THE MAJESTIC desperately wants to be a heartwarming classic, the type that is a staple of family gatherings and the holiday memories of a million people. It is intent on warming the cockles of the heart, but screenwriter and Hollywood native Michael Sloanr, even abetted by GREEN MILE and SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION director Frank Darabont, has… Read More »
WINGED MIGRATION (LE PEUPLE MIGRATEUR)
You could be forgiven if see the previews of Jacques Perrins WINGED MIGRATION and conclude that this is just another well-produced documentary about our fine feathered friends. Youd be so wrong. This is to the nature documentary, even the finest ones that have found a home on PBS, what home movies are to CITIZEN KANE.… Read More »
KM 0
It’s Madrid, it’s summer, and the only thing soaring higher than the temperature are the hormones of an unlikely band of strangers who are about to become much more in Juan Luis Iborra and Yolanda Barcia Serrano’s frothy and very sexy comedy, KM O. There’s nothing too deep here, unless you count the power of… Read More »
HELL HOUSE – DVD
HELL HOUSE is one of the scariest documentaries you will ever see. In it, fundamentalists with what they consider to be the purest of motives, put on a Halloween house in which scenarios are staged depicting violence that is intensely disturbing both emotionally and graphically. Its all meant to convert the unsaved by demonstrating a… Read More »
MUCH ADO ABOUT SOMETHING
The piquant documentary, MUCH ADO ABOUT SOMETHING, takes on the question of who actually wrote Shakespeares plays and poems. Now, I am of the opinion that in the final analysis, it doesnt really matter. The works speak for themselves and whether they were written by the Bard of Avon or not, they still glimmer with… Read More »
LAST CASTLE, THE
I will say this for THE LAST CASTLE, it being such a ho-hum picture it doesnt put us in the uncomfortable position in these uncertain times of dealing with the moral dilemma of enjoying a finely crafted film about American soldiers fighting among themselves. Its surprisingly dull for a film that has so many things… Read More »
A KNIGHT’S TALE
No doubt about it, A KNIGHTS TALE is an odd film. Part adventure tale, part romance, part social commentary and dont forget the one thing that will stick with you long after Heath Ledgers dreamy smile and Rufus Sewells wildly sexy sneer have drifted away. The way these denizens of 14th century Europe break into… Read More »
SUNSHINE HOTEL
Michael Dominic’s documentary SUNSHINE HOTEL takes us to one of the last of the flophouses that once teemed in New York’s Bowery. From a high of two hundred half a century ago, there are now only eight, housing tenants in cubicles with chicken wire instead of ceilings, tenants who cling to those cubicles as an… Read More »
TRIBUTE
So what is it exactly that makes a person want to become someone else, even for a few hours up one a stage? Thats an interesting enough question, but Rich Hall and Kris Curry goes a bit deeper than that with their endlessly fascinating documentary, TRIBUTE, a look at the people in tribute bands and,… Read More »
SHREK
As a pleasant reminder of what youre NOT going to get with SHREK, this animated film starts with the cliché of a storybook fairy tale. Big green hands turn the oversized, tritely illustrated pages of a princess locked in a tower and the brave knight who rescues her and gives her true loves first kiss.… Read More »