Letters from Iwo Jima

You have to start watching right at the beginning of La Cérémonie, Claude Chabrol’s latest addition to one of the oddest and most compelling bodies of cinematic work in the world. Why does the maid, Sophie (Sandrine Bonnaire), answer the questions of her would-be employer, Catherine Lelièvre (Jacqueline Bisset) in that odd way? Why is…

Father’s Day by Ivan Reitman is based on the preposterous premiss that an apparently happily-married woman, upset at her husband’s failure to pursue their runaway 17 year old boy who has left home to become a rock-band groupie, would tell not one but two old boyfriends that they might be the boy’s father—in the expectation…

Yet another attempt by Hollywood to pass off kiddie kartoons as fun for all ages

Mira Nair (I arm Iran?) takes an English classic and de-Orientalizes it, so leaving very little for non-ideologues to enjoy

A funny but also depressing take on the lives of women of the Upper West Side

Anaconda by Luis Llosa is a riot of special effects but as dramatically negligible as you would expect. If you haven’t seen it, see if you can answer the following questions about it. 1. The expedition up the Amazon is (a) to shoot big game, (b) to capture big snakes to sell to zoos, (c)…