| |
| THE
STRAIGHT STORY |
| 010100 |
| Alvin Straight (RICHARD FARNSWORTH) was 73
when he got the call about his brother. Alvin couldn't see well
enough to hold a driver's license. He walked only with the support
of two canes. He didn't much care for anybody else helping him
out. But when he got the call that his brother Lyle (HARRY DEAN
STANTON) -- separated from him by hundreds of miles and a decade
of proud silence -- had suffered a stroke, Alvin knew he had
to reach him. So, with little money but abundant determination,
he climbed on his lawnmower and set out. |
 |
| |
| THE SIXTH SENSE |
| 010100 |
| In M. Night Shyamalan's THE SIXTH SENSE, Bruce
Willis plays Dr. Malcolm Crowe, a successful Philadelphia child
psychologist who is haunted by the sudden reappearance and suicide
of a former patient. Months later Dr. Crowe encounters Cole
Sear (Haley Joel Osment), a troubled, withdrawn young boy who
bears a striking similarity to his earlier patient. Dr. Crowe
is compelled to help Cole, not only for the boy's sake, but
for his own redemption. As Dr. Crowe struggles to determine
what torments Cole, he must also come to terms with his increasingly
distant relationship to his wife (Olivia Williams). Meanwhile,
Cole is unable to describe the horrible things he sees even
to his worried mother (Toni Collette). The scene where Cole
finally tells Dr. Crowe about his supernatural secret is one
of the 1990s most quoted and well-known cinematic moments. |
|
| |
| LUCIE ALBRAE |
| 010100 |
| Based on the inspiring autobiography of French
freedom fighter Lucie Aubrac, Berri's film chronicles the way
that Aubrec and her husband involved themselves in World War
II, taking primary roles in the French resistance. Set in Lyons,
France in 1943, this suspenseful political drama depicts the
loving couple as they faught for survival during the dark days
of the third Reich's invasion of their homeland. Gerard Depardieu
stars as Raymond Samuel, a courageous leader of the French resistance
with fierce devotion to both to his wife Lucie (Carole Bouquet)
and his young child. While working to undermine the Gestapo,
he is betrayed by a fellow freedom fighter and imprisoned. Tortured
and beaten in a Nazi prison, Samuel is sentenced to death for
war crimes. It is up to the beautiful and cunning Lucie to find
a way to save her husband's life before it is too late. She
is determined to keep a promise of passion made when the young
lovers first met. This beguiling love story depicts the astonishing
bravery and determination of Lucie to save her husband at any
costs while continuing to fight for personal and political freedom
in France. A thoughtful and passionate period piece that brings
a heart-stopping true story of great courage to the screen. |
|
| |
| BRINGING
OUT THE DEAD |
| 010100 |
| Martin Scorsese exhilaratingly adapts Joe
Connelly’s novel about Frank (Nicolas Cage), a paramedic
working among the filth and mental desolation of New York City's
Hell's Kitchen in the early 1990s. Lately he has been haunted
by the visions of a newborn baby whom he was unable to resuscitate.
Soon after, another image begins to torment him, that of Mary
(Patricia Arquette), a recovering drug addict who enters Frank's
life when he attempts to save her father. His spiral into even
further confusion is paralleled with his three driving partners:
Larry (a boisterous John Goodman), whose advice to Frank is
not to think about all the death and violence; Marcus (a scene-stealing
Ving Rhames), a religious fanatic who uses his medical skills
as propaganda for the Lord; and Walls (a maniacal Tom Sizemore),
a loose cannon who has no sensible grounding whatsoever. In
order to escape the madness that is consuming him, Frank asks,
unsuccessfully, to be fired. He must ride out the nightmare,
trying to redeem the lives of Rose, Mary, and himself in the
process. Scorsese uses his camera to capture Frank’s wavering
mental state with tilted angles and fast-speed photography.
In portraying the tormented Frank, Cage dives wholeheartedly
into character, delivering another fiery performance. |
|
| |
| LEGEND OF 1900 |
| 010700 |
| The story of an individual who is born and
raised on a ship, learning about people and the outside world
through interactions with the ship's rotating passengers, THE
LEGEND OF 1900 comes from director Guiseppe Tornatore. When
a deckhand, Boodman (Bill Nunn), discovers a newborn baby on
January 1, 1900, he Christens him Danny Boodman T.D. Lemon 1900.
A freak accident takes the life of the older Boodman, and 1900
(Tim Roth) is looked after by other members of the ship's crew.
As he grows up, he learns to accept the crew as his family and
the ship as his home. A glimpse of an individual playing a piano
intrigues 1900, and before long he's a well-accomplished adult
pianist. The legend reaches land and eventually earns 1900 visits
from Jelly Roll Morton (Clarence Williams III) and a member
of the music industry who wants to record him. The song that
1900 plays is dedicated to a beautiful young woman (Melanie
Thierry) who threatens to lure him off the ship. Sheepishly,
he stays. All of this is told in flashback, remembered by 1900's
despondent friend Max (Pruitt Taylor Vince) as he prepares to
pawn his trumpet. When he discovers that the ship is about to
be sunk, he is convinced that 1900 is still on it somewhere
and the frantic race is on to save his friend. |
|
| |
| AMERICAN
BEAUTY |
| 010700 |
| AMERICAN BEAUTY tells the story of Lester
Burnham (Kevin Spacey), a suburban father who snaps when he
becomes disgusted with his stale, repetitive existence. Burnham
lets us know in voice-over from the film's opening that this
is the day he dies (using the SUNSET BOULEVARD flashback approach),
a technique that adds an inevitable tension to the proceedings
and keeps the story moving forward at all times. On a whim,
Lester quits his job and begins a regression into young adulthood,
lifting weights, smoking pot, doing nothing, and discovering
the overflowing sexuality of his 16-year-old daughter's best
friend, Angela (Mena Suvari). His wife, Carolyn (Annette Bening),
has her own midlife crisis of sorts. A real estate agent, she
experiences a youthful awakening when super-agent Buddy Kane
(Peter Gallagher) seduces her repeatedly. Meanwhile, Jane (Thora
Birch), the Burnhams' daughter, is pursued by Ricky (Wes Bentley),
the mysterious boy next door who carries a video camera around
with him at all times. When Ricky's militaristic father, Colonel
Fitts (Chris Cooper), discovers something potentially horrifying
on one of his tapes, and when Carolyn's rage for Lester's actions
boils over, the time bomb finally explodes. |
|
| |
| DOGMA |
| 010700 |
| Imaginative theology and a bigger than usual
budget make Kevin Smith's fourth film a kind of post-Catholic
fantasy that only a comic-book enthusiast of his caliber could
dream up. The plot is set in motion by two banished angels,
Loki (Matt Damon) and Bartleby (Ben Affleck). After a few millenia
in Wisconsin, they've discovered a loophole in Catholic doctrine
that would allow them back into heaven--but prove the fallibility
of God and destroy the universe. Unaware of the peril, they
make their way to New Jersey to receive a plenary indulgence.
Meanwhile, God has dispatched a seraphim (Alan Rickman) to recruit
lapsed-Catholic Bethany (Linda Fiorentino) to stop the angels.
She finds help in muses, prophets (Jay and Silent Bob), and
the forgotten 13th apostle, Rufus (Chris Rock). Before long,
all hell breaks loose (literally), and God (Alanis Morrisette)
has to put in an appearance of her own. The success of the film
is in the juxtaposition of Smith's trademark acerbic attitude
and witty dialogue against the enormous canvas of Christian
iconography and apocalyptic conflict. |
|
| |
| BOYS DON'T CRY |
| 011400 |
| From the middle of America emerged an extraordinary
double life, a complicated love story and a crime that would
shatter the heartland. In Falls City, Nebraska, Brandon Teena
(Hilary Swank) was a newcomer with a future who had the small
rural community enchanted. Women adored him and almost everyone
who met this charismatic stranger was drawn to his charming
innocence. But, Falls City's hottest date and truest friend
had one secret: he wasn't the person people thought he was.
