a presence who
sends her messages through the puzzle solutions on television's Wheel of
Fortune. They soon are sharing a flat as well as Kate's game show delusions
when she becomes pregnant. Harry insists she stop taking her antipsychotic
drugs for the fetus' sake and then stops taking his own after landing a
good job and prematurely feeling in control. Their love has a frantic and
needy underpinning that spells impending disaster. English actor John Lynch
(In The Name of The Father) gives an especially committed performance.

Followed by two sequels, ("Aliens" and "Aliens 3 - The Resurrection") as is
so often the case, this first film in the sequence is the best, though
"Aliens" isn't bad. An affective melding of the sci-fi and horror genres,
it concerns a spaceship crew who investigate a derelict spacecraft leading
to disastrous results. Unlike most genre predecessors that feature
production designs with shiny, ultraslick technology, the craft here are
depicted as creaking, grungy vehicles with interiors that resemble a WWII
U-Boat. Co-captain Ripley is played by Sigourney Weaver who is as tough as
nails surviving a wicked array of hazards and emerging as one of few female
heroines in a genre usually reserved for the testosterone set.

American Pie
Following the success of "There's Something About Mary", there has been a
raft of gross-out pix that primarily targets teen audiences, each
desperately trying to out-raunch the other. American Pi", the story of
four high school senior boys who make a pact that each will lose their
viriginity before the prom is one of the more successful attempts. With an
abiding interest in bodily secretions, and above all, pimply sex, it is
curiously reminiscent of a much more innocent time. These guys have all the
gangly uncertainty and insecurity about sensual matters that pl'agued teens
in far more innocent adolescent comedies during the '40s and 50s.
Think Andy Hardy with no holds barred.

The Awful Truth (1937)
One of the more delirious screwball comedies that graced American screens
in the '30s, it earned an Oscar for director Leo McCarthy. Cary Grant and
Irene Dunn play a divorcing couple awaiting a final decree while attempting
to disrupt each other's lives with escalating dirty tricks.
 

The Advocate

Talk about misleading packaging; the stills and copy on Miramax's video box don't
give you an inkling as to the unusual film contained therein. Set in 16th century France,
a lawyer decides to leave Paris for the tranquility of the countryside. The film opens
with a peasant about to be hung for sodomizing his donkey, the poor animal is also
condemned to death. A courier breathlessly arrives bearing a reprieve for the ass�the
court has ruled that since it was an unwilling participant, it is to be spared.
Then the movie gets weird... According to the prologue it was quite common in those
times for animals as well as people to be tried for crimes ranging from murder and
mayhem to witchcraft. The titles then inform us that the film which follows is largely
based upon the transcripts of actual trials that took place in medieval France. In the
story that follows, our lawyer takes on the defense of an immense black pig which
stands accused of murdering a child. Between court appearances our hero spends
much of his time bedding the gypsy owner of the pig and an assortment of
other comely females of the town. This is a sort of Perry Mason meets Fanny Hill
meets The Devils meets Monty Python. Absolutely iconoclastic.
 

Accident

A very cerebral piece by director Joseph Losey that is superficially the
story of an Oxford professor who falls for one of his students. But Harold
Pinter's demanding script operates on a whole lot of levels and is
supported by a first-rate class of British veterans.
 

The Accidental Tourist

John Hurt is superbly subdued as a business travel writer who is
emotionally numb after the death of his son and a subsequent divorce from
his wife. He meets an extroverted animal trainer (Geena Davis) who at first
seems utterly incompatible but who gradually draws him out of the shell he
has erected. The story unfolds in quiet and wonderful ways. A highly
recommended three-hanky item.
 

Affliction

An unflinching adaptation of Russell Banks first-rate novel is given
emotional heft by Nick Nolte as Wade Whitehouse, a profligate sheriff,
father and son, and his venemous, alcoholic father, Glen, played by James
Coburn in an eye-opening performance following a career of mostly
featherweight roles. These two have a barnful of emnity between them
which is played out with icy observation in this powerful and disturbing
drama spiced with a murder mystery. If you're up for a dose of
no-holds-barred realism, check this one out.
 

