Rainer Werner Fassbinder's crocodile-tearjerker about the romance and marriage of a sixtyish German scrubwoman and a young Moroccan immigrant. It's a crossbreed of two Douglas Sirk tearjerkers of the Fifties, All That Heaven Allows and Imitation of Life, and twice as hard to swallow as either of those. Fassbinder clicks …
A pre-credit disclaimer brings us up to speed: what follows is a fictionalized biopic inspired by the life of Céline Dion that’s “been modified in keeping with the filmmaker’s vision.” Regrettably, writer-director-star Valérie Lemercier never makes good on her promise of a triple threat. When drained, the script contains enough …
Why did Robert Rodriguez bother giving Rosa Salazar the CG Margaret Keane treatment when Hollywood already had tumescently-eyed young actresses like Anya Taylor-Joy or Bel Powley eager to report for duty? It’s Ex Machina for teenagers when a futuristic sawbones (Christoph Waltz in cruise control) fuses together the upper-torso of …
There’s a gay, black BFF living down the hall, a suffocatingly adorable mom, a handsome Jewish doctor, the obligatory Hallmark greeting card romantic interlude (parasailing, anyone?), characters who break out into spontaneous sing-alongs, and Whoopi Goldberg as God. What separates this from all the other chick flicks out there? Colon …
Grisly details of the 1972 plane crash in the Andes, the survivors of which resorted to eating the casualties in order to stay alive. The crash itself is hair-raising, and the rest is certainly a more tasteful (not to say tasty) treatment than the 1976 Mexican quickie, Survive. Possibly it's …
AIDS in the world of ballet, specifically the British ballet, more specifically the fictitious Ballet Luna ("Queers have made my theater great!"). All very never-say-die and brave and exemplary, but tediously goody-goody and idealized, too. And the climax -- an Opening Night sans rehearsal -- is canned corn. With Jason …
In 2006, tech-friendly social worker Dan Cohen got the bright idea to bring iPods loaded with personalized playlists to elderly nursing home patients suffering from disconnection. Whether because of Alzheimer's, dementia, or schizophrenia, these people had lost touch with the world, and with themselves. In at least a few instances, …
Joseph Mankiewicz accepts all the Broadway Backstage stereotypes and hones them into a like-new sharpness, a little dulled again before movie's end. Bette Davis is the insecure star and Anne Baxter the ambitious ingénue climbing up her back. Gary Merrill, Davis's real-life husband, plays her husband, and George Sanders and …
Screens as part of the German Currents Film Festival.
Pedro Almodóvar's paean to womanhood, in particular motherhood and actresshood, is dedicated to three of the kind: Bette Davis, specifically for All about Eve; Gena Rowlands, for Opening Night; and Romy Schneider, for The Important Thing Is to Love. The title, quite plainly, derives from the Davis film, a Spanish-dubbed …
Pedro Almodóvar's paean to womanhood, in particular motherhood and actresshood, is dedicated to three of the kind: Bette Davis, specifically for All about Eve; Gena Rowlands, for Opening Night; and Romy Schneider, for The Important Thing Is to Love. The title, quite plainly, derives from the Davis film, a Spanish-dubbed …