Back home in Lincoln just seventy-five miles away, Brandon Teena
was a different person caught up in a personal crisis that had
haunted him his entire life. Like many young people, he made
costly mistakes and when he inadvertently trespassed between
his new love Lana (Chloe Sevigny) and her reckless friend John
(Peter Sarsgaard), the mystery unraveled into violence. In a
single, short life Brandon Teena was at once a dashing lover
and a trapped outsider, both an impoverished nobody and a flamboyant
dreamer, a daring thief and the tragic victim of an unjust crime.
Boys Don't Cry explores the contradictions of American youth
and identity through the true life and death of Brandon Teena.
What emerges from a dust-cloud of mayhem, desire and murder
is the story of a young American drifter searching for love,
a sense of self and a place to call home. |
|
| |
| THE SOURCE |
| 011401 |
| The story of three young men who defined the
"Beat Generation" in the mid '40s through poetry and
prose. Jack Kerouac (Depp), Allen Ginsburg (Turturro), and William
S. Burroughs (Hopper) are the subject of this insightful documentary
by Chuck Workman (SUPERSTAR: The Life And Times Of Andy Warhol)
who utilizes interview footage, feature film and television
clips, performances of fellow beat artists, and dramatized readings
to further examine the story of these cultural icons. |
|
| |
| EARTH |
| 012800 |
| Deepa Mehta's epic tale of the hateful religious
and civil wars that took place in India and Pakistan in the
1947 battle to gain independence from the British, EARTH is
the second movie in a trilogy from the director, preceded by
FIRE (1996) and followed by WATER (due in 2001). The story,
which is based on an autobiographical novel entitled CRACKING
INDIA, by Bapsi Sidhwa, is told through the eyes of a little
girl, Lenny (Maia Sethna), who has one leg in a brace. The impediment
keeps Lenny from being very active, so she spends her time sitting
and talking with her loving nanny, Shanta (Nandita Das), whose
beauty attracts a faithful following of about six male friends.
Lenny and Shanta sit in the park, fly kites, take long picturesque
walks through the ruins outside their village, and all the time
Lenny is absorbing the conversations around her. Between Shanta's
Muslim and Hindu suitors--one of whom is a Sikh--and Lenny's
parent's varied group of Parsee and Catholic friends, the debates
about the futures of India and Pakistan, including a litany
of stereotypes, fearful opinions, and hateful feelings about
all parties involved, become more and more heated. Finally,
Lenny watches as the warring begins. A horrific trainload full
of the bodies of massacred Muslims arrives in their town. Gangs
march through the streets raging with violence. Hindu tenements
are burned to the ground. Lenny is terrified, and as she struggles
to understand all that is happening--and why--the tragedy only
gets worse. EARTH is an intense and moving film that illustrates
beautifully the terrifying political and cultural atmosphere
of 1947 India. |
|
| |
| LAST NIGHT |
| 012800 |
| Writer/director/actor McKellar's take on the
always intriguing "end of the world" concept is a
thoughtful, engaging effort that uses dialogue instead of action
to discuss this premise intellectually. The inhabitants of a
Canadian city quietly accept the news that the world is going
to end at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Day, 2000 (wisely,
an explanation is never given). Rather than succumb to obscene
hysteria, the various assembled characters come to terms with
their situations thoughtfully and reasonably. McKellar's film
is a pleasant change of pace from Hollywood's recent barrage
of action-packed visions of the apocalypse. |
|
| |
| HARLAN CO. USA |
| 020400 |
| If Barbara Kopple had made no other film than
this documentary account of the 1974 strike of Kentucky mine
workers, arguably one of the finest documentaries ever made
in the U.S. and possibly the best on the problems of organized
labor, her place in film history would be assured. The strike
began when the miners working for the Eastover Mining Co. joined
the UMW, and its corporate parent, Duke Power, refused to sign
the standard union contract. By living with the 180-odd families
involved in the strike, Kopple shows the backbreaking burdens
of the miners' life in the best of times and the looming fear
of destitution in the worst. As the strikers strive to remain
united through a difficult year, Kopple photographs the picketing,
the company's use of state troopers to keep the roads open for
scabs, the showdowns between the miners and strikebreakers brandishing
firearms. After several shootings, one miner is finally killed.
During the man's wake, a memorable sequence, his mother collapses.
While the film is unabashedly partisan, it's worth remembering
that the company's refusal to sign a contract was condemned
by the National Labor Relations Board and that the corporation
agreed to sign only under heavy pressure from federal mediators.
The Oscar-winning HARLAN COUNTY, USA is a landmark in the history
of American documentary filmmaking. |
|
| |
| BOUND FOR GLORY |
| 020400 |
| Hal Ashby's film of Woody Guthrie's autobiography,
BOUND FOR GLORY, recounts the protest singer's life starting
when he's a young man with a wife and two children, trying to
find work as a sign painter in the Dust Bowl-ravaged Texas of
the 1930s. He leaves his wife, Mary (Melinda Dillon), with her
family and, like thousands of others, rides the rails to California.
Along the way he sees the brutal treatment of men by the railroad's
hired thugs before being thrown into a hard life in the migrant
workers camps of the San Fernando Valley. He begins to write
songs about everything he's seen and joins Ozark Bule on the
radio, not just singing about union organizing, but actually
going to meetings and brawling with union-busting goons. When
the radio station management, as a result of pressure from its
advertisers, tells Woody--who's now attracting a following with
his protest songs and ballads about the lives of oppressed people--that
he can't do those songs, he gives up the radio program and decides
to ride the rails to New York to seek a larger audience for
his music. David Carradine, as Guthrie, does his own singing,
giving an intimacy to the songs that might have been lost by
dubbing. The award-winning cinematography by Haskell Wexler
captures both the bleakness of the Great Depression and the
beautiful grandeur of America, exactly what Guthrie expressed
in his songs. |
|
| |
| AMERICAN MOVIE |
| 020400 |
| Smith's film is a poignant commentary on what
it takes to make an independent film. It also happens to be
a genuinely hysterical, crowd-pleasing romp. Trying to get his
masterpiece, NORTHWESTERN, off the ground, but failing miserably
due to lack of funding and support, struggling Midwestern filmmaker
Mark Borchardt instead turns his attention to COVEN, an abandoned
37-minute horror film that he began filming in 1990. His hopes
are to sell enough copies of the video to enable him to clear
his current debts and begin moving forward with his real baby,
NORTHWESTERN. The painstaking effort to get COVEN in the can
and onto the screen for the film's world premiere provides the
greatest laughs in this undeniably entertaining documentary. |
|
| |
| ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER |
| 021100 |
| Cecilia Roth stars in this celebrated film
from Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar. Distraught over
the death of her teenage son, Manuela drives to Barcelona to
find the boy’s father, an itinerant transsexual named
Lola (Toni Canto). While combing the city's less reputable districts,
she also meets up with Agrado (Antonia San Juan), a sassy transvestite
prostitute, and Rosa (Penélope Cruz), a pregnant nun
on her way to El Salvador. She also becomes the manager for
Huma (Marisa Paredes), the actress her son idolized, and helps
her through a run of A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE. Together these
great ladies bond through various heartrending crises, enduring
the pain and celebrating the beauty of being women (or almost
women). Considered to be one of Almodóvar's most fully
realized works, this charming and unique film blends his earlier
gender-bending irreverence with the mature grace and compassion
of his later work, striking a perfect note of humor and pathos. |
|
| |
| SLEEPY HOLLOW |
| 021100 |
| In Tim Burton's stylish, creepy retelling
of the classic Washington Irving story, SLEEPY HOLLOW, Ichabod
Crane (Johnny Depp) is a squeamish, bookish 18th century New
York City investigator sent to a small town in lower Westchester
county to look into three mysterious decapitations. When the
always rational Crane arrives at the little Dutch village, he
finds that most of the townsfolk believe the culprit to be the