After Dark, My Sweet

A stylish and moody story based on a Jim Thompson pulp fiction story that
involves Jason Patric as a dim-bulb drifter who becomes caught up in the
schemes of a beautiful woman and her neurotic friend played brilliantly by
Bruce Dern. Though the plot shambles along without much development and the
conclusion is somewhat unsatisfactory, the committed central performances
and striking photography outweigh these drawbacks.
 
 

After Hours
Scorsese's  black comedy was a bit of a dud at the box office It's the brilliant
noire account of a Manhattan office worker who, on the promise
of some tail, becomes enmeshed in a nightmarish series of events that
involve a wild collection of Big Apple denizens. It's very surreal and
often tense and funny all at once with a number of terrific cameos by
people like Cheech & Chong and Terri Garr. Impossible to watch without
having Kafka come to mind.

Agnes of God

A young nun apparently becomes pregnant then kills the newborn child. A
court-appointed shrink attempts to find out exactly what happened with
results that are ambiguous. Though the movie doesn't entirely work, the
lead performances by Jane Fonda, Anne Bancroft and Meg Tilly are
exceptional as is the photography by Sven Nykvist, Ingmar Bergman's
venerable cameraman.
 
 

Aguirre, Wrath of God

This was shot on location in the Amazonian rainforest by the wacko German
director Werner Herzog. It is the story of a Spanish conquistador who
leaves the Pizarro exploration party with his own smaller force and
descends into madness as he penetrates deeper into the Amazon basin. Quite
hallucinogenic and wildly funny in a couple of spots. If you like this, be
sure to check out Fitzcarraldo, by the same director, which deals with a
crazed man who is intent on establishing a monopolistic shipping route
through the Amazon and in so doing, drags a steamship across mountains with
the ultimate plan of building an opera house in the middle of the jungle.
Burden of Dreams is a documentary that chronicles the making of this film
in which a ship was actually dragged across the jungle and a number of
people really died in the process.

Alberto Express

A clever Italian comedy about a feckless young man who is presented with a
huge bill by his father - an accounting of every lira papa has expended in
his behalf beginning with the hospital bill for his birth. We follow
Alberto on a strange and often hilarious journey to raise the money.
 

Alfie

Michael Caine is excellent as a cockney playboy who loves to the play the
birdsfor all he's worth. After a while he starts to question the value of
his lifestyle. A nicely observed characterization that has really held up
over the years, with the memorable title tune piped by the incomparable
Cher.

An American Werewolf in London

A creative and offbeat treatment of a story that has been done endlessly.
Two young American backpackers are set upon by a wolf-like creature on a
lonely English moor. The surviving hiker goes to London to recuperate only
to discover by the full moon... but then, of course, you know the story.
But with its modern setting and some sharp humor, this entry sets itself
apart from the many shopworn entries within the genre.
 
 

Analyze This

Robert DeNiro plays Paul Vitto, a New York Mafia boss with panic disorder.
After almost being snuffed, he can't sleep, has anxiety attacks and is
impotent with his girlfriend. He seeks out the help of a local
psychiatrist, Ben Sobel (Billy Crystal) giving him two weeks to effect a
cure�or else. "If you turn me into a fag I'll kill you." This stuff's
all been done before, but not usually with the benefit of the sparkling dialogue this
film enjoys. Indeed, Crystal can quickly become tiresome and a subplot involving his
many attempts to get married wears out its welcome, but some of the
therapy sessions are a hoot. At one point Crystal inquires why DeNiro maintains
a mistress. DeNiro replies that he can do "things" with her that he can't do with his
wife. Crystal persists, wondering if the wife might do these "things" if he asked. To
which DeNiro retorts, "What-wid de same lips she kisses my kids goodnight?" There
are too many scenes in which Crystal vacillates between repulsion and fascination and
tries to bail out of the case, but stay tuned for the punchy dialogue.

