Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont is an elegant, moving story of a lovely woman of age on a journey to find something meaningful again in her life and literally “trips” into the life of a young man on his own journey to find himself as a writer. It is a deeply moving, powerful, yet subtle film that...
My Afternoons With Margueritte is purely delightful! Once upon a time in a little French town a sweet and delicate little old lady in her 90’s named Marguerite is reading aloud from her novel. The town simpleton, Germain is an illiterate handyman in his 50’s who is taking a walk to the park and he...
Czech Dream asks some powerful questions. Can capitalism have a human face? Sure it can. Student filmmakers Vít Klusák and Filip Remunda had an idea. They invented the “Czech Dream”, a marketing campaign about the grand opening of a super mega (or hyper) market. They position themselves as businessmen and locate a public relations and...
A beguiling and intellectually nimble feat of filmmaking, The French Lieutenant’s Woman film is based on a 1969 postmodern historical fiction novel by author John Fowles. It’s important to note that the authors concern was to do with the effects of society on an individual’s awareness of him or herself and more so, how having...
I am Sam is a beautiful film which really demonstrates whey Sean Penn is a star. Sam is an autistic and mentally retarded man who has the intelligence level of a 7 year old. He grew up in an institution after his mother died. He now lives as much of a regular life as he can,...
Ché Part I (The Criterion Collection) delivers pure revolutionary magic. Steven Soderbergh has directed a masterpiece that captures you in the first minute watching an extreme closeup of Benicio Del Toro in classic and iconic Che pose. This is an exquisite piece of filmmaking which is experiential and unique and tells the story in almost a...
Bubbling with humor, awesome performances and lavish cinematography, The Butterfly or Le Papillon in original French, is about a young girl named Elsa (Claire Bouanich) who is often left alone by her young mother Isabelle (Nade Dieu). She decides to leave on a trip to search for a butterfly with an elderly neighbor, Julien (Michel Serrault),...
Clue – the movie was a fun movie to watch. I loved seeing all of the familiar characters from the popular game, Clue on the big screen – Mr.Green, Professor Plum, Miss Scarlett, Col.Mustard, Mrs.White, and Mrs.Peacock. The French Maid, Mr. Boddy and the Butler were awesome too! Was it done with the rope in...
We watched Certified Copy last night and the immediately unique and interesting about this film is that the dialogue is in English, Italian and French. The characters move between the languages as real multi-lingual speakers often do. Another unique feature is that this film was created by Iranian writer and director Abbas Kiarostami and he...
Mao’s Last Dancer is the true story of Li Cunxin, a ballet dancer who defected to the United States in 1981 from Maoist China where he was born. We share his journey from his youth in a small village in the Shandong province, to when he is taken away at age eleven from his family to...
Making Leo Tolstoy’s great novel War and Peace into a film must have been a daunting task and undertaking, especially in 1956 when this film was made. Watching it now, in 2015, I can appreciate the massive scope of work and production that went into the grand sets and scenes. The film script had to...
Guilty by Suspicion. By suspicion only… and yet guilty. Can you imagine? A realistic look at a terrible time for many Americans. This film is about the true happenings of Hollywood during the 1950’s when the Un-American Committee was ruled by McCarthy and going through their anti-communist mania. It is the best film on this...
Dustin Hoffman became a star playing in The Graduate, His character, Benjamin Braddock, is a 21 year old young man who has just finished college and is back at his parents house in California. Unsure of his future and knowing that he does not want to be like his parents, he spends the film avoiding...
Midnight in Paris is beautiful film opens with a three minute postcard styled montage of Paris, showing the iconic tourist sites filmed with a filter so colorful it almost makes the scenes look like a painting. The artist’s job is not to succumb to despair but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence....
In Flawless, we get to watch Robert De Niro, a hardened New York cop, become best friends with a drag queen. What? In this surprisingly delightful film we meet Walter Koontz (De Niro) who plays a police officer / hero who has a stroke which partially paralyzes his one side. He loses his ability to...