Headless Horseman, the ghost of a monstrous Hessian soldier
(Christopher Walken), who seems to be mysteriously tied in to
one of the town's most prominent families. Burton's natural
instincts for campy humor, combined with the hauntingly gorgeous
technical work (Emmanuel Lubezki's cinematography and Danny
Elfman's score included), collide to create a work of exhilarating
entertainment and poetic storytelling. Miranda Richardson, Casper
Van Dien and Christina Ricci help make up an ensemble cast that,
combined with the historically accurate village sets and dreamlike
magic of the haunted Western Woods--created on the largest sound
stage in film history--makes SLEEPY HOLLOW a visually stunning,
gripping, and, at times, chilling film. |
|
| |
| DEUCE BIGALOW |
| 021100 |
| Schneider is Deuce Bigalow, a bumbling fish
tank cleaner. When Antoine, a successful gigolo with a sick
fish, has to leave the country for a few weeks, he offers Deuce
the opportunity to housesit for him. Predictably, Deuce manages
to trash the place and must enlist the aid of pimp TJ (Griffin)
to help him pay for the damages. TJ turns him, in a series of
absurd preparations, into a prostitute. The subsequent encounters
with self-conscious females provide the film with its biggest
laughs, and eventual moral: enable a woman to feel confident
about herself and she will learn to love you no matter what
you look like. |
|
| |
| SWEET
AND LOWDOWN |
| 021800 |
| Allen's pseudo-biopic about 1930's jazz guitarist
Emmet Ray (Penn) is a personal tribute by the director to a
period of musical history that has inspired and influenced him
greatly. Penn immerses himself into the role of the boozing,
womanizing Ray with his usual intensity (this time, with a comic
slant). Cameos by Allen and author Henton give the film a TAKE
THE MONEY AND RUN feel, but it is Zhao's rich photography, as
well as the solid musical sequences, that provide the film with
its depth. Overall, though, this is a lighthearted effort that
aims solely for the funny bone. Morton steals the show as Ray's
silently suffering wife in a breakout role that should elevate
her to the forefront of Hollywood actresses. |
|
| |
| GIRL INTERRUPTED |
| 021800 |
| It's 1967, and 17 year old Susanna Kaysen
(Winona Ryder) is like a lot of American teenagers her age—confused,
insecure, struggling to make sense of the rapidly changing world
around her. The psychiatrist she meets with (courtesy of her
parents), however, gives this behavior a name—Borderline
Personality Disorder, "manifested by uncertainty about
self-image, long-term goals, types of friends or lovers to have,
and which values to adopt"—and whisks her away to
Claymoore. Here, Susanna discovers Lisa, Daisy, Georgina, Polly
and Janet—a group of offbeat young women who not only
become her closest friends, but light Susanna’s way back
to someone she had lost—herself. |
|
| |
| GENGHIS BLUES |
| 022500 |
| In 1995, blind bluesman Paul Pena, who has
played with Muddy Waters, B.B. King, John Lee Hooker, Jerry
Garcia, and Merl Saunders and wrote the Steve Miller Band hit
"Jet Airliner," traveled to Tuva, a small land in
Northern Mongolia, with a small film crew and radio DJ Mario
Casetta. Pena had become fascinated with the Tuvan practice
of harmonic throat singing, in which singers are able to make
incredible, almost magical sounds flow from deep in their throats.
Pena's tour of the country leads him to the 1995 Throat singing
Competition and Symposium, in which he competes in the kargyaa
section, and the crowd is thrilled to see an American blues
musician throat singing and talking to them in the Tuvan language.
Brothers Adrian and Roko Belic document the trip, alternating
between scenes of Pena's experiences with the people and shots
of the beautiful Tuvan landscape and culture, from lush fields,
stunning mountains, and hot deserts to dancing, a form of sumo-like
wrestling, and a brutal sheep slaughtering ceremony. This majestic
film won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature at the 1999
Academy Awards as well as the Audience Award at the Sundance
Film Festival. The music in the film is literally incredible
and it has to be seen and heard to be believed. |
|
| |
| SPIKE
& MIKE'S SICK & TWISTED |
| 030300 |
| |
| |
| |
| TUMBLEWEEDS |
| 030300 |
| Mary Jo Walker (McTeer) is a Southern mother
who hides her self-consciousness by overcompensating. She drinks,
wears revealing outfits, and says things that other people would
never even consider. Fleeing her latest abusive relationship,
she and her daughter, twelve-year-old Ava (Brown), head out
west. They eventually settle in Starlight Beach, California,
and seem to be getting along just fine on their own, but it
isn't long before the cycle threatens to repeat itself. McTeer's
portrayal of Mary Jo is so seamless that one might forget she
is even acting. Reminiscent of the character driven films that
made 1970s Hollywood so exhilarating. |
|
| |
| BOILER ROOM |
| 030300 |
| Welcome to the infamous "boiler room"
- where twentysomething millionaires are made overnight. Here,
in the inner sanctum of a fly-by-night brokerage firm, hyper-aggressive
young stockjocks peddle to unsuspecting buyers over the phone
- and are rewarded with mansions, Ferraris and more luxury toys
than they know what to do with. In this unassuming Long Island
enclave, Gen Xers chase the green at breakneck speeds, sometimes
one step ahead of the law. |
|
| |
| HOLY SMOKE |
| 031000 |
| In this wildly inventive film from director
Jane Campion (THE PIANO), Kate Winslet stars as Ruth, a headstrong
Australian woman determined to get back to India in time to
join a group marriage to her guru. Her family, hoping to break
the cult leader's psychic grip on Ruth, hires P.J. (Harvey Keitel),
a macho American deprogramming expert teetering on the brink
of a nervous breakdown. A no-holds-barred battle of the psyches,
cultures, and sexes ensues as P.J. and Ruth fight, connive,
and eventually fall into bed together in what becomes a mutual
search for individual truth. The strong performances of the
two stars, a hilariously offbeat script (cowritten by Campion
and her sister, Anna), and a wealth of delicious, texture-enhancing
flourishes (including some surreal bits of computer animation,
Pam Grier's work in a small role as P.J.'s partner, and a wild
opening sequence set to Neil Diamond's "Holly Holy")
combine to make HOLY SMOKE! a weird, winning blend of goofy
comedy and hallucinatory mysticism. |
|
| |
| MAGNOLIA |
| 031000 |
| In a single day in Los Angeles, a number of
interconnected lives are changed forever. A lonely police officer
(John C. Reilly) falls in love with a disturbed cocaine addict
(Melora Walters). Her father (Philip Baker Hall), the host of
the game show "What Do Kids Know?" has terminal cancer
and tries to make amends for his past mistakes. A former champion
of the show (William H. Macy) struggles to find love while the
current champion (Jeremy Blackman) suffocates under the pressures
of being a boy genius. An elderly man (Jason Robards) lies on
his deathbed, tended by nurse Phil Parma (Philip Seymour Hoffman),
while his trophy wife (Julianne Moore) wrestles with grief and
guilt, and his estranged son (Tom Cruise), an infomercial host,
teaches workshops on how to trick women into having sex. Throughout
all of this, past deeds are lamented and strange forces loom
in the air. |
|
| |
| TOPSY TURVEY |
| 032400 |
| Topsy-Turvy is the new film from award-winning
writer/director Mike Leigh. The British filmmaker has, in his
works, brought filmgoers into intimate contact with ordinary
Londoners navigating extraordinary emotional territory. With
Topsy-Turvy, Leigh leaps back in time to grant filmgoers an
audience with two Londoners whose lives were marked by extraordinary
creativity: Gilbert and Sullivan. |
|
| |
| GALAXY
QUEST |
| 032400 |
| For four years, the crew of the NSEA Protector
donned their uniforms and set off on thrilling and often dangerous
missions in space--then their series was canceled. Twenty years
later, the five stars of the classic '70s TV series Galaxy Quest
are still in costume, making appearances at science fiction
conventions for their legions of die-hard fans. But some of
those fans are a little more far out than the actors could ever
have imagined. A group of aliens who have mistaken intercepted
television transmissions for "historical documents"
arrive at a convention and whisk "Commander Peter Quincy
Taggart" (Tim Allen) and his crew into space to help them
in their all-too-real war against a deadly adversary. With no
script, no director, and no clue about real interstellar travel,
the make-believe crew of the Protector has to turn in the performances
of their lives to become the heroes the aliens believe them
to be. |
|
| |
| REINDEER GAMES |
| 032400 |
| Rudy Duncan (Ben Affleck) is a small-time
car thief about to be released from jail in time for Christmas.
