Musical Written and directed by John Turturro To a radical non-smoker like myself–someone who finds the act of smoking about as sexy as Dick Cheney–the very term “Romance and Cigarettes” seems odd. That’s appropriate. John Turturro’s musical tragi-comedy about marriage and adultery is a very odd motion picture. The songs are familiar hits, and for [...]
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War drama Written and directed by Brian De Palma An American soldier in Iraq videos everything he sees. A French documentary shows how checkpoints work and why they don’t. A security camera captures thugs planning a violent crime and talking about it afterwards, seemingly unaware that everything they do and say is getting recorded. People [...]
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A few interesting things coming up: The Roxie presents RKO Lost & Found, a series of six RKO movies that have not been seen since at least 1959, throughout the week of November 23. One of them, A Man To Remember, hasn’t been seen since it’s first run in 1938. I missed a press screening [...]
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Thanks to Cerrito Classics, I’ve finally seen Dr. Zhivago in something approximating the way it was meant to be seen–35mm with DTS digital 5.1 sound. True, the movie was meant to be seen in 70mm, with six-track magnetic sound, but this is probably as close as I’m ever going to get to that. There’s an [...]
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thriller Written and directed by Tony Gilroy Think of Michael Clayton as the flip side of Erin Brockovich. This time, the hero works for a law firm defending an evil corporate giant from the people it has poisoned. And no, you’re not supposed to root for him winning his case. (There’s an actual connection between [...]
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The combined Korean American and Asian Film Festival opened last night at the Castro with Genghis Khan: To the Ends of the Earth and Sea. I was there. The opening party was quiet and subdued–at least it was by the time I arrived, a little after 7:00. It may have been hopping when it started [...]
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If people know anything about Charlie Chaplin, they know he made silent movies. And if they know anything about silent movies, they want said movies to be accompanied by live music. And yet the upcoming Chaplin series at the Pacific Film Archive, screening nearly all of his features and all of his later shorts, has [...]
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Romantic comedy Written by Pierce Gardner and Peter Hedges Directed by Peter Hedges Peter Hedges does something unusual here. He puts a major comedy star (Steve Carell) into a conventional comic plot (widower with adorable kids falls in love with his brother’s girlfriend), then plays it for real emotions without worrying much about laughs. Instead [...]
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