Tatie Danielle, Terms of Endearment, Tampopo...Martin Paule's Micro Movie Reviews collection for Shelterbelt Cinema Channel, gotop10.com, world cinema page; movies from india china japan; European films, African Cinema; top 10 cinema academic film journals sites

This claustrophobic comedy-drama’s entire 90-minute running time takes place in a shabby Michigan motel room. Despite that, director Richard Linklater’s handling of the material is kinetic and constantly involving. Ethan Hawke and Robert Sean Leonard are two former high school buddies who meet up after 10 years and enter into a protracted sparring match about an alleged date rape that happened in their senior year. Leonard is an indie film producer in town for a festival screening of his latest; Hawke appears to be in a state of arrested development living on pot sales. Uma Thurman, who plays the subject of their argument, enters the film in the final half shattering the stalemate that has congealed between the two men. An altogether wonderful examination of sexual politics and of a friendship that has worn itself out.

Time and Tide aka Seunlau Ngaklau

Though I am not a fan of martial arts movies, I found this innovative actioner from Hong Kong a delight, albeit a largely mindless one. The bewildering plot concerns a couple of drug cartels, a pair of lesbian cops, and dual, somewhat parallel lines of action occurring in Latin America and Hong Kong simultaneously. A more precise synopsis is pointless; the story lines exist as devices on which to string a series of thoroughly creative and breathtaking action sequences that dispense with most of the cliches of kung fu flicks. Ultra-caffeinated non-stop action is the central attraction here.

This 1989 six-part British mini-series was the inspiration for the U.S. feature film Traffic. Like that Hollywood remake, it explores the complexities of drug addiction and trade from three perspectives: cops chasing heroin smugglers and distributors in Hamburg, a British minister struggling with his daughter's smack addiction while attempting to deal with the same problem on a political level, and a Pakistani peasant who goes from poppy farming to becoming the right-hand man of a major heroin exporter. It is in the last story that there is a major departure between the two versions. In the American release, the third story concerns a Mexican undercover cop. Perhaps the producers felt that the Pakistani story was too remote and exotic to be relevant to U.S. audiences. In any event, it is this third element of the story that works least well in the English version. We don't come to understand these Asian people and their motives nearly as well as we do the Germans and British characters. Nonetheless, this is a gripping and wonderfully detailed account of a problem that deserves the complex treatment it is given here.

Somewhat uneven, this is a collection of four stories about a disparate group of New Yorkers and their intersections with each other and with fate. Alan Arkin and John Turturro are standout cast members with Arkin especially good as a mean-spirited office supervisor who has neglected his family for his career and fires a worker simply for being too happy. Turturro plays a schmuck professor who is fooling around—the kind of role he excels at. Clea DuVall is also fine as a housecleaner whose life is turned upside down when she is hit by a car. As with so many other films of recent release, the movie uses a disjointed timeline to keep us guessing, and the conceit works nicely here.

Sidney Poitier delivers one his best early performances in this late-‘60s English film. He plays an unemployed engineer who takes a job teaching in a rough-and-tumble East London high school where the kids are biding their time until schools ends. Roughly similar to Blackboard Jungle, this film is a happier affair with the kids making remarkable progress under the commanding and dignified presence of Poitier’s character. This is a charming period piece with a fine roster of supporting players including the singer Lulu as a student who sings the memorable title song, a top-40 hit of its day.

Director Robert Guédiguian begins his film with a slow, detailed 360-degree panning shot of Marseilles, the location of this patchwork of stories about working class life in that port city, giving us a sense of what is to come. The central story deals with a woman who works at an exhausting job packing fish then returns home by dawn each day to a sterile apartment where she must serve the needs of her smack-addicted daughter and illegitimate granddaughter. Similarly, each of the other major characters is confronted with life-sapping obstacles that in several cases end in tragedy. Yet the film offers a glimmer of hope bookended as it is by the story of an immigrant boy seeking donations to buy a piano. Don't seek cleverly intertwining plots here; this is a mosaic, not a tapestry of human struggle.