When his cellmate, Nick, is suddenly killed, Rudy decides to
take on his identity in order to meet Nick's beautiful pen-pal
girlfriend, Ashley (Charlize Theron). The couple has fun until
her psychotic brother, Gabriel (Gary Sinise), shows up. Gabriel
and his gang want to hold up a casino where Nick had once worked,
and they blackmail Rudy/Nick into going along with the scheme.
Rudy has to bluff his way through the crime, pretending to be
Nick in order to avoid being killed while trying to sabotage
the plans of the bad guys. Will Rudy be able to outsmart the
bad guys, or will he end up facedown in the snow? |
|
| |
| MR. DEATH |
| 033100 |
| The story of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., a man
whose complete belief in himself as an expert in anything he
devoted his time to ended up ruining his professional career.
Growing up in the American prison system, where his father was
an employee, Leuchter literally stumbled into his first position
as the individual who perfected the electric chair, making capital
punishment run more smoothly for the officials, as well as victims.
This improvement convinced other prisons that he could make
the same adjustments to their chosen outlets: lethal injections,
gas chambers, and gallows. Soon, Leuchter was the country's
predominant expert on the maintaining and designing of execution
equipment. The trial of one Ernst Zundel would change all of
this, however. Charged in Canada with the publishing of historical
lies in the form of a pamphlet which firmly refuted the reality
of the Holocaust and proposed that the gas chambers at Auschwitz
were an invention by Jewish sympathizers, Zundel needed the
support of an expert who could prove that this was, in fact,
the case. Enter Leuchter, who traveled to Poland (on his honeymoon!)
and collected samples from various sites to prove, for himself,
whether or not these chambers existed. His results, which appeared
to everyone except the revisionists and himself as being utterly
ridiculous and inaccurate, ruined his marriage, personal life,
and career in the penal system. All of this due to his stubborn
belief that everything he did was perfect and unflinching. A
truly sad story. |
|
| |
| THE WAR ZONE |
| 033100 |
| Tim Roth's directorial debut, based on the
novel by Alexander Stuart (who adapted the screenplay), is not
for the faint of heart. When a seemingly normal family moves
from London to rural Devon, 15-year-old Tom (Freddie Cunliffe)
stumbles into a shocking secret concerning his father (Ray Winstone)
and 17-year-old sister, Jessie (Lara Belmont). Afraid of breaking
up the family and upsetting his mother (Tilda Swinton), who
has just given birth to a baby girl, he crawls into a shell
and remains there, confused and alienated. Eventually, the situation
boils over and the truth is exposed. Roth shows that he has
the ability to draw extremely emotional performances from professional
actors Winstone and real-life partner Swinton, as well as from
newcomers Belmont and Cunliffe, who provide the film with its
true heart. A brilliantly harsh and tragic family drama. |
|
| |
| THE CUP |
| 040700 |
| Inspired by a true story, THE CUP (written
and directed by Buddhist monk Khyentse Norbu) is set in a monastery-in-exile
in the foothills of the Himalayas where hundreds of young boys
study the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Arriving from their homes
in the Chinese-controlled country, two refugee boys, Nyima and
Palden, are accepted into the monastery and immediately become
involved the daily routine of monastic life, meeting others
like the soccer-obsessed Orygen and the easy-going Lodo. Against
the wishes of their master Geko, the determined Orygen convinces
Palden and Lodo to sneak out of the monastery to watch a soccer
match in a nearby town. After the boys are caught, Geko brings
this growing soccer craze to the attention of the Abbot, the
head of the monastery. Together the two elders ponder how to
deal with the boys' interest in such modern attractions in the
midst of their Buddhist studies. Meanwhile, despite being reprimanded,
Orygen is determined to see the impending World Cup match, even
if it means bringing the match into the monastery. |
|
| |
| WHAT PLANET ARE YOU FROM? |
| 040700 |
| The year is 2,999. Four solar systems and
three generations away from Earth lies a highly evolved world
populated by what appears to be male life forms. When one of
them, Harold, is sent to Earth on a mission to impregnate a
woman and have a child, he quickly learns that traveling halfway
across the universe was the easy part. Upon his arrival to Earth,
Harold befriends Perry Gordon (Greg Kinnear), a horny, morally
challenged specimen of the human male, and together they scope
Phoenix for women. To Harold, however, female Earthlings prove
to be an immensely diverse and complicated species. On the prowl
for the ideal woman with whom he can mate, the alien encounters
a wide spectrum of potential candidates: a charming, almost
frigid stewardess (Judy Greer), a topless waitress (Anastasia
Sakelaris), Perry's sexually aggressive wife, Helen (Linda Fiorentino),
and finally, Susan (Oscar® nominee Annette Bening), a recovering
alcoholic who's about to embark on a new life. |
|
| |
| THE THIRD MIRACLE |
| 040700 |
| Agnieszka Holland directs this reflective,
moving drama, which was based on the novel by Richard Vetere,
who also adapted the screenplay with John Romano. THE THIRD
MIRACLE tells the story of Frank Shore (Ed Harris), a priest
currently undergoing a crisis of faith. Investigating a deceased
woman upon whom he has the ability to bestow sainthood, he begins
to fall for the woman's agnostic daughter, Roxanne (Anne Heche),
confusing his purpose even more. Seeing his only chance for
redemption in canonizing the woman, he must dig deep within
himself to convince the cynical Archbishop Werner (Armin Mueller-Stahl)
that she is, in fact, worthy of sainthood. |
|
| |
| THE
WHOLE NINE YARDS |
| 041400 |
| Nicholas "Oz" Oseransky (MATTHEW
PERRY) is a nice dentist living in suburban Montreal. His new
next door neighbor, Jimmy "The Tulip" Tudeski (BRUCE
WILLIS), is a hit man hiding out from a dangerous Chicago crime
family. Despite their differences, Oz and Jimmy have one thing
in common: someone's trying to kill them both. For Jimmy, avoiding
a couple of hired killers is child's play. But for Oz, it's
a whole new ball game. |
|
| |
| THE
MATRIX |
| 041400 |
| Neo (KEANU REEVES) is desperately seeking
the truth about The Matrix - something he's heard of only in
whispers - something mysterious and unknown - something, Neo
is certain, that has unimaginable and sinister control over
his life. What is The Matnx? |
|
| |
| THE EMPEROR AND THE ASSASSIN |
| 041400 |
| In the third century B.C., Ying Zheng (Li
Xuejian), the powerful king of Qin province, struggles to unify
China and become the country's first emperor. In an effort to
make himself seem untouchable, he sends his lover, Lady Zhao
(Gong Li), to her homeland, Han, to recruit a professional killer
who will intentionally botch an assassination attempt on him.
Once in Han, Zhao meets Jing Ke (Fengyi Zhang), an infamous
assassin who has given up the sword. Zhao's plans change after
Ying begins ruling with an increasingly brutal hand--and she
starts to fall in love with Jing. Shakespearean in its riveting
presentation of tragic power plays on the battlefield and behind
the closed doors of royal chambers and featuring wondrous costume
and set designs that breathe life into a magnificent chapter
of China's rich history, Chen Kaige's film--at the time of its
release the most expensive ever produced in his home country--is
a sweeping, beautifully shot, visionary epic. |
|
| |
| MY BEST FIEND |
| 041400 |
| Werner Herzog directed this documentary about
the puzzling relationship between himself and actor Klaus Kinski.