An Angel at My Table

Originally made for New Zealand television this is the incisive biography
of Janet Frame, that country's preeminent novelist and poet. Misdiagnosed
as a schizophrenic, she undergoes a hellish childhood and her attempts to
have a normal life while practicing her art are continually undercut by an
unsympathetic society and family. Three different actresses play Frame from
childhood through adulthood and each is amazingly right physically and
emotionally in her part. Though it runs nearly three hours, there isn't a
wasted moment in this engaging work.
 

Antonia's Line

An elderly Dutch woman awakens one morning and decides that this is the
day that she will die. But before she does so, she looks back on her
iconoclastic life as the matriarch of an unconventional, extended family.
The film deals with the circularity of life ultimately making strong
statements about a strong woman.
 
 

Airplane

I love splendidly stupid movies like this that don't overlook a single
cheap shot. A spoof on big catastrophe flicks like Airport, it consists
of non-stop jokes of every moronic sort from sight gags to slapstick. Hang
in through the closing credits, because there are laughs wedged into them
also! If you go for this sort of stuff, then definitely check out the
Naked Gun series with Leslie Nielsen as well as its TV-based progenitor,
Police Squad several episodes of which are available on tape. Then of
course, there's Steve Martin's The Jerk which stands as an exemplar of
this sophomoric and, for me, screamingly funny genre.
 
 

...And God Spoke

Highly recommended to anyone who enjoyed either This is Spinal Tap or
Waiting for Guffman, this is an ersatz documentary about a goofy
director-producer team who decide to do the Bible...on a budget. Among
their casting coupes is Soupy Sales as Moses and the guy who played the
Incredible Hulk as Cain (brother Abel is played by a very swishy young guy
who has the crap beaten out of him by Cain in their pivotal scene).
Very silly in a Monty Pythonish sortof way.

American Bluenote aka Fakebook

Though the storyline�a group of struggling suburban New Jersey jazz
musicians try to make it to the big time�has been overworked, a bright cast
of unfamiliar actors and a true love of the music shine through. Episodic
in structure, there is a charm here that makes it a nice companion piece to
The Commitments.
 

American Heart

A rough-edged con is paroled and reunited with his teenage son who has
become disaffected by the brutal life he has suffered. Together
they try to make a go of things living in the underbelly of Seattle.
Director Martin Bell who directed Streetwise, the superb documentary
about Seattle street kids, brings a high degree of realism to this
affecting story. Jeff Bridges and Edward Furlong as the father and son are
impressive.
 
 

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Scorcese's triumphant chick flick entirely transcends the genre It is
the immensely human story of a woman finding her own strengths after her
husband dies leaving her broke and without prospects. There are
unforgettable performances from all the main players: Ellen Burstyn, Kris
Kristofferson, Jodie Foster ( in a very early role as a streetwise tomboy)
and Harvey Keitel as a very creepy, erstwhile suitor of our heroine.
 
 

Ali-Fear Eats The Soul

A remarkable love story by the eclectic German director Rainer Werner
Fassbinder in which a dowdy German widow forms a relationship with and
marries an Arab immigrant 30 years her junior. A quiet, gentle film that
makes its point about the universality of love and racism in rather subtle
ways.
 

Apt Pupil

After his taut and cleverly plotted Usual Suspects, my expectations
were high for director Brian Singer's next project. But the sophomore jinx
strikes in this tale adapted from a Stephen King novella about an aging Nazi war
criminal and a high school boy who becomes his protegé after unearthing the older man's past.
The boy turns the tables on the Nazi forcing him to pretend that he is the boy's grandfather.
In one especially implausible scene, the two meet with the boy's guidance counselor, played
by a horribly miscast David Schwimmer sporting a moustache in a failed attempt at suggesting
an older man. Watch this one for fun�it is rife with uninentional humor�think of it as a
half-baked sitcom. The show could be called My Nazi Grampa.

Apartment Zero

A shadowy Argentine-made mystery full of details bound to delight serious movie fans.
Colin Firth is a meticulous man who operates a Buenos Aires art movie
theatre. Much to his regret, he takes in a boarder who, it turns out,
has no visible means of support.
 