In the mid-1980s, a wealthy Cape Verdean businessman dies, and instead of bequeathing his substantial estate and business to a conniving nephew as expected, his fortune goes to his illegitimate daughter. The businessman also leaves her a set of cassettes on which he has chronicled his life. The tapes provide transitions to a series of flashback vignettes in which we trace his rise from a barefoot immigrant boy to great success as an importer. Bright and lighthearted, the stories are featherweight and charming. Aside from giving us a feel for this West African island's culture and land, the soundtrack offers a good bit of the lilting indigenous music. The comedy is pretty broad and some plot points don't really scan, but in balance this is a pleasing little entertainment.

A series of articles that appeared in Harper's Magazine provided the impetus for this in-depth look at the career and machinations of Henry Kissinger, a look that leads many to the conclusion that he should be indicted as a war criminal. The film meticulously builds its case demonstrating how Kissinger has perpetrated crimes against humanity and engineered dirty tricks on three continents while creating the persona of a wily diplomat and revered elder statesman. Especially compelling is the well-documented case that Kissinger was the linchpin in delaying the end of the Vietnam War that led to the deaths of countless innocents in Vietnam and Cambodia. One comes away from this film filled with revulsion for the man.

One of Alfred Hitchcock’s fluffier concoctions, it stars two of the director’s favorite actors: Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. Grant plays a long-retired French cat burglar while Kelly is a wealthy American debutante who shares the general perception that a rash of jewelry heists on the Cote D’Azure are his work. Grant must establish his innocence by finding the burglar who is mimicking his modus operandi though the title probably also slyly refers to Kelly’s interest in “catching” Grant romantically. Partially shot on location on the Riviera, the lush locales are seen to their best advantage in glorious VistaVision and several sequences were shot from a helicopter—probably the first time this technique was used in a Hollywood feature film. Fans of lavish costuming will undoubtedly be impressed with Edith Head’s fabulous creations on display during the finale that involves a masquerade ball.

Though this film is ostensibly the documentary-style account of Jonathan Caouette’s difficult life and relationships with his mother and grandparents, it is something more than that. Cobbled together from Super-8 home movies that the director began shooting as a child, answering machine tapes, stills, and more recent video footage, the film serves as a document celebrating the director’s survival in the face mental illness and denial. It has been tweaked with editing tricks and effects that make the film more visually arresting without undermining its core truthfulness. Highly recommended to documentary connoisseurs, especially those who found Capturing the Friedmans (also reviewed here) worthwhile.

When this adaptation of a series of newspaper columns that was later bundled into a book originally ran on PBS in 1993, its nudity, frank treatment of gays and prolific pot puffing caused a stir among bluenoses. Set in 1970s San Francisco, several story arcs revolve around the inhabitants of a colorful Russian Hill apartment building presided over by Anna Madrigal (Olympia Dukakis). Tales offers a game cast, plenty of humor intertwined with tragic bits, and above all a compelling snapshot of a city exuberant in its Bohemianism. Two sequels made for Showtime and shot in Canada are pallid follow-ups.

When Anne (Isabelle Huppert), her husband and two children arrive at their vacation home in the French countryside, they discover that it is occupied by a desperate family. We are soon made to realize that a cataclysmic event of some sort has occurred and the comforts of civilization are rapidly dwindling. Anne and her family decamp to a train station where they join others all attempting to survive and hang on to the vestiges of a civil society. Director Michael Haneke is interested issues of violence and has icily treated that subject in earlier films such as The Piano Teacher and Funny Games. The first half hour of this film is utterly riveting setting an impossible-to-maintain level; it loses some energy as it goes along. it This is dark, stripped-down fare that is at once is memorable and difficult to watch.

I have mixed feelings about director Volker Schlondorff’s adaptation of the Gunter Grass’s allegorical novel about a boy who, in the face of the world’s barbarism, chooses to cease growing at age three. On the one hand the film is full of powerful images and stirring set pieces not easily forgotten, on the other, the allegory at times grows terribly obvious and heavy-handed. This lavish production is still worth seeing for fans of epic cinema.