Beginning with their apocalyptic first meeting at age 13 and
continuing through AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD and their subsequent
films together, MY BEST FIEND reveals the deep trust involved
in maintaining such a powerful love-hate relationship as the
glue that keeps them from following up on their plans to murder
each other. Candid and intimate interviews with Kinski’s
costars are interspersed with rare and compelling behind-the-scenes
and behind-the-camera footage from such classic Kinski/Herzog
collaborations as AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD and FITZCARRALDO.
Herzog himself dryly narrates as the magnetic and destructive
energy that resulted when Herzog and Kinski clashed is contrasted
with footage depicting their, at times, gentle and brotherly
love, in this portrait of two artistic visionaries feeding off
each other. From his early days as an aspiring and intense young
actor to stints as a ranting and raving performance artist taunting
audiences with claims that he was Jesus, Kinski’s extraordinary
and extravagant persona comes across strongly in Herzog's double-edged
love letter of a film. |
|
| |
| NOT ONE LESS |
| 042100 |
| NOT ONE LESS is the heartwarming tale of a
13-year-old girl, Wei Minzi (Wei), who is a substitute teacher
living in a poor village in rural China. She is given a month-long
assignment to teach a classroom of 28 students, ages 6 through
10, with instructions to make sure that all the students, "not
one less," stay in school. Wei approaches the job as any
13-year-old might--like a sullen teenager--but because she's
close in age to her students, they respond to her with playful
attentiveness. This film is a clear departure from director
Yimou's dramatic and controversial earlier films JU DOU (1990),
and RAISE THE RED LANTERN (1991). In NOT ONE LESS, Zhang uses
a straightforward documentary style enriched with scenic shots
of Wei walking over the dusty footpaths of her village, backed
by lush, cascading mountains. The children, including Wei, are
non-actors who play themselves. As the story goes, Zhang Huike
(Zhang), the class troublemaker, is sent to the city to find
work and pay off his parents' debts. Teacher Wei sets out to
find him and bring him back. Wei puts herself on the line for
her tiny school and its impoverished community, and miraculously,
her message travels farther than she'd ever imagined it might. |
|
| |
| MIFUNE |
| 042800 |
| Kresten (Berthelsen) is a Copenhagen businessman
who has just married Claire (Grabol), his boss's beautiful daughter.
When he receives a call the very next morning informing him
of his father's passing, Claire is confused. Apparently, Kresten
has told everyone in Copenhagen that he has no living relatives.
This is due to the fact that he was raised in the country and
was ashamed to confess to his unprosperous rural upbringing.
Nervously, he assures Claire that the burial will be handled
swiftly and that she needn't bother travelling with him. Arriving
at his father's decrepit farm, Kresten encounters his handicapped
brother Rud (Asholt). He reconnects with him by pretending to
be the samurai actor Toshiro Mifune, a game they played throughout
their childhood. When Kresten realizes that the paperwork is
going to take longer than expected, he places a newspaper ad
for a housekeeper, disgusted with their filthy living conditions.
He gets more than he could have hoped for when the strikingly
gorgeous Liva (Hjejle) arrives. Liva has been working as a prostitute
in order to pay for her younger brother's private school tuition,
but when she begins receiving threatening phone calls, she flees
the city. As genuine feelings begin to emerge between Kresten
and Liva, the truth unavoidably rears its mischievous head,
teaching everyone involved a very powerful lesson about family
and love. |
|
| |
| LIBERTY
HEIGHTS |
| 042800 |
| Returning once again to the Baltimore of his
youth, director Barry Levinson adds another installment to his
Baltimore Trilogy (DINER, TIN MEN, AVALON), tackling the emotionally
charged subjects of anti-Semitism and racism--in addition to
his standard themes of family, friendship, and loyalty--in LIBERTY
HEIGHTS. In 1954, Ben Kurtzman (Ben Foster), a Jewish teen from
Baltimore, is intrigued by the new girl in his class. The problem?
Sylvia (Rebekah Johnson) is one of the first African American
students to attend his school. While Ben and Sylvia pursue a
forbidden friendship in the early days of desegregation, Ben’s
older brother, Van (Adrien Brody), is smitten with Dubbie (Carolyn
Murphy), a beautiful wealthy WASP who may as well live in another
world. As the Kurtzman brothers struggle with their budding
relationships and new cultures, their father, Nate (Joe Mantegna),
is busy dealing with his own problems. His failing burlesque
show is a front for running numbers, and he owes a huge payout
to Little Melvin, a small-time African American drug dealer
who is certain that Nate is trying to stiff him because of the
color of his skin. Levinson once again employs a subtly entertaining
visual style that allows the terrific dialogue and serious story
lines to play out with realism and depth. |
|
| |
| GHOST DOG |
| 050500 |
| Ghost Dog (Forest Whitaker) lives simply,
apart from the world in a homemade shack on the roof of an abandoned
building. His only true companion is the trusted carrier pigeon
that serves as his primary means of communication with the outside
world. He studies the early eighteenthcentury Japanese warrior
text Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai. Each morning, he bows
to the altar he has constructed and practices the ancient disciplines
of the samurai. Ghost Dog is a contract killer, a master of
his trade who can whirl a gun at warp speed and moves through
this world like a phantom, stealthy and evanescent. In the spirit
of the samurai, he has pledged his loyalty to a small-time mobster
named Louie (John Tormey), who saved his life many years before. |
|
| |
| ME MYSELF I |
| 050500 |
| A frustrated single woman thinks back to her
past and wonders what her life would be like if she had married
the love of her life in this charming romantic comedy from Australia.
When she finds herself face to face with the self that actually
did marry him, she gets to see the life that particular path
would have presented. Rachel Griffiths (HILARY AND JACKIE) delivers
a supremely engaging performance that reaffirms her status as
one of the world's finest actresses. |
|
| |
| ROMEO
MUST DIE |
| 050500 |
| ROMEO MUST DIE is the story of fathers and
sons, of the importance of blood, of star-crossed lovers willing
to risk their lives for their love. Two warring families, one
Chinese, one African American, are fighting for control of the
Oakland waterfront. It's an eye for an eye as members of each
gang keep turning up dead--including the son of Ch'u Sing, the
Chinese gang leader, which escalates the war to epic proportions.
Into this fray comes Han Sing (Jet Li), Ch'u's other son, a
cop who has escaped from a Hong Kong prison where he was serving
time for not arresting his father and brother. Han soon becomes
a little too friendly with Trish O'Day (Aaliyah), the daughter
of Isaak O'Day (Delroy Lindo), the leader of the African American
gang. The growing romance between Han and Trish parallels the
growing body count. |
|
| |
| VIRGIN
SUICIDES |
| 051200 |
| Based on the 1993 novel by Jeffrey Eugenides,
THE VIRGIN SUICIDES tells the dreamlike tale of the Lisbons,
a family living in a sheltered 1970s suburbia. When Cecilia
(Hannah Hall), the youngest of the five teenage Lisbon daughters,
inexplicably commits suicide, the rest of the family--Mr. Lisbon
(James Woods), an awkward high school math teacher; Mrs. Lisbon
(Kathleen Turner), a stern, humorless housewife; and the four
remaining sisters: Lux (Kirsten Dunst), Bonnie (Chelse Swain),
Mary (A.J. Cook), and Therese (Leslie Hayman)--recedes into
a morbid cloud of repression and denial. As the girls are forced
to retreat from everyday life by their conservative mother,
they become the subject of fascination for a group of neighborhood
boys, who narrate the story and hope to rescue the girls from
their listless confinement. |
|
| |
| FINAL DESTINATION |
| 051200 |
| Death is coming and Alex Browning (DEVON SAWA)
is blessed with the curse of knowing when, how and where the
grim reaper will strike. Alex's bone-chilling gift reveals itself
just as the teenager embarks on a trip to Paris with his high
school French class. In the plane's cabin, buckled-in and ready
for take-off, Alex experiences his first powerful premonition.
