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THE SWEET HEREAFTER – Ian Holm, Sarah Polley

The Sweet Hereafter (1997)
Direction: Atom Egoyan
Screenplay: Atom Egoyan; from Russell Banks’ novel
Cast: Ian Holm, Sarah Polley, Bruce Greenwood, Tom McCamus, Gabrielle Rose, Alberta Watson, Caerthan Banks, Maury Chaykin
 

Ian Holm, Sarah Polley in The Sweet Hereafter
 

By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:
Some films are well crafted but lifeless. Others err by believing they can too readily make an audience care for a character just by having a traumatic situation beset him early on. The Sweet Hereafter, a 1997 drama by Canadian director and screenwriter Atom Egoyan, suffers from both maladies. It’s not a bad film, but it certainly is not a great film, either — much less ‘the best film of the year’ as Los Angeles Times [...]

Cannes 2009: Lars von Trier’s ANTICHRIST

Antichrist: Filmmaker Lars von Trier (top); Charlotte Gainsbourg, Willem Dafoe (bottom).
In this pyshcological horror-drama, a married couple struggles to come to terms with the accidental death of their son.

Wendy Ide in The [London] Times:
"Von Trier has moved away from the sparse, rough and ready work of the Dogme era and embraced a stylised and visually sumptuous look for Antichrist. The movie is packed with arresting and atmospheric images, some of which you’ll wish you could permanently erase from your memory.
"If von Trier’s issues with female sexuality have been evident in previous films, particularly Breaking the Waves and Dogville, in Antichrist he ups the ante, constructing a gender war of nuclear intensity between [...]

THE LIMEY d: Steven Soderbergh

The Limey (1999)
Direction: Steven Soderbergh
Screenplay: Lem Dobbs
Cast: Terence Stamp, Lesley Ann Warren, Luis Guzman, Peter Fonda, Barry Newman, Joe Dallesandro, Nicky Katt, Amelia Heinle, Melissa George

 

 
By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:
Director Steven Soderbergh’s 1999 so-called crime drama The Limey is easily the best Soderbergh effort I’ve seen. That’s partly due to the innovative narrative structure, which makes all but the last few minutes of this great film a flashback. The rest is due to an excellent script by Lem Dobbs, whose other great success came a year earlier, in Alex Proyas’ sci-fi thriller Dark City. Both films, despite their apparent differences, are acutely focused on human memory and [...]

THE LIMEY II – Terence Stamp

THE LIMEY – Part I
Aside from memory, there are superbly rendered details that distill the characters: Wilson radiates affection for Eduardo’s help in tracking down Valentine by fondly calling him Sancho (as in Panza). All of these things — along with Eduardo’s and Elaine’s motivations, and the portrayal of the relationship between the hitmen — work well. In fact, they work so well precisely because there are no specifics, but generalities sharply etched so that the viewer ‘feels,’ as well as understands, the motivations and relationships. That allows the viewer to feel what goes on inside Wilson, thus creating a stronger identification with him than would be gotten were all things laid [...]

Joseph L. Mankiewicz Tribute: SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER

Joseph L. Mankiewicz Centennial – Part I
And if Guys and Dolls (1955) was a bore — just about everyone in this film musical is miscast, from Brando to Mankiewicz himself — the director recovered his touch with the adult (and bizarre) Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), a psychotic psychological drama adapted by Gore Vidal and (officially) Tennessee Williams from Williams’s own play. (Williams later said he had nothing to do with the film version.)
The story follows a young woman (Elizabeth Taylor) who is sent to a psychiatric hospital after she suffers a nervous breakdown following