This knowing and witty comedy drama is a study in snobbism that only a French director--in this case Agnes Jaoui--who also co-wrote and co-stars with her husband Jeanne-Pierre Bacri , could pull off with such aplomb. Bacri plays a boorish industrialist who falls for his English teacher and clumsily attempts to ingratiate himself with her circle of artsy-fartsy friends much to their amusement. Meanwhile Barcri’s bodyguard becomes involved with a waitress and minor hash dealer (Jaoui) in a relationship in which they both claim to be iut for just sex and laughs while their actions counter that. In the end, most of the assumptions each character makes about themselves and others is undone. Wonderful writing and performances make this a tasty French treat.

Now that everyone who has a high-def video camera is a potential filmmaker, Robert Altman’s sly, made-for-TV mockumentary has particular pungency. Alex Tanner is a 30-something would-be documentarian that is struggling to finish up a film about her father, a failed 1988 presidential candiadate, against the backdrop of the 2000 presidential race. Full of squirmingly funny moments, one of the best is a scene in which she and the real-life daughter of John Kerry get into a heated squabble when they attempt to simultaneously interview Ron Reagan. The film may prove initially confusing and chaotic for some viewers, but stay with it as the characters and situations slowly take form.

What elevates this above the ordinary police procedural is Clint Eastwood’s three-dimensional characterization of a New Orleans detective attempting to catch a serial murderer. Wes Block is a divorced man with two young daughters and a house full of adopted stray dogs who is struggling with own darker sexual urges while trying to catch the psycho bumping off sex workers. Eastwood generates tremendous, understated power in his performance, especially in his interactions with his kids. (His real-life daughter Alison is very good as his serious, older child.) Murkily shot, largely at night on location, this is a convincing work of neo noire that holds up quite well.

Though this 1976 Roman Polanski film doesn’t share the reputation of his Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby, I find it as nearly equally compelling as those masterpieces. Polanski stars as a timid clerk who moves into a Parisian flat formerly occupied by a woman who committed suicide and where he is surrounded by a bizarre collection of fellow tenants. Soon his sanity crumbles as he comes to identify with the former tenant, and as is the case in Rosemary’s Baby and Repulsion, it is impossible to tell where delusion ends and reality begins. Aside from Polanski’s performance, the star here is the apartment building itself, a shambling structure full of dark corners and menace. In his autobiography the director talks about how a gigantic mirror was used in exterior shots that include an unforgettable suicide scene to give the building more mass and height.

Far more than simply a re-creation of a mountaineering misadventure, this is a harrowing, at times painful to watch examination of how the events that are recounted forever changed its two protagonists. Two British climbers tackle a previously unconquered Andean peak and make it to the summit within the first 20 minutes of the film. Though it has been a scramble to the top, they are unscathed. But things go very wrong during their descent setting up a story rife with unrelenting tension and drama. The climb is very realistically portrayed by actors, while the actual climber's recollections, told quite dryly and matter-of-factly, are interspersed with the action. In some respects, it is the subtext of their personal stories that contains the heart of this film. These men have been inalterably changed by what they have gone through and though for the most part they maintain their stiff-upper-lipped demeanors, chinks in their emotional armor reveal that clearly.

Traffic
From the multifaceted director Steven Soderbergh comes this sprawling
look at the illicit drug industry. It focuses on the U.S.-Mexico drug
trade from a number of perspectives including those of tough-minded
Mexican and American cops, a powerful dealer's deluded wife, an
alienated American teenage heroin addict, and her father who has just been
named
his government's drug czar and fails to see the drug problem beneath
his own nose. Though the latter story is a bit heavy handed, Soderbergh keep
control of his expansive narrative and tells his story well.

A laugh-filled mockumentary that details the last-gasp American tour of a
70s British heavy metal rock act, this is an on the money parody with lots
of wonderfully fatuous dialogue. Director Rob Reiner plays the documentary
filmmaker supported by a sterling cast who evoke a perfectly twisted
rendition of arena rock. Even the songs are a hoot, acidly satirizing the
bombast andpubescent profundity of arena rock.