He sees the plane explode in a fiery blaze moments after leaving
the ground. Sensing imminent doom, Alex panics and insists that
everyone get off the plane. In the melee than ensues, seven
people including Alex, are forced to disembark. |
|
| |
| CIDER HOUSE RULES |
| 051900 |
| THE CIDER HOUSE RUES, an expertly crafted
and intelligent adapation of John Irving's novel, explores themes
of disappointment, ideas of moral ambiguity, and, indeed, lessons
about life itself, woven into a dramatic story that is neither
slow nor sentimental. Tobey Maguire is the immensely likable
Homer Wells, a lifelong resident of a Maine orphanage who comes
of age during WWII under the auspices of its director, Dr. Wilbur
Larch (Michael Caine). Larch is pragmatic, progressive, highly
intelligent, and loathe to let Homer go out into the world.
He sees him as a son, and the only one whose medical training
allows for him to take over when he retires from his job as
physician, obstetrician, and illegal abortionist. When ingenue
Candy (Charlize Theron) and air force adventurer Wally (Paul
Rudd), come to Larch for help with an abortion, Homer befriends
the couple and, against Larch's wishes, sets off with them to
see the world, or at least the rest of Maine. Working at an
apple orchard owned by Wally's mother (Kate Nelligan), Homer
lives and works with a group of African-American migrant workers,
among them the morally ambiguous Mr. Rose Delroy Lindo and his
beloved daughter Rose Rose (Erykah Badu in a stunning debut).
When Wally goes off to war, and Rose Rose gets into a complex
and frightening situation, Homer is faced with serious choices
and dilemmas that can only be solved by the wisdom he has learned
from Larch. A classic, old-fashioned-style American film that
deals directly with sensitive and taboo issues, THE CIDER HOUSE
RULES is a beautifully acted, carefully paced story full of
substance. |
|
| |
| COLOR OF PARADISE |
| 051900 |
| In THE COLOR OF PARADISE, an eight-year-old
boy named Mohammed attends a school for blind children in Tehran.
When summer vacation arrives, the parents of the other children
arrive to take them home. Mohammed's widowed coal worker father,
Hashem, however, arrives hours late, then asks a teacher if
Mohammed can stay at the school permanently. When his request
is refused, Hashem takes his son on a cross-country journey
to their family home in northern Iran. While Hashem is dour
and visibly burdened, Mohammed's senses are overloaded with
the sounds, scents, and textures of the lush natural surroundings
along the way. At the family farm, Mohammed is reunited with
his two young sisters and his adoring Granny, with whom the
young boy has a spiritual bond. When Hashem is given the chance
to marry a young woman from a strict Islamic family, he worries
that his son will destroy his chance of approval from her family,
so he sends the boy off to a remote part of Iran to be a carpenter's
apprentice. Initially, the boy feels abandoned but eventually
grows accustomed to his new environment. Back at the family
farm, however, Hashem's selfishness destroys the bucolic peace
as it touches each member of his family in a different destructive
manner. THE COLOR OF PARADISE is an intelligent, moving experience,
featuring outstanding direction from Majid Majidi and a terrific
cast. |
|
| |
| TIME CODE |
| 052600 |
| TIMECODE was filmed using four separate digital
cameras that--in one unedited take--capture a series of loosely
intertwining characters who live and work in Los Angeles at
the end of the 20th century. That establishes it as the first
legitimate commercial real-time motion picture (ROPE, CLEO FROM
5 TO 7, and NICK OF TIME were falsely constructed re-creations).
What's more, Figgis broke the screen into blocks, letting all
four stories unfold at the same time. The story is a surprisingly
lighthearted satire of Hollywood, featuring a parade of potentially
cliched characters: the spineless company heads, the coked-up
actress, the jealous girlfriend, the pretentious director, etc.
Fortunately, Figgis has assembled an accomplished and attractive
cast, which keeps the content from succumbing to the visual
onslaught. The result is a strikingly original motion picture
that will be remembered historically for its bold attempt at
creating a new cinematic language. |
|
| |
| JACKS |
| 052600 |
| You can pick your friends, but you can't pick
your cards. |
|
| |
| EAST IS EAST |
| 052600 |
| Set in the early 1970s, EAST IS EAST, directed
by Damien O'Donnell, follows the lives of a Pakistani-English
family living in Northern England. George Khan (Om Puri), a
proud Pakistani immigrant, and his British wife, Ella (Linda
Bassett), run a fish and chip shop, while raising their seven
children. George is determined to honor Pakistani tradition
by arranging marriages for each of the children, whether they
like it or not. When the Khan kids, including the nightclubbing
Tariq (Jimi Mistry), the artsy Saleem (Chris Bisson), and the
shy, parka-wearing Sajid (Jordan Routledge), begin to rebel
against their forceful father, their mother also joins the household
mutiny. During an awkward nuptial arrangement meeting with the
snobby Shahs and their two unappealing daughters, the family's
conflict hits its peak with surprising results. |
|
| |
| JOE GOULD'S SECRET |
| 052600 |
| Based on the New York City friendship between
journalist Joseph Mitchell and Greenwich Village bohemian Joe
Gould, JOE GOULD'S SECRET takes the viewer on a nostalgic journey
back to 1940s New York. In 1942, an article entitled "Professor
Seagull" by Joseph Mitchell (Tucci) was published in The
New Yorker magazine. It told the story of Joe Gould (Holm),
a homeless man who touted himself as an intellectual and the
author of a massive work-in-progress called THE ORAL HISTORY
OF OUR TIME. Mitchell, who first perceived Gould to be one of
"the great, genuine, original American writers," learned
in the course of their long-term friendship that much of the
profile he'd written for THE NEW YORKER was false. Over 20 years
later, Mitchell penned a second article, "Joe Gould's Secret."
