| V for Vendetta The Alan Moore graphic novel comes to the big screen courtesy of two guys who worked with the guys who directed the matrix. Confused? As with all the film adaptations, Alan Moore took his name off the film, but as adaptations of his comics goes, this is more From Hell than League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Probably the most faithful to his spirit, if not to his intelligence level. Pretty good movie, and has a pretty awesome ending explosion. 1984 meets a revenge pic. |
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| Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 5 The beloved BPE owner Adam is becoming more like Larry David everyday. Another mostly improvised season from the Seinfeld co-creator and general insane man Larry David. |
| Inside Man
(spike lee) All this movie took to grab me was Denzel 'I want another Oscar to keep my porch door open' Washington yelling 'this aint no bank robbery' in the preview. Jodie Foster, Clive Owen, and a Spike Lee heist plot, great critical reviews, probably worth the time. |
| Manderlay Lars Von Trier (Dancer in the dark, breaking the waves) returns with the sequel to Dogville and 2nd in his 'America' trilogy. Replacing Nicole Kidman with Bryce Dallas Howard (The Village), Manderlay finds Grace in the 1030's south stumbling upon a plantation where the residents have persuaded its population slavery is still ongoing and never ended. With Danny Glover, Willem Dafoe, Chloe Sevigny, and Lauren Bacall. |
| Don't Come Knocking Actor/Playwright Sam Shepard and Director Wim Wenders re-team again after 1984's career defining Paris, Texas to take on a territory Shepard knows well, the American west. Playing the lead role this time out as well as screenplay duties, Shepard plays Howard, an aging actor once known for his parts in Westerns, now filling his life with drinking and young women. When he gets word he might have a child, he sets off to find out, coming face to face with an entirely missed life. |
| CSA: Confederate States of
America Produced (AKA paid for by) Spike Lee, this black satire is a quasi-documentary, showing the world as if the South had won the Civil War. The film portrays like a news film 150 years of History after the north surrender, A favorite at sundance, not to be missed. |
| Brick - Official Site A Noir movie set in a modern day high school. A movie about and in love with language, its a detective story of incredible creative bent. A southern Californian teenager, Brendon investigates the sudden disappearance of his ex-girlffriend Emily. |
| The Hidden Blade From the director of the oscar nominated Twilight Samurai, Yoji Yamada, this film follows a samurai who is reluctant to fight. |
| Sealab 2021 Season 4 |
| The Brak Show Season 2 |
| Scary Movie 4 Why? |
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| Rome Season 1 - official HBO site Another epic HBO series with good timing, in the wake of the last season of Six Feet Under, Imperial Roman intrigues and culture clash in a bloody, complex series. |
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| Simpsons Season 8 |
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| Eric Rohmer's Moral Tales (6
Film criterion boxset) The multifaceted, deeply personal dramatic universe of Eric Rohmer has had an effect on cinema unlike any other. One of the founding critics of the history-making Cahiers du cinéma, Rohmer began translating his written manifestos to film in the sixties, standing apart from his new-wave contemporaries, like François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, with his patented brand of gently existential, hyperarticulate character studies set against vivid seasonal landscapes. This near genre unto itself was established with his audacious and wildly influential series Six Moral Tales. A succession of jousts between fragile men and the women who tempt them, Six Moral Tales unleashed on the film world a new voice, one that was at once sexy, philosophical, modern, daring, nonjudgmental, and liberating. Included are: Love in the Afternoon Claire's Knee The Bakery Girl of Monceau My Night at Maud's Suzanne's Career La collectionneuse |
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| L'Enfant (the child) Bruno and Sonia, a young couple living off her benefit and the thefts committed by his gang, have a new source of money: their newborn son. From the Dardenne Brothers (The son). Won the Palm d'Or at Cannes this past year. |
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| Eternity and a Day A terminally ill man's last day. |
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| Land of the Blind A 1984 type allegory in a never specifically located land where a soldier, Joe, played by Ralph Fiennes helps a political prisoner, Thorne (played by Donald Sutherland) escape a totalitarian government and come to power. Thorne promises to be the countries savior, but is he just another dictator in disguise? A surreal dystopian dark thriller. |
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| Masters of Horror: Dario Argento - Jenifer |