 

Au Revoir, Les Enfants

Based on personal WWII experiences by the late French director Louis Malle,
a headmaster takes enormous risks in sheltering some Jewish children from
the Nazis. Very tense and stirring, the climax is emotionally cathartic.
(In visiting the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C., I came upon a tribute
to the headmaster which is very nearly as moving as the film.)

L'America

Two Italian white collar con men go to neighboring, poverty-stricken
Albania to set up a sham shoe manufacturing operation�a ploy to steal
development money provided by their government. As they must have a pliant
Albanian as the puppet head of their phony corporation, they spring an
addled political prisoner who's been locked up since WWII and who thinks he is
still in the 40s. What ensues is a very touching road movie utterly unlike
any other. The title derives from the relationship between affluent Italy
and its desperately poor neighbor across the Adriatic which suffers from economic
and political chaos following the collapse of the Communist government. The
relationship of the countries is analogous to that of The U.S. and Mexico
with Italy as the L'America of the title.

The Assignment

On first blush this would appear to be just another one of those slam-bang
action pix bursting with big pyrotechnics, car chases and wholesale mayhem.
It certainly has all these ingredients but the film finally weighs in as a interesting
character study. Aidan Quinn is cast as a Cuban-American naval officer who
is recruited by CIA counter-terrorism operative ( Donald Sutherland) and
his Israeli counterpart (Ben Kingsley) to discredit the notorious real-life
Jackal aka Carlos, an international terrorist who he physically resembles.
Quinn undergoes a rigorous and at times inhuman training regime
administered by these handlers until he has digested all the nuances and
brutality of the man he is to impersonate. He is even required to receive
sexual training by one of Carlos' former lovers. In absorbing all these
aspects of the quarry he begins to lose his own identity putting immense
strain on his marriage and life. Set against a half dozen exotic locales,
the story undoubtedly takes significant liberties in depicting the exploits
of the real-life arch-villain ( awaiting trial at the time this film was made)
and often strains credulity. Yet the focus on Quinn's struggle to retain his
humanity while dealing with the stress of his impersonation is a saving grace.
 

Angels and Insects

The involving story of a Victorian naturalist who upon returning from an
expedition is taken in by a well to do family who supports his research.
While he studies the social structures of the insect realm, the humans
surrounding him act in extremely bizarre ways. An interesting premises is
fleshed out attractively with meticulous period detail.
 

Another Day in Paradise

Newcomer Vincent Karthieiser plays Bobby, a teenage meth freak and
smalltime hood who comes under the sway of "Uncle Mel", played by James Woods,
a seasoned gangster who takes the boy under his highly criminalized wing. Director Larry
Clark (Kids ) doesn't necessarily benefit from an obviously bigger budget with
this, his second film, yet it does have certain charms along with its liabilities. The leads
are all uniformly good with Melanie Griffith sporting immense, colagen-puffed lips as
Woods' smack-shooting moll Sid, and Natasha Gregson-Warner as Bobby's girl who may
have more smarts than rest of the foursome put together. A sort of Bonnie and Clyde
of the 90s, the movie unleashes great waves of violence and profanity while documenting
this mentorship-from-hell. There's lots of lowbrow yacking a la Tarantino, but it largely
lacks his inventiveness. And in one ludicrous scene, after a night of carousing, Mel puts
Bobby to bed with a kiss on the forehead. Nevertheless, despite this tendency to lay things
on a bit thick, the film should have some appeal to videoholics who like gangsters-on-the-run
pix. There's also a super soulful 70s soundtrack with many great obscurities of that genre
and a nice cameo by Memphis soul man Clarence Carter in a ribs joint that just oozes funk.
 

Awakenings

Robert DeNiro and Robin Williams excel in roles quite unusual for these two
capable actors. Williams plays real-life psychiatrist Oliver Sachs who
experiments with his persistently vegetative patients at a state
institution by injecting them with Depo Provera. DeNiro is one of his
successes awakening from a decades-long sleep to deal with the consequences
of his sudden adulthood after lapsing into a coma as a child. Very poigant
and affecting without being mawkish.