Director Alan Rudolph ("Choose Me") is an iconoclast with a catalogue of
films that defy categorization. Though emotionally credible, many of his
works are set in odd worlds that invite laughter. So it is here. A career
criminal (Kris Kristofferson) is released from prison and becomes involved
with a queer assortment of characters. Style is everything with Rudolph and
he doesn't disappoint here. Drawing on elements of noire, he creates a
landscape immediately recognizable as a Rudolph film. To get a better feel
for this directors ouevre, you may want to check out "Choose Me" reviewed

This dazzling action adventure yarn takes place at the end of Desert Storm
in 1991 when a quartet of U.S. soldiers go after a cache of gold booty
siezed by Iraqi troops from Kuwait. Out of necessity the Americans ally
with Iraqi rebels (Kurds?) and finally must make a choice between the gold
and the rebels. Beneath the grainy, bleached-out color and showy video
techniques, the film operates on a highly surreal level with a loopy
sensibility all its own. In a telling scene between one of the GIs and an
Iraqi captor in which they talk about the meaning of the Gulf War, it
becomes clear that the latter has a much clearer grasp of the geopolitics
of America's involvement than does the American.

The Theory of Flight
Looking like a distressed fledgling tossed from the nest, Helena Bonham
Carter plays Jane, a wheelchair-bound ALS victim who must rely on a speech
synthesizer to communicate. Her one great goal is to lose her virginity. In
her quest, she employs Richard, a failed artist (Kenneth Branagh) who has
been assigned to her as a companion resulting from a community service
sentence he received for leaping off a building with a pair of ludicrous
wings. Both actors show great facility for physical comedy and the film
moves comfortably between pathos and slapstick. Unfortunately the flight
metaphor is beaten into the ground and Branagh's character is somewhat
sketchy, but these two British pros make the movie eminently watchable.

Another extremely unpleasant old lady who makes life sheer misery for all
who attempt to help her. Loaded with terrific humor, we strangely enough
come to sympathize with this woman over the course of the film as she
laments her dead husband.

I had avoided this movie for years fearing that it was the sort of
tearjerker that I loathe; sort of a hyped up "Love Story" for the 80s. Just
goes to show that preconceptions can be utter bunk-I loved this
multie-hanky serio-comedy! Essentially the three-decade story of a mother
and daughter - Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger - and their love-hate
relationship, what makes this movie work are formidable characterizations
and plot turns that never resort to soapy formulas. Jack Nicholson's
character, a dissolute former astronaut who's a neighbor and love interest
for MacLaine is brilliantly played with a full complement of nuance and
nastiness which has become patented Nicholson turf.

Very different in subject and tone from the rest of Roman Polanski's work,
you would never guess that he is the expert hand behind this lovingly
crafted adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Tess of The D'Urbervilles. Set in
England at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, the story concerns a
young woman whose impoverished family learns that it is the remnants of a
once proud aristocratic lineage. Attempting to better herself, Tess makes
contact with the wealthy family that allegedly bought the rights to the
family's former social standing. What follows is an epic of truly Victorian
proportions and sensibilities, a wonderfully literate potboiler that is
exquisite in every respect.

Created by the director who made "When Father Was Away on Business", this
is the story of an innocent young man who is born into a gypsy family and
who over time is trained in the life of petty crime and scams. Colorful and
exotic, it is rife with touching and magical scenes. The dialogue is in
Romany requiring it to be subtitled in every country in which it is
distributed!

John Huston's single greatest accomplishment, it is the story of three
thoroughly despicable characters who join forces in a search for gold in
Mexico. This examination of greed and the evil that can lurk in men's
hearts is tremendously atmospheric and suspenseful.

The fascinating premise of this documentary has its origins nearly 40 years
ago. Director Michael Apted of the BBC selected a group of seven year-old
English children from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds and filmed
them at seven year intervals, recording their hopes, dreams and
aspirations. It is compelling to see how strongly the British class system
impacts the lives of these kids: the wealthy ones generally fulfill their
dreams or at least achieve their more mundane goals while their poorer
counterparts for the most part don't. Although a few dropped out of the
project along the way, it is intriguing to watch these people grow from
childhood, through gawky adolescence into adulthood with a mixture of
results ranging from unbridled success to miserable failures and even
madness.

