Hands on a Hard Body by S.R. Bindler is a documentary about a contest, held annually in Longview, Texas, by the Jack Long Nissan dealership, which gives away a $15,000 pickup truck to the contestant who can keep at least one hand on the truck longer than anyone else, given five minute breaks every hour…
The Apple was directed by a 17 year old girl, Samira Makhmalbaf, the daughter of the Iranian filmmaker, Mohsen Makhmalbaf (Gabbeh). It tells the true story of twin 12 year old girls, Massoumeh and Zahra Naderi, who were locked up behind iron bars by their father for their entire lives until the neighbors complained and…
Nettoyage à Sec (Dry Cleaning) by Anne Fontaine presents us with a French version of that now familiar Hollywood trope, merely gestured towards in 8mm, the capacity for sexual adventurism and even perversion in all of us. Nicole (Miou-Miou) and Jean-Marie (Charles Berling) have been married for 15 years and run a dry-cleaning establishment in…
Nettoyage à Sec (Dry Cleaning) by Anne Fontaine presents us with a French version of that now familiar Hollywood trope, merely gestured towards in 8mm, the capacity for sexual adventurism and even perversion in all of us. Nicole (Miou-Miou) and Jean-Marie (Charles Berling) have been married for 15 years and run a dry-cleaning establishment in…
The Harmonists, directed by Joseph Vilsmaier, is the “based-on-a-true story” story of The Comedian Harmonists, an immensely popular singing group in pre-war Germany that eventually had to break up, as three of its six members were Jewish. Like nearly every other film set in its time and place, this one is ultimately sucked into the…
Beshkempir: The Adopted Son by Aktan Abdykalykov from Kyrgyzstan is written in Kyrgyzstani and stars the director’s son (Mirlan Abdykalykov) as Beshkempir, a name which literally means “five grandmothers.” It is a name sometimes given to adopted children to signify the role played by a sort of council of old women of the village in…
Peeping Tom by Michael Powell first appeared in this country in 1960, and it is often compared with Psycho, the work of another British-born filmmaker from the same year. But where Psycho was widely regarded as its auteur’s masterpiece, Peeping Tom got such a critical slating that it all but ended Powell’s career prematurely. Nowadays…
My Name is Joe, written by Paul Laverty (in Glaswegian with English subtitles) and directed by Ken Loach, stars Peter Mullan as the title character, an unemployed laborer (a surprisingly unobtrusive reminder of Loach’s usual left wing themes) and recovering alcoholic who is introduced to us at an AA meeting. He is now ashamed that,…
A Civil Action, directed by Steven Zaillian, is not, as I expected it to be, another of those God-awful Grisham things about noble, crusading trial lawyers getting the better of evil, corrupt insurance companies. In real life, it is usually the trial lawyers who are the bad guys and the insurance companies their victims, but…
Children of Heaven by the Iranian director, Majid Majidi is a little gem of a film of the sort which the Iranians seem to be good at, though it is a very little gem. When nine year old Ali Mandegar (Mir Farrokh Hashemian) takes the only pair of shoes belonging to his younger sister, Zahra (Bahare…
The Hi Lo Country, based on a novel by Max Evans published in 1961, has a weird period flavor to it even though, as directed by Stephen Frears, it is also very much of the nineties. You can see in it elements of Hemingway’s austere sensualism and bedrock conviction that literary art mainly consists of…
Hilary and Jackie, directed by Anand Tucker from a screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce and based on the memoir A Genius In the Family by Hilary and Piers du Pré is a guilty pleasure. It is a pleasure because it is marvelously written, acted and directed, but it is a guilty one because a lot…