Arachnaphobia

It would not be kind to subject anyone with a pronounced fear of
creepy-crawlies to this cleverly fashioned horror pic. The storyline�a
horde of killer spiders come to roost in an all-American home-is right out
of the cut and paste book of Grade Z scary movies. But decent acting, a
solid budget and good special effects raise this well above the ordinary.
 
 

The Arrival

Another case of a by-the-numbers sci-fi story that emerges well ahead of
the standard fare in this genre. Charlie Sheen is a radio astronomer who
attempts to convince his superiors that he's listened in on proof of
extraterrestrial intelligence. After being blown off by his boss, he
discovers that the aliens have already landed on earth and they're up to
diabolical stuff. Lots of fun for the fantasy fan without the ponderous
philosophical content of "Contact", the 1997 Jodie Foster movie that shares
a lot of the same plot points-except her aliens are far more abstract and
benign.
 

At Play in the Fields of the Lord

A very long and initially stumbling effort (aside from stunning aerial
photography) about two missionaries and a roughneck bush pilot and their
relationships with each other and a tribe of rainforest people. Carefully
adapted from Peter Mathiessen's demanding novel about the cultural
collision between traditional people and the outside, "civilized" world.
Stay with this film as it gains momentum.

Atlantic City

This is Louis Malle's intelligent character study of a washed-up numbers runner who
still harbors hope for one big score. Played wonderfully by Burt Lancaster in perhaps his
best role, he becomes involved with a casino employee (Susan Sarandon in a
terrific, early performance) and her gangster boyfriend. The story plunges inevitably forward
to a grim conclusion while exposing the tawdry facade of this East Coast Vegas by the sea.

Abre los Ojos aka Open Your Eyes

OK, this Spanish film is a bit of a mess. But it stars the transcendentally lovely Penelope Cruz (for whom I have a particular weakness) and a strong co-star in Eduardo Noriega. The somewhat confused story line, told in flashback, concerns a handsome Spanish playboy who is disfigured in an intentional auto wreck at the hands of a spurned lover. The film takes a turn towards the sci-fi and horror genres as he looks into cryogenics as a way of killing time until plastic surgery has evolved to the point that his face can be properly reconstructed. Though there is a lot of hocus-pocus here, there is also a provocative idea running through the film about inner and outer beauty. With Cruz's exotic presence, along with director Alejandro Amenebar's stylish camera work, this is a worthwhile selection for fans of sci-fi thrillers. (The film was remade in the U.S. in 2001 as Vanilla Sky and stars Tom Cruise who bought the rights. It also stars Cruz, Cruise's crrent main squeeze, reprising her original role.)

Addiction, The

A young college student (Lili Taylor) is attacked while walking home one night by a woman who appears to be a vampire. In turn, and following the Bram Stoker formula, the student becomes a vampire too. In Abel Ferrara's gritty treatment of vampirism, the condition is likened to drug addiction and made more convincing by its lurid urban settings. An odd mix of twisted comedy and more substantial ideas, the film falters here and there but is largely saved by the director's flair coupled with a star turn by Christopher Walken who has never been stranger.
 

Alias Betty

Following the death of her young son, French novelist Betty Fisher falls into a deep depression. To help Betty cope, her disturbed, self-centered mother who has been estranged from Betty for many years kidnaps another child to replace her daughter's dead son. Slowly, reluctantly, Betty accepts the child as her own. We then begin to learn something of the surrogate boy's troubled background opening up the story of his family, something that in the end weakens the narrative. The cornerstone of the film is the fiery-icy relationship between Betty and her mother. Both of them have maternal instincts that seem to waver in the face of stress and which carry a feeling of great authenticity.

