Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Unmade Beds by Nicholas Barker is the sort of picture I would normally hate: a kind of heightened documentary that is not really, as it purports to be, straightforward interviews with four single adults in New York but rather staged interviews in which each of the subjects has been given a chance to work up…

It used to be said of anything that sounded overwrought and over-writerly that it “smelled of the lamp” — because the author was supposed to have had to stay up late to think of all the labored and artificial expressions he uses. Trixie, directed and co-written (with John Binder) by Alan Rudolph doesn’t just smell…

The Tao of Steve by Jenniphr Goodman is a likeable little slacker film set in (or near) Santa Fe, but a little too top-heavy with talk — in particular philosophical talk — as many indy first films by would-be intellectuals tend to be. We mustn’t be too hard on them. And the idea is a…

An often funny, less-often satirical satire of the movie business which suffers from the usual weakness of its kind: it’s only kidding

Almost Famous begins in 1969 with a literary discussion about Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird between a precocious eleven year-old, William Miller (Michael Angarano), and his widowed mother, Elaine (Frances McDormand). A college professor in San Diego, Elaine has obviously invested a great deal of hope in her son, whom she intends to be…

A movie that proves you don’t have to be a left-wing nut to make documentaries these days; you can also be a right-wing nut