Invincible
January 3, 2007
Underdog sports movies, when done well, can be a surefire formula for success. Get a sympathetic protagonist and pit him against insurmountable odds with a satisfying ending so that everyone leaves the theatre feeling all warm and fuzzy. Case in point:...
Little Miss Sunshine
December 20, 2006
This star-studded independent film (isn’t that an oxymoron?) was the toast of this year’s Sundance Film Festival with its distribution rights being bought for $10 million – one of the biggest deals ever made in the festival’s history. The film...
The Fallen Idol
December 7, 2006
Based on the Graham Greene short story “The Basement Room” (he also wrote the screenplay), The Fallen Idol (1948) is a taut thriller seen through the eyes of child. Phillipe (Henrey) is the son of a foreign diplomat in London, England. His parents...
Love Actually
December 7, 2006
Richard Curtis is a terrific writer of comedy – no question. He has had unmitigated success ranging from TV’s Blackadder through to global blockbuster hits like Four Weddings, Notting Hill and Bridget Jones’s Diary. It’s not surprising...
The Green Mile: Special Edition
December 1, 2006
Magic realism is a tricky thing to pull off in a movie. It’s a deft balancing act that if you go too far in one direction you run the risk of losing the audience. In literature, it is much easier to pull off because a lot of it is left up to the reader’s...
The Double Life of Veronique
November 30, 2006
When The Double Life of Veronique (1991) was screened at the Cannes Film Festival it not only brought international acclaim and attention to its director Krzysztof Kieslowski but also to the film’s star, Irene Jacob. At the time, the 24-year-old Swiss...
Sweetie
November 22, 2006
New Zealand filmmaker Jane Campion has had a fascinating career with a varied body of work including a period drama (The Piano), a literary adaptation (The Portrait of a Lady) and a crime thriller (In the Cut). A common trait among all of the films in...
The Lake House
November 2, 2006
In an interesting bit of counter-programming and offering some relief from the glut of big, dumb summer action movies, The Lake House (2006) is a romantic movie for adults and is a reunion for Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock who, ironically, starred in...
Hands Over the City
October 27, 2006
Edoardo Nottola (Steiger) is an ambitious land developer who wants to build up a promising, rough piece of real estate in Francesco Rosi’s hard-hitting expose of corruption, Hands Over the City (1963). From the opening establishing shot, Rosi presents...
Reds: 25th Anniversary Edition
October 23, 2006
The 1970s saw the rise in prominence of the director in Hollywood and this resulted in many movies being pushed through the system that wouldn’t normally have been made. However, by the time of the Heaven’s Gate (1980) debacle, the rule of the director...