American Dream

Barbara Koppel's documentary about a meatcutters' strike against the Hormel Company in Minnesota depicts the corporation as a brutal entity that despite high profitability constantly seeks to cut pay and benefits for its workers. Though it may sound dull, this examination is fraught with tension and high drama. The going gets especially tough when the national union tells the striking local to give up the fight and go along to get along; something these Minnesotans are unwilling to do.  The atmosphere is far more dire than in Michael Moore's Roger & Me; Koppel has no taste for comedy here.

American Movie

A tribute to persistence, this is the documentary account of a young Midwesterner's attempt to bring a feature film into being with practically no resources, financial or artistic. Full of wonderful detail about life in middle America.

 
American Psycho

Based loosely on Brent Easton Ellis' highly controversial novel, this is the story of a Wall Street trader who, aside from having an overwhelming consumerist attitude, is also a psychopathic killer. This film treatment comes at the story as a black comedy and thanks to great design and a solid performance by Christian Bale in the lead, it works.

 
American Splendor

Harvey Pekar is one strange bird, and this film about his life is at least as strange as its subject. A quintessential loser and cynic from Cleveland who lives in an  abysmally depressed urban landscape, Pekar is employed in a brain-deadening job with the VA. In the 1970s, against all odds, he begins collaborating with underground comic artists including R. Crumb and becomes a counter-culture hero. This film avoids nearly all the conventions of the biopic to tell its subject's story using a range of stylistic touches and several points of view. Good stuff.

 
Anatomy of a Murder

One of the great courtroom flicks, James Stewart is brilliant as a smart yet folksy defense attorney attempting to save his GI client's neck from a murder charge. Graphic details of the crime that are revealed in court were considered controversial in their day (1959) but today the film's main attraction are its terrific performances and characterizations.

 
All About My Mother

This is a far more serious work from Pedro Almodovar who founded his career on frantic absurdist comedies. Upon the accidental death of her son, a mother attempts to carry out his final wish to know his father. Though it has the tonality of a soap opera, this a wonderful homage to the strength and resourcefulness of women.

All I Wanna Do AKA Strike!

Set in 1963, this is a serviceable comedy about a New England girl's school on the cusp of the Women's Lib movement.  Miss Godard's school is in financial trouble and is considering merging with a boy's school when our heroine Odie after her parents discovered a diaphragm in her sock drawer. Odie and her friends discover the perks of same-sex education, sisterhood, solidarity and a relaxed atmosphere in which girls aren't forced to constantly spruce up for male attention. How they deal with the threatened influx of males makes for a sprightly comedy with characters we can care about.

Almost Famous

Director Cameron Crowe's semi-autobiographical reminiscence of his early days as a stringer for Rolling Stone is a treat from start to finish. While the story ostensibly tracks 15-year-old William Miller as he hangs out with a rising rock band on the road with view to doing a Rolling Stomne story, this is really a sweet  coming-of-age piece par excellence. Especially great moments include a scene in which Miller gets advice from his hero, rock journalist Lester Bangs played with aplomb by Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Frances McDormand steals every scene she is in as Miller's protective yet understanding mother. Billy Crudup is exactly right as the dopey, kind guitarist in the fictional band Stillwater.

The Apostle

Robert Duvall's character study of a deeply flawed revival preacher is a much subtler work than say, the earlier Elmer Gantry. Rather than an expose of a corrupt man of God, he is a complex of traits suffering the results of one signal mistake. Duvall wrote, directed, produced, and nurtured this project into existence over the course of five years. His love for the work shows.  

Ariel

The Finnish director Ari Kaurismaki's films are something of an acquired taste. They are droll and deadpan in the extreme, though his Leningrad Cowboys Go America (reviewed here) was quite bit broader in its humor and has a substantial following. The story here is a much more darkly funny one in which we follow the downward trajectory of a miner who loses his job in the opening moments of the film when the Lapland mine he works at is shut down. A co-worker hands him the keys to his Cadillac and then goes into the loo and shoots himself. The miner then drives the Caddy to a big city where he is promptly preyed upon by denizens. Things go from bad to worse,but really this film has little to do with serious plotting. Recommended to devotees of Jim Jarmusch's early films and fans of Buster Keaton.   

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