The old lovers-on-the-run plot is given a reworking for the 90s with
Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette being chased by some serious
heavies. Dennis Hopper has a great supporting role as Slater's dad;
amazingly in this flick he's among the straightest characters! Tons of
violence, chases aplenty and basically, lots of fun.

Jeff Goldblum plays a gangly American actor in London who plays the
second-banana to the bitchy star of a comedy review played by Rowan
Atkinson of "Mr. Bean" fame who makes his life miserable. Later he lands
the lead in a very strange London stage musical version of "The Elephant
Man". Though the story meanders a bit, its full of endearingly oddball
moments.

One of my favorite Roman Polanski ("Rosemary's Baby", "Chinatown") movies.
He plays the lead as a nebbishy little guy who rents an apartment in Paris
in which the former tenant committed suicide. Over time he comes to
identify with this former tenant so much so that he too becomes suicidal.
Deliciously black, scary and funny.

A slow but very moving Italian film in which three brothers, each very
different from the others, return home to their village for their mother's
funeral. Much of the story is told in flashback form as the reminiscences
of their aging father.

Remarkably, this film was made in Serbia in 1991 during the horrendous
civil war there. It is set in 1954 Yugoslavia and is told from the
viewpoint of a pudgy young boy who lives in a crowded apartment with his
musician father, ballerina mother and a clutter of relatives all of whom
squabble incessantly. The boy hero-worships Marshall Tito and wins an essay
contest in which he proclaims that his love for the country's leader
exceeds that he has for his parents. This results in his being taken on a
hike with a collection of other ardent young Commies led by a martinet who
is being spied on by a couple of secret police. The film abounds with
gentle jokes about the boy's prodigious appetite and the foibles of the
authoritarian state. Beautifully filmed and realized, the film intersperses
newsreel footage to help capture the quality of the time.

A very funny, very dark look at a hyper-ambitious TV weather woman who will
stop at nothing to advance her career, including murder. It runs out of gas
a bit before the end but offers lots of laughs along the way.

The title is taken from the lavish palace/museum in Istanbul which houses
the immense loot of the Ottoman Empire. Filmed by French director Jules
Dassin in 1964, this became the prototype for countless other techno-heist
movies and remains among the best. Peter Ustinov and Robert Morley are
among the excellent cast of caper conspirators which is aided immeasurably
with location shooting that takes full advantage of the exotic locales. If
you like this one, check out "Rififi" by the same director, made 10 years
earlier and offering many of the same qualities. (Since seeing "Topkapi"
and visiting the palace, I have learned that most of its bejewelled
treasures were stripped of their gems and replaced with fakes ages ago.)

A very original look at a Walter Mitty-like man who has nurtured a lifelong
fantasy about being a strong, secret agent type while in fact he is a drab
and ordinary sort of guy. This is an unusual and eloquent statement about
childhood, dreams, envy and revenge.

From the demented minds that brought you "The Toxic Avenger" comes this
trashy sendup of the Shakespeare classic. With borrowings from "King Lear"
and "A Midsummer's Night Dream", there are generous helpings of nipple
piercings, car crashes, projectile vomiting and mutant lesbians. If you
make it through the movie, check out the closing credits for more bonehead
humor. Somehow, I think the bawdy bard of Avon would approve. Monumental
bad taste, an ensemble of pathetic characters and a scatalogical
sensibility that makes "Animal House" look like thoughtful cinema should
revolt all but diehard John Waters fans and others of that ilk. You know
who you are...

In the opening moments a mall-slut high school girl announces to her
parents that she's pregnant and plans to marry her craven young boyfriend
of whom they heartily disapprove. Pop promptly keels over from a heart
attack, mom kicks her out of the house, the boyfriend tells her to take a
hike and she meets up with a very strange and alienated computer
repairman...