| Silent Hill The screenplay was adapted for the screen partially by Roger Avary (rules of attraction) so its anyone's guess. Based on the video game. |
| Poseidon Remake of one of my dad's favorite movies. Considered one of the summer blockbuster bombs, and not a movie I wanted to see remade. But if anyone can fill Gene Hackman's shoes it might be Josh Lucas. Directed by that Wolfgang guy who can't do movies that have ships not sinking in them. |
| Sketches of Frank Gehry - Trailer Directed by Sydney Pollock (The Interpreter and a million other things), this is a documentary, Pollock's first, which delves into the life and work of his friend, the Architect Frank Gehry. Watch his squiggles on paper turn into amazingly unique structures. |
| Kicking and Screaming
(Criterion/Noah Baumbach) No, Will Ferrel's soccer movie is not a criterion, though Anchorman should be. This is Squid and the Whale's director Noah Baumbach's first film, which set his career up and away. For all the 20 somethings. Paralyzed by postgraduation ennui, a group of college friends remain on campus, patching together a community for themselves in order to deny the real-world futures awaiting them. |
| Seduced and Abandoned
(Criterion) Shotgun weddings, kidnapping, attempted murder, emergency dental work—the things Don Vincenzo will do to restore his family’s honor! Pietro Germi’s Seduced and Abandoned was the follow-up to his international sensation Divorce Italian Style, and in many ways it’s even more audacious—a rollicking yet raw series of escalating comic calamities that ensue in a small village when sixteen-year-old Agnese (the beautiful Stefania Sandrelli) loses her virginity at the hands of her sister’s lascivious fiancé. Merciless and mirthful, Seduced and Abandoned skewers Sicilian social customs and pompous patriarchies with a sly, devilish grin. |
| Lonesome Jim Directed by Steve Buscemi, and starring Casey Affleck and Liv Tyler, Failing to make it on his own, 27-year-old Jim moves back in with his parents and deals with crippling family obligations. Watch the trailer. |
| Akeelah and the
Bee There are multiple spelling bee movies, and I don't know if this is the best one, but I know it is one. Heartwarming? With Laurence 'did you see me in Event Horizon' Fishburne and Angela 'How great was I in Strange Days?' Basset. |
| Friends with Money A drama about three married women, their husbands, and their lone single friend. With Jennifer Aniston, Frances McDormand, Catherine Keener, and Joan Cusack. Director worked on Sex and the City and Six Feet Under, as well as directing/writing Lovely and Amazing. |
| South Park Season 8 |
| Nip/Tuck Season 3 We caved and will have Season 3 piping hot new from its dark twisted oven. |
| The Tick Season 1 (animated) The classic, much beloved (by me) animated series based on the Tick. All but one of the first season episodes (to be included on the next season set). SPOON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! |
| Castle of Cagliostro (Early
Miyazaki) Early film from Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Nausica of the Valley, Howl's Moving Castle). A flamboyant thief and his gang struggle to free a princess from an evil count's clutches and to learn the hidden secret to a fabulous treasure that she holds part of a key to. Check out the reference to this movie in the movie 'Cars' (One of the cars looks eerily familiar to one in this movie). |
| Looking for comedy in the
muslim world From Al Brooks (Defending your life), To improve its relations with Muslim countries, the United States government sends comedian Albert Brooks to south Asia to write a report on what makes followers of Islam laugh. With my favorite Congressional actor, Senator Fred Dalton Thompson (have you seen FEDS?). |
| Water The last of a trilogy (Earth, and Fire before), Water is set in the 1930s during the rise of the independence struggles against British colonial rule, the film examines the plight of a group of widows forced into poverty at a temple in the holy city of Varanasi. It focuses on a relationship between one of the widows, who wants to escape the social restrictions imposed on widows, and a man who is from a lower caste and a follower of Mahatma Gandhi. |
| Duck Season Coming of Age film produced by Y Tu Mama Tambien director Alfonso Cuaron, and directed by Fernando Eimbcke. Flama and Moko are fourteen years old; they have been best friends since they were kids. They have everything they need to survive yet another boring Sunday: an apartment without parents, videogames, porn magazines, soft drinks and pizza delivery. The placid sunday's harmony is slowly broken through a series of revealing, funny, and moving non-events. |
| Mountain Patrol - Kekelixi You wouldn't think a movie produced by National Geographic could be this interesting, or exciting. A moving true story (however, this is NOT A DOCUMENTARY) about volunteers protecting antelope against poachers in the severe mountains of Tibet. |
| The Wizard Fred Savage. Power Gloves. Super Mario Bros. 3. The 1980's just won't go away. With Jenny Lewis who like Rilo Kiley would go from Kid star to female songwriter today. |