Director: Danis Tanovic, 2001."War is hell." Civil War General William Sherman said this in an address to the graduating class of the Michigan Military Academy in 1879. Films have explored this thought, most notably Saving Private Ryan. Spielberg showed us the violence and gore close-up, especially in the opening sequence of the D-Day landings in Normandy.130 years after Sherman's famous quote, Pope Benedict XVI declared, "The human tragedies and the absurdity of war remain in people's memori... Read Full Story
Director: Agnès Jaoui, 2000.What value does art have in our lives? Can it bring transformation? Is it an acquired taste? Actor-writer Jaoui puts the spotlight on art and love in her directorial debut. This is a slow French comedy of sex, good taste and bad manners. What story there is centers on three men and three women whose lives intersect. These interactions form the crucible for their character development.Early in the film we see Castella (Jean-Pierre Bacri), a wealthy industrialist who... Read Full Story
Director: Brian De Palma, 1993."And I want to thank a lot of people for that. I look over there and I see that man there, Mr. Norwalk. I want to thank you, sir. . . . And I want to thank AImighty God. . . . I can't believe this. I must have forgot. How could I forget my dear, close friend and lawyer David Kleinfeld, who never gave up on me through everything, thick and thin." This is Al Pacino giving his awards speech for his one and only Oscar, won for the 1992 Scent of a Woman, right? No, a... Read Full Story
Director: Kevin Macdonald, 2009.The new movie from MacDonald (The Last King of Scotland) makes us watch and think to the very end even while taking us on a taut and tense thrill ride. That should be no surprise given that Tony Gilroy wrote the screenplay. Better known for his writing on the Bourne trilogy, Gilroy also wrote and directed Duplicity, itself a fine film.As the film opens a petty thief is being chased through the backstreets of Washington DC until he is coldly executed in a dark a... Read Full Story
Director: Eric Lartigau, 2006The staple of the romantic comedy is the happily single bachelor put into a position where permanent relationship looms, threatening his carefree ways. I Do takes this formula and meddles with it a little.When we first meet Luis (Alain Chabat), he's a young man in the 70s with wild hair and wildly in love. But he is surrounded by his mother Genevieve (Bernadette Lafont), the strong-willed widow and matriarch of the family, and five sisters. Overbearing, they insul... Read Full Story
Director: Tony Gilroy, 2009.After his debut film, Michael Clayton, Gilroy comes back with a stronger, smarter, brighter movie. Both deal with multinational conglomerates, but Duplicity has more pizazz. Perhaps it's the star power of Julia Roberts, or the chemistry between Roberts and Clive Owen. It helps that the screenplay is tight and engaging. Gilroy wrote it himself. And he has written some dandies, including the fabulous Bourne movie trilogy.Owen plays Ray Koval, an MI6 spy while Roberts... Read Full Story
Director: Marc Forster, 2004."Grow up." "Act your age." "Quit being a kid." "Be a man." How many times have we heard people tell us one of these? Or maybe we have used them on our kids. They sound so mature and logical. But they fly in the face of the premise of this movie.Finding Neverland takes us behind the scenes of "Peter Pan," telling the story that led to that play's creation. Though it is based on real life, some of the events are more imaginative or modified, such as the conflating o... Read Full Story
Director: Joel Coen, 1984.A quarter century ago a pair of fresh young film-makers hit the scene. They were the brothers Coen. This was their first film, but it contains seeds of the greatness that was to come, with foreshadowings of both Fargo and their Best Picture Oscar, No Country for Old Men.Like No Country, Blood Simple is set in Texas. But where the later film used the harsh landscape almost as a character, here is is used simply as a backdrop for a film noir. Like any good noir, the pr... Read Full Story
Director: Michael Haneke, 2005.Caché is a French suspense thriller that defies traditional Hollywood norms. Moodily sad, it ratchets the tension but leaves the ending ambiguous with no real closure. This is intentional, as Haneke wants the audience to reflect on the various possibilities and come up with their own interpretation of the film. For a typical American viewer this may be quite frustrating. For European viewers this will resonate.The movie opens with an extended camera shot, sans m... Read Full Story
Director: Greg Kerr, 2009.Independent film-maker Greg Kerr brings a striking debut full-length feature to the big screen. Kerr, who is by day a professor at Portland Community College teaching screen writing classes, wrote this screenplay, then self-funded its production in Oregon. A labor of love, it took over 5 years to come to fruition. This is a film made on a shoe-string budget of $31,000, and that is evident. But after the first 5 minutes, the story is strong enough to make us forget th... Read Full Story