A sitcom where the situation at first seems so unbelievably contrived as to
undermine the story. Yet it all works splendidly. Without having actually
met her, a guy falls in love with a radio talk-show host who offers pet
care advice. The host lacks self confidence about her looks and talks a
dumb-blonde neighbor into impersonating her on their first date. The
success of the loopy situations that arise rests with three terrific leads
played by Janeane Garofalo, Uma Thurman and Ben Chaplin. A tasty bit of
mind-popcorn.

Orson Welles' 50s masterpiece has grown in reputation over the years. Set
on the Mexican border, it involves intrigue, corruption and drugs. Welles
plays a fat, corrupt cop in stark contrast to Charleton Heston who portrays
a clean cut Mexican cop whose Anglo wife is kidnapped. The opening scene
which involves a car bombing has become known as one of the great set
pieces of American cinema.

One of FranÃ§ois Truffaut's most moving films recounts the long-term
relationship between a young Frenchman and two English sisters at the turn
of the century. Originally released in 1971, Truffaut added more footage
in 1984 improving what was already a good film into a masterpiece. The
photography by Nestor Almendros is breathtaking. Try to get the 132 minute
version that includes that added footage.

Two women awaiting their boyfriends outside a Soho flat quickly realize
they've been two-timed by the same guy. What follows, in what is
essentially a filmed play, is an examination of the timeless topic, what's
the deal with men versus women? Robert Downey Jr. is exactly right as
Blake, a narcissistic actor who dances through all sorts of self-absorbed
hoops to defuse this potentially disastrous confrontation. Fresh from his
stay at the L.A. county jail, Downey seems to draw on a personal memory
bank inventorying a host of bad choices. A one-set affair, the film derives
its energy from the sparkling performances of the cast and the acerbic
dialogue of writer-director James Toback (known as a major league womanizer
in his own right). The film takes a misstep towards tragedy in the final
moments, but it is buoyed and salvaged by the good stuff that precedes it.

This enormously creative film by Danny Boyle ("Shallow Grave") deals with a
circle of heroin addicts who inhabit the grungier corners of Glasgow. A
superb cast that includes Ewan McGregor as a junkie trying to climb out of
the pit and Robert Carlisle as his psychopathic, bullying buddy are
standouts. Some have argued that the movie glamorizes the junkie life. I
vehemently disagree. Though there are some great moments of lunacy, the
lives of these losers for the most part are grimly consumed with finding
the next hit. Adapted from a ferociously constructed novel which some
friends have found offputting due to the nearly impenetrable Scots slang.

An underappreciated little thriller about suppressed rage that bubbles to
the surface when the power abruptly goes down in a neatly manicured suburb.
Very stylishly directed with a trio of good performances by the central
cast, especially by Elizabeth Shue whose work here, as in "Leaving Las
Vegas", proves her to be a committed actress contrary to the nothing parts
she endured in her early career.

An unassuming slice-of-life comedy about an Italian-American couple who get
cold feet on the eve of their marriage. Perfect fare for those who enjoyed
"Moonstruck" and others of that ilk and fully equipped with thick as a
brick Bronx accents and lots of loveable family and friends.

One of the great Ealing Studios British comedies. This one features Peter
Sellers and his crew as prisoners whose sentences are nearly over. They
devise a plot to break out of jail to do a big jewel heist and then break
back into prison, establishing the perfect alibi. Alistair Sim is fun as a
gang member on the outside who assumes the role of a reverend with a
particular interest in ministering to prisoners.

The devastating story of an Italian woman who during the final days of WWII
struggles to survive the chaos along with her teenage daughter. In an
especially harrowing scene, mother and daughter are raped by Allied
Moroccan soldiers. Sophia Loren won an Oscar in what may have been her most
challenging role-a far cry from the sexpot turns that were her usual
assignments. Directed by Vittorio DeSica, one of the masters of Italian
cinema.

Novelist Norman Mailer adapted his own novel and directed this most
peculiar film noire/comedy about a guy who may have committed a murder that
he just can't remember. Mailer has his cast of outlandish characters,
including a very salty Lawrence Tierney as the maybe-murderer's father,
mouthing the strangest dialogue imaginable. The movie shares many of the
offbeat charms of David Lynch's "Twin Peaks" and "Blue Velvet" which should
serve as either a recommendation or warning, depending on your
predilections.

