| X-Men 3: Last Stand for your Money Watch the whole thing come to its conclusion, and the phoenix storyline be completely wasted. |
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| Thank you for Smoking The Satirical comedy follows the machinations of Big Tobacco's chief spokesman, Nick Naylor, who spins on behalf of cigarettes while trying to remain a role model for his twelve-year-old son. |
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| Body Double (Brian De Palma) |
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| Edmond Written by David Mamet (Mamazing?), And starring William H. Macy. A fortune-tellers teasing rumination sends Edmond Burke (Macy) lurching into New York City's hellish underworld. |
| Art School Confidential The team that brought Ghost World to the screen adapt another Clowes graphic novel, with in my humble opinion slightly less success. John Malkovich turns in the best performance as an apprentice seeking semi-creepy art professor, but languishes in the small part. Great pokes at the art world in general, and its commercialization/instutionalization. Worth a watch, but for those hoping for the charm of Ghost world times 2 may want to pass. Dark comedy that tries to be too many things. I could be wrong. |
| Prairie Home Companion (Robert Altman) Adaptation of Garrison Keillor's Radio program of the same name. A look at what goes on backstage during the last broadcast of America's most celebrated radio show, where singing cowboys Dusty and Lefty, a country music siren (Meryl Streep), and a host of others hold court. With Lily Tomlin, John C. Reilly, Virginia Madsen, Kevin Kline, and Tommy Lee Jones. |
| Click Adam Sandler makes some fairly general jokes, and everything works out in the end. Best movie about an enchanted/mystical remote control? Stay Tuned, obviously. |
| The King The ever in demand and pretty much the guy for indie films these days, Gail Garcia Bernal, turns in this film starring William Hurt. Gail plays Elvis, who after being discharged from the navy, goes to Texas to find his father, whom he's never met (Hurt). Things go for the worst, and things spiral out of control. With similar intensity to Down in the Valley, Hurt's performance is not to be missed. |
| Land of Plenty Wim Wenders film that went under the radar. After years of living abroad with her American missionary father, Lana (Michelle Williams) returns to the United States to begin her studies. But instead of focusing on her education, Lana sets out to find her only other living relative - her uncle Paul, her deceased mother’s brother. A Vietnam veteran, Paul is a reclusive vagabond with deep emotional war wounds. A tragic event (9/11) witnessed by the two unites them in a common goal to rectify a wrong, and takes them on a journey of healing, discovery, and kinship. |
| Wonder Showzen S. 2 |
| Hail Mary (Godard) A Called blasphemy by some, In this modern retelling of the Virgin birth, Mary is a student who plays basketball and works at her father's petrol station; Joseph is an earnest dropout who drives a cab. The angel Gabriel must school Joseph to accept Mary's pregnancy, while Mary comes to terms with God's plan through meditations that are sometimes angry and usually punctuated by elemental images of the sun, moon, clouds, flowers, and water. Godard intercuts a brief parallel story of Eva and her nameless lover; their adulterous affair, rife with philosophical discussions, leads nowhere. |
| Harvey Birdman Attorney At Law Vol. 2 My favorite of the adult swim cartoon series. Stephen Colbert's voicework is hilarious. |
| The Break-Up A mainstream romantic comedy without a black and white happy ending? Wonders never cease. |
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| The Omen Using the exact same script as the original, almost shot by shot the same, with a new cast. I have always wanted to see Julia Stiles die at the hand of a child, so there's always that. |
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| Clean, Shaven (Criterion) Lodge Kerrigan began his succession of utterly unique, visually and aurally dazzling character studies with the raw, ravaging Clean, Shaven. A compelling headfirst dive into the mindscape of a schizophrenic (played by the remarkable Peter Greene) as he tries to track down his daughter after he is released from an institution, Kerrigan's film brilliantly uses sound and image to lead audiences into a terrifying subjectivity. No one is left unscathed. |
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| Alfred Hitchcock Presents S. 2 |
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| Solo con Tu Pareja (Criterion) Before Alfonso Cuarón brought us the international sensation Y tu mamá también, he made his mark on Mexican cinema with the ribald and lightning-quick social satire Solo con tu pareja. Don Juan-ish yuppie Tomás Tomás (Daniel Giménez Cacho, from Bad Education) spends his nights juggling so many beautiful women that he can't keep their names straight—until one of his many conquests, a spurned nurse, gives him a taste of his own medicine. Beautifully filmed by the inimitable Emmanuel Lubezki (The New World), Cuarón's wildly successful feature debut (which has never been released in the United States) offers the first glimpses of the exuberant flair that has come to define this one-of-a-kind director. |
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| Masters of Horror: Larry Cohen - Pick Me Up From the director of Q - the winged serpent. In the middle of nowhere, with only a two-lane highway to connect it to anywhere--probably upstate New York--a recently divorced female traveler, who is a passenger on a bus that has broken down, gets caught in a bizarre and violent turf war between serial killers. |
| Nacho Libre Nach-oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! |
| The L Word S. 3 (is it Lasagna?) |
| Road to Guantanamo (Michael Winterbottom) The initial posters for the film were rejected by the MPAA. Part drama, part documentary, The Road to Guantánamo focuses on the Tipton Three, a trio of British Muslims who were held in Guantanamo Bay for two years until they were released without charge. |
| Slither Firefly's Nathan Fillion in a movie penned and directed by James Gunn, who wrote a book I'm quite fond of (the toycollector). A small town is taken over by an alien plague, turning residents into zombies and all forms of mutant monsters. B-Movie gold. |
| That's My Bush! Entire Series Short lived sitcom from South Park Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone about well, George W. Bush. |
| Creature Comforts S. 2 and X-mas Special More dry British comedy from this always enjoyable claymation series. Real life interviews are imposed on claymation animals. |
| Sweetie (Criterion - Jane Campion) Though she went on to create a string of brilliant films, Jane Campion will always be remembered for her stunning debut feature, Sweetie, which focuses on the hazardous relationship between the buttoned-down, superstitious Kay and her rampaging, devil-may-care sister, "Sweetie"--and by extension, their entire family's profoundly rotten roots. A feast of colorful photography and captivating, idiosyncratic characters, Sweetie heralded the emergence of this gifted director as well as the breakthrough of Australian cinema, which would take international film by storm in the nineties. |
| Hands over the City (Criterion) Rod Steiger is ferocious as a scheming land developer in Francesco Rosi's Hands over the City, a blistering work of social realism and the winner of the 1963 Venice Film Festival Golden Lion. This expose of the politically driven real-estate speculation that has devastated Naples's civilian landscape moves breathlessly from a cataclysmic building collapse to the backroom negotiations of civic leaders vying for power in a city council election, laying bare the inner workings of corruption with passion and outrage. |
| La Commune (Peter Watkins) |