Director Tucci reconstructs a quaint 1940s New York City, complete
with old-fashioned studded subway cars, beautiful brownstone-lined
streets, dark moody pubs, and old-fashioned diners. Also included
are a couple of cameos that add flavor to this basic New York
tale--Sarandon plays artist Alice Neel, and Martin appears briefly
as publisher Charlie Duell. |
|
| |
| THE FILTH AND THE FURY |
| 060200 |
| A documentary about the British punk rock
band the Sex Pistols, THE FILTH AND THE FURY puts the band's
story in the context of 1970s Britain. Depicted as a time when
pop culture was clownish and sociopolitical divisions were exacerbated
by hypocrisy in the government and angst among the people, the
film mixes archival footage of 1970s television broadcasts and
commercials with live footage of Sex Pistols concerts, interviews
with the band, and animated excerpts from director Julien Temple's
classic 1980 documentary, SEX PISTOLS: THE GREAT ROCK AND ROLL
SWINDLE. This filmic collage also provides comic relief when
the band's nihilistic mantra gets heavy. Which is not to say
that the movie makes light of the Sex Pistols story. Its intelligent,
reflective narration is given in current-day voice-overs from
band members John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten), Paul Cook, Steve
Jones, Glen Matlock, and manager Malcolm McLaren. Also included
are interviews with bassist Sid Vicious, who died of a heroin
overdose in 1979. The film puts the British punk era into 21st-century
perspective, hitting on everything from management discrepancies
to "over-partying" to the how and why of the way the
Sex Pistols wielded such enormous influence with their anti-establishment
venom. |
|
| |
| THE BIG KAHUNA |
| 060900 |
| First-time feature director John Swanbeck
teams up with producer-actor Kevin Spacey for this big screen
adaptation of Roger Rueff's play HOSPITALITY SUITE. The story
concerns three lubricant salesmen who have gathered in a Witchita,
Kansas hotel room in order to throw a cocktail party for prospective
buyers. They are Larry (Spacey), a harsh, cocky veteran; his
partner Phil (Danny DeVito), a passive recovering alcoholic;
and Bob (Peter Facinelli), a naïve new colleague whose
ethics drive Larry into fits of disbelief. The trio waits for
the night's arrivals--most specifically, "The Big Kahuna,"
a man so wealthy that he has the ability to single-handedly
revive Larry and Phil's struggling careers. After the party,
Larry and Phil are dumbfounded when they discover that Bob actually
spoke to him, only their conversation consisted solely of religious
dialogue. Larry sends Bob in search of "The Big Kahuna"
with the order that he discuss business if he wants to remain
employed. The subsequent hours provide each individual with
the chance to exorcise his inner demons once and for all. Limited
in its usage of locations, Rueff's big-screen adaptation of
his play contains inspired performances from Spacey, DeVito,
and Facinelli. |
|
| |
| HIGH FIDELITY |
| 060900 |
| A male-perspective confessional about being
an adult--but not acting like one--HIGH FIDELITY is the story
of Rob Gordon (John Cusack), the thirty-something owner of Championship
Vinyl, a record store in the suburbs of Chicago. Rob is in the
throes of a difficult breakup with his girlfriend, Laura (Iben
Hjejle), and he creates a list of the ex-girlfriends who qualify
as his Top Five Worst Breakups, then tracks them down one by
one. At work, Rob's relationship with the geeky guys who help
run the store, Dick (Todd Louiso) and Barry (Jack Black), is
hilarious and juvenile: the three espouse encyclopedic knowledge
of records while making lists of everything from the Top Five
Side 1s and Track 1s to the Top Five Songs About Death. Director
Stephen Frears works from a script based on the 1996 Nick Hornby
novel of the same title and adapted by D.V. DeVincentis, Steve
Pink, John Cusack, and Scott Rosenberg. Frears integrates Cusack's
signature goofball antics and gives him a series of talk-to-the-camera,
Ferris Bueller-style monologues that Cusack delivers with personal
ingenuity. |
|
| |
| U-571 |
| 061600 |
| Jonathan Mostow's (BREAKDOWN) World War II
submarine thriller about a crew of inexperienced American mariners
forced to pilot a disabled German U-boat through hostile waters
delivers plenty of action while paying homage to such war genre
greats as DAS BOOT and DESTINATION TOKYO. Matthew McConaughey
(EDTV) leads the rag tag American crew as Lt. Andrew Tyler,
a young officer determined to prove himself a capable leader
after being denied command of his own ship. His fellow seamen
include Jon Bon Jovi (MOONLIGHT AND VALENTINO), Bill Paxton
(A SIMPLE PLAN) and a cross-section of American society, featuring
a hot-headed Brooklyner, an earnest farm boy, a wise black cook,
a pack of fresh-faced young sailors, and Harvey Keitel as a
salty old sea dog. Working with a lean plot, Mostow employs
Oliver Wood's (FACE/OFF) detailed, claustrophobic cinematography
and an exceptional sound design to create a series of engaging
and genuinely tense action sequences that take the rickety submarine
to crushing depths in order to outrun German attacks. While
his attention to hard historical facts may be a bit leaky, Mostow's
ability to sustain suspense rewards viewers with a tight genre
piece with no shortage of action or good old American patriotism. |
|
| |
| COMMITTED |
| 061600 |
| Ever since Joline (HEATHER GRAHAM) married
Carl (LUKE WILSON), she's madly in love, emotionally bonded
and totally committed... even though Carl walked out on her
two weeks ago. Convinced she can save her marriage, she drives
two thousand miles west on a comic adventure to track down her
wayward husband. Along the way, she has close calls with a pair
of highway robbers, a Mexican witchdoctor and more than one
cactus. But the real odyssey begins when Joline winds up in
El Paso, Texas, finds Carl and stakes out his new life...from
her car. With a little help from her brother Jay (CASEY AFFLECK)
his new girlfriend Carmen (PATRICIA VELASQUEZ) and Neil (GORAN
VISNJIC), her tantalizing "neighbor," she discovers
the ups and downs of being the most committed woman in America. |
|
| |
| HUMAN TRAFFIC |
| 061600 |
| The Ecstasy-fueled youth culture of England
is examined in this buoyant, good-natured film from 25-year-old
newcomer, Justin Kerrigan. A group of young Welsh revelers,
including Jip (John Simm), Lulu (Lorrain Piliongon), and Koop
(Shaun Parkes) endure their mundane jobs all week, and then
cut loose on a typically wild Friday night of dancing, drinking,
drugging, shagging, and then recovering in order to deal with
their parents come Sunday. The film's guileless pro-drug stance
may prove off-putting to more jaded and conservative American
audiences, but as a "peak" at England's thriving 1990s
counterculture, it's a fun, fascinating document, and a cheery
companion to TRAINSPOTTING (which was obviously a huge inspiration).
Kerrigan fills the film with lots of surreal and fantastical
digressions, direct addresses to the camera, and quote-worthy
bits of British slang. Energetic electronica pulses throughout
for a dynamite score, which combines with the high-spirited
performances of the cast and makes for good time, whatever your
"buzz" may be. Its honesty about the good, great,
and not-so-great aspects of the lifestyle should ring true to
those familiar with the scene, and provide others with a thrilling,
propaganda-free glimpse into club-kid nightlife. |
|
| |
| 42 UP |
| 062300 |
| Director Michael Apted's evolving film, the
longest-running documentary project in history, began as a study
of the influence of class on schoolchildren in England. In SEVEN
UP (1963), Apted interviewed 14 seven-year-old children from
vastly different backgrounds. He visited the same group of children
every seven years, charting the changes in their lives. In 42
UP, the sixth film in the series, the subjects have grown up,
entered the middle of their lives, and experienced dramatic
reversals of fortune. Although three of the participants have
removed themselves from the spotlight, the remaining voices
paint an enlightening, honest picture of love, life, death,
success, and failure. Going beyond the notion of merely recording
history, the documentary is unusual in the effect that it has
had on the participants' lives. In some cases, friendships have
formed between the subjects; in most other cases, the documentary
has forced them to be more reflective and aggressive as they
anticipate the seven-year ritual. A simple but powerful portrait
of 14 lives, the SEVEN UP series is Apted's most groundbreaking
work; the documentary has already inspired similar projects
in many other countries. |
|
| |
| 28 DAYS |
| 062300 |
| Gwen Cummings (Sandra Bullock) is a successful
New York writer living life in the fast lane and everyone's
favorite party girl. She shares this roller-coaster lifestyle
of hopping from dance club to bar to hangover with boyfriend
Jasper (Dominic West) -- handsome, magnetic and equally attracted
to life on the wild side. Life is just an exercise in debauchery
-- until Gwen's ungraceful display at her sister Lily's (Elizabeth
Perkins) wedding, when she gets drunk, commandeers the limo
and earns herself a DUI and 28 days in court-ordered rehab. |
|
| |
| EAST WEST |
| 062300 |
| A historical drama that recreates the brutal
events of 1946 Russia, in which Stalin, having tricked expatriates
into returning to their native land, murders and imprisons them
as they cross the border. The film focuses on a married couple
and their seven-year-old son. The father, a Russian immigrant
living in France, decides to move his family back to Russia.
Landing, they are only kept alive due to the fact that he is
a doctor. Eventually, the mother becomes fed up and searches
for a way to return to France. Regis Wargnier's film is a powerful
and sobering effort. |
|
| |
| CANNIBAL! THE MUSICAL |
| 063000 |
| An offbeat horror-comedy-musical based on
the true story of Alfred Packer -- an 1870's trail guide who
was convicted of killing and then eating five prospectors. Packer
is hired by the future victims to help them find gold in the
frontier, but he murders them instead. Filmmaker Trey Parker
mixes gore and comic production numbers to tell this unusual
tale. |
|
| |
| BOSSA NOVA |
| 063000 |
| This movie was adapted from a novel by Brazilian
author Sergio Sant'anna. Set in Rio de Janeiro, it is mostly
in Portuguese, with conversations involving American characters
occasionally rendered in English. Amy Irving plays Mary Ann
Simpson, an American expatriate who has been teaching English
classes at a private school in Rio ever since her husband died
in a tragic accident. Lawyer Pedro Paulo (Antonio Fagundes)
has just been left by his wife, and becomes enamored of Mary
Ann after a chance meeting. He spontaneously decides to court
her by signing up for one of her courses. These two, along with
several of Mary Ann's other students, Pedro's brother, his ex-wife,
and a vivacious young law intern, become entangled in an extensive
web of romantic attachments and disappointments, and only at
the very end of the movie do we find out who ultimately ends
up with whom. |
|
| |
| ROAD TRIP |
| 063000 |
| University of Ithaca College freshman Josh
(Breckin Meyer) misses his childhood sweetheart, Tiffany (Rachel
Blanchard), who is going to school in Austin, Texas. Josh makes
a tape proclaiming his love for her, but one of his friends
accidentally mails the wrong tape; he instead sends the tape
of Josh having sex with the beautiful Beth (Amy Smart). Josh
had slept with Beth only after assuming that Tiffany had found
someone else. So Josh, E.L. (Seann William Scott), Rubin (Paulo
Costanzo), and Kyle (DJ Qualls), the geek with a car, set off
in a powder blue Ford Taurus to intercept the tape before Tiffany
can see it. They leave behind the insane Barry (Tom Green),
who is on the multiyear graduating plan and would rather stay
in the dorm and feed a live mouse to Mitch the snake. The group's
1,800-mile trip will feature encounters with exploding cars,
crazy motel clerks, too-hip grandparents, stealing from the
blind, the wrong fraternity, and that old stand-by, chef's revenge.
The story is told in flashback, as the always frightening Tom
Green leads a group of prospective students and their parents
through an absurdly hilarious tour of the Ithaca campus, selling
Josh's story as a reason to attend the school. ROAD TRIP is
good raunchy fun, starring a likable cast of characters, told
by director Todd Phillips with a charm that places it above
the standard teen exploitation flick. |
|
| |
| UP AT THE VILLA |
| 063000 |
| With UP AT THE VILLA, director Philip Haas
offers an intriguing cocktail of romance, melodrama, and suspense.
The setting is Italy in the late 1930s--fascism is on the rise,
and British expatriate Mary Panton (Kristin Scott Thomas), a
penniless young widow, is searching for a new husband who will
be able to support her. She has all but made up her mind to
accept wealthy Sir Edgar Swift's (James Fox) proposal when the
situation is complicated by the arrival of a debonair American
playboy, Rowley Flint, played by Sean Penn (who is cast against
type here). A flirtation develops between the two--but it is
yet another suitor, Austrian war refugee Karl Richter (Jeremy
Davies), whose amorous advances Mary finally succumbs to out
of pity. When Richter realizes that a continuation of their
love affair is out of the question, he commits suicide. Now
it's up to the rakish Rowley to save Mary from the consequences
of her fateful one-night-stand, even if it means being arrested
for murder. Directed with Haas’s trademark flair for beautiful
scenery, UP AT THE VILLA is an elegant cinematic adaptation
of a novella by Somerset Maugham. |
|
| |
| KIKUJIRO |
| 070700 |
| In Takeshi Kitano's KIKUJIRO, the actor/writer/director
(billed as "Beat Takeshi") portrays the brash, mischievous
title character, a middle-aged man living with his wife in Tokyo.
When Masao (Yusuke Sekiguchi), a sullen neighborhood boy, embarks
on a quest to find his estranged mother, Kikujiro's wife instructs
him to accompany the child. Unfortunately, before they even
leave town Kikujiro squanders all of their travelling money
by gambling at the cycle races and as a result these two unlikely
companions must hitch a series of rides on the open road. As
Kikujiro and Masao trek along the Japanese countryside, they
encounter strange characters and circumstances, leading to a
series of misadventures. |
|
| |
| 8 1/2 WOMEN |
| 070700 |
| Another erotic comedy from Peter Greenaway,
8 1/2 WOMEN takes its inspiration from one of cinema's greatest
films. After a businessman (John Standing) tragically loses
his wife, his son (Matthew Delamere) returns to Geneva from
managing a series of Pachinko Parlors in Kyoto, Japan. When
the pair screen Fellini's 8 1/2, the resulting experience inspires
them to set up their own brothel. Greenaway once again uses
his striking visual skills to craft an entertaining, deeply
enjoyable motion picture. |
|
| |
| SHANGHAI NOON |
| 070700 |
| When the lovely Princess Pei Pei (Lucy Liu)
is kidnapped from China, the Emperor dispatches three of his
most fierce and noble Imperial Guards to deliver the ransom
in gold to her kidnappers in America's Wild West. Chon Wang
(Jackie Chan) isn't among the chosen. However, he manages to
tag along anyway by offering to carry the luggage for his uncle,
the Interpreter. |
|
| |
| HAMLET |
| 071400 |
| Ethan Hawke stars in this modern update of
Shakespeare's classic play. He portrays a young filmmaker in
New York City who struggles to gain power of his deceased father's
company, even as the new boss (Kyle MacLachlan) manages to take
total control of the proceedings. Michael Almereyda's (NADJA)
film is another stylized adaptation of the Bard's words, featuring
standout performances by the entire cast. For other modern Shakespeare
adaptations, see Baz Luhrmann's ROMEO AND JULIET and Julie Taymor's
TITUS. |
|
| |
| TITAN
AE |
| 071400 |
| The story is a classic bildungsroman, following
the journey of Cale, a young man who holds the destiny of humankind
in his hand--literally. Opening with the stunning destruction
of earth as seen from space, the film launches the audience
into a seamlessly imagined universe in which the alien Drej
have turned humans into homeless émigrés, searching
desperately for a new world. Cale (voiced by Matt Damon) is
haunted by the legacy of his father, who abandoned him but created
the spaceship Titan, which holds the key to the new home of
humankind. With the plan for Titan imprinted in his hand, Cale
is swept from a life of lonely drudgery devoid of female companionship
into the colorful crew of mysterious Captain Korso (voiced by
Bill Pullman). On the Valkyrie ship, Cale enjoys Korso’s
crew, including the kind, beautiful, and expert woman pilot
Akima (voiced by Drew Barrymore) along with a strange but fascinating
band of aliens. |
|
| |
| GRASS |
| 071400 |
| Using snappy, comic book-like graphics, great
newsreel and film footage, stills, and music, GRASS chronicles
the history of the American government's relationship with marijuana
and marijuana users. A slick, entertaining, witty documentary
narrated by known grass activist Woody Harrelson, the film is
a fast-paced, coherent (if somewhat biased) illustration of
the absurdity of drug laws and the untruthful coercion tactics
and propaganda campaigns the government has used since the 1900s
to convince the public that pot causes everything from insanity
and murder to rape and Communism. The film tells how marijuana
was traded by migrant workers over the Mexican border in the
early 1900s, and how laws passed to control the drug were also
used to control immigrants. Soon, a series of "truths"
were set loose on the public by the government to deter people
from using grass (shown in the film as hilarious, but true,
headlines deemed "The Official Truth": If you smoke
it, you will kill people! and, If you smoke it, you will go
insane!) More importantly, perhaps, is the film's examination
of how drug laws and the drug war were first formed. Rather
than passing the problem of drug addiction on to the Health
Department, it was relegated to the Treasury Department, which
formed the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, which imposed taxes
on marijuana instead of implementing rehabilitation programs
for users of the more serious heroine and cocaine. |
|
| |
| BOYS
AND GIRLS |
| 071400 |
| This charming romantic comedy reinforces the
idea that love sometimes finds individuals where they're least
expecting it. Ryan (Freddie Prinze, Jr.) is a | | |