This is undoubtedly the best version of this oft-filmed Arabian Nights
story about a young boy, Sabu, doing battle with an evil magician. The
special effects and vivid Technicolor are magnificent, as are many of the
performances. There's an almost as good silent version that was directed by
Raoul Walsh in 1924 which may be more problematic to find on video tape.

Heartthrob-to-be Leonardo DiCaprio makes a big impression in this involving
story of a boy and his mother (Ellen Barkin) who marries a mean-spirited
martinet played convincingly by Robert DeNiro. Set in a Washington state
backwater, the stepfather undertakes a vicious campaign of physical and
mental violence directed at the boy. Based on the recollections of writer
Tobias Wolff, it is especially chilling to realize that the events depicted
actually happened.

This is another restored film of Satyajit Ray's now available on tape and
well worth running down. It consists of two adaptations of stories by
Rabindranath Tagore, the first concerning a postmaster who is transferred
to a remote, malarial Indian village. There he inherits from his
predecessor a little orphan servant girl, setting up a curious
relationship. The second story is the tale of an Indian law student who
decides to marry a local tomboy to sidestep an arranged marriage by his
mother. But his chosen just isn't the marrying kind...

Alejandro Jodorowsky's hallucinogenic Western is the practically
indescribable tale of a stranger who travels across a forbidding landscape
attempting to set right the many evils he encounters. Peopled with a
freakish assortment of dwarves, giants and hermaphrodites, this film
enjoyed a major cult following until a suit over the film's ownership cast
it into cinematic oblivion. I was lucky enough to find a (probably
bootlegged) Japanese video tape a couple of years ago and hopefully a
generally obtainable version will become available in the future.

A quest for the perfect noodle soup stands at the center of this quirky
comedy by Japanese director Juzo Itami. Told in episodic form, a robust,
Marlboro Man sort of Japanese truck driver befriends a woman whose noodle
soup shop is failing to thrive. Together they work at refining her
specialty to the level of art while the film has a great time poking fun at
various aspects of pop culture. If you find this to your liking, check out
the director's other efforts: "A Taxing Woman" and "The Funeral" which are
equally off center though perhaps not quite as exquisitely realized.

Chronicling the failing health and ultimate death of her grandmother might
not seem to be the appropriate fodder for a comedy, yet Jan Oxenberg's
documentary film is wistfully funny and touching. With a vision all her
own, the director uses fictional and fantastic elements to create a minor,
ironic masterpiece.

The title refers to Tolyan, a Russian soldier who is both charismatic and
corrupt. Kata is the recently widowed mother of a six year-old son, Sanya,
in this story set just after WWII. Both of them are desperately seeking
security and love in this tumultuous period (aren't they all?) in Russian
history. The dashing Tolyan quickly wins over both mother and son and sets
about using them in his Machiavellian confidence schemes. Kata is
entranced by his virility while the son sees in the soldier a father
figure. It is only when they have become deeply attached to Tolyan that
they realize he is a thief and confidence man. Though there are some
plotting implausabilities along the way, the performances are affecting,
especially by Misha Philipchuk as the young boy who exhibits skills not
usually found in such young actors. Writer/director Pavel Chukhrai seems to
be drawing parallels between this ad hoc family and the Russian state in
which Stalin became a love object of the people while merrily using their
adoration as the political base for his diabolic reign.

A nifty caper flick that offers flashy camera work, tight scripting and a
solid performance by James Caan as a career safecracker angling for that
last big score so that he can retire to a country cottage with his
girlfriend played by Tuesday Weld. Caan must dance a deadly line between
corrupt police and a venal Robert Prosky playing a menacing crime boss. The
energetic direction and scripting by Michael Mann presages the work he
would later do on TV's "Miami Vice". An electronic score by German art
rockers Tangerine Dream helps move the proceedings along nicely. Willy
Nelson has a memorable cameo as an aging convict who is facing his death in
the slam. The heist sequences are tense and expertly mounted so that the
tiredness of this particular genre is hardly noticed.

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