GIANT LITTLE ONES is a perceptive, intelligent examination of what happens when unexpected feelings and actions don’t have neat labels. In a time when acceptance of teenage sexuality, at least straight sexuality, has become the norm for most concerned, both parents and their sexually active kids, the question of sexual fluidity can still flummox.
SAUSAGE PARTY
It’s just as well that Seth Rogan’s animated comedy, SAUSAGE FEST, is R-rated. That would be because the most awkward question a parent might have to answer after his or her child has seen this metaphysically dense romp wouldn’t be about the specific mechanics involved in the bonding between Brenda (Kristen Wiig), a bosomy hot… Read More »
3
3 is a German variation on the classic French bedroom farce. As such, in addition to the leaping from metaphorical bed to metaphorical bed with all the attendant cross-purposes and miscommunications, there are also robust and tantalizing morsels of semiotics, synchronicity, existential identity, with a romantic spirit at work that not only invokes, but also… Read More »
THE GURU
THE GURU is a fluffy confection that mixes the exuberance of Bollywood with measured lunacy of 30s screwball comedies and adds just a dash of The Joy of Sex to leaven the mixture with a millennial sensibility. Our hero is Ramu, an Indian dance teacher who was marked as a child by seeing John Travolta… Read More »
TEKNOLUST
One of my favorite lines in Lyne Hershman-Leeson’s TEKNOLUST concerns the side effects of knowledge. They’re dangerous because they’re unpredictable. Once you learn something, paradigms shift, assumptions evaporate, and you’re forced to look at the world in a whole new way and maybe even re-think your whole life. Scary stuff. The film ponders the nature… Read More »
LIES (GOJITMAL)
Ah, sadomasochism, the gift that keeps on giving–welts, bruises, tattoos in all sorts of interesting places and that’s the theme of LIES, the latest flick from Jang Sun Woo, up until now one of my favorite directors on the world scene. But, hey, everyone slips up occasionally. For Jang its a particularly joyless coupling of… Read More »
Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu is BIUTIFUL
Until now Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu has made films that feature multiple story lines of people in crisis. With BIUTIFUL, he follows one story from beginning to end, but loses none of the complexity or richness of his previous work. It also incorporates part of his own experience of feeling a brush with death. When I… Read More »
Gregg Araki Goes KABOOM
Gregg Araki made his reputation for uncompromising indie filmmaking with a the Doom Generation Trilogy. Those films explored the terror and exhilaration of being young, confused, and hormonal. His later film, MYSTERIOUS SKIN, was unflinching in its depiction of the effects of child sexual abuse on its victims. His latest, KABOOM, picks up many of… Read More »
Helen Hunt Conducts THE SESSIONS
I spoke to Helen Hunt on October 5, 2012, and the obvious question was about whether or not being unclothed before a camera ever feels normal. She was good-natured about answering, and went on to talk about the trepidations she did and didn’t have about accepting the role of Cheryl Cohen-Greene, the sex-surrogate who helped Mark O’Brien,… Read More »
Jimi Mistry & Heather Graham Find THE GURU
THE GURU was a hit in Europe long before it made its way to the States and that’s a darn shame. Its infectious good humor and playful smarts is something no moviegoer should have to do without a minute longer than necessary. Playful is also the way I’d describe two of its stars, Jimi Mistry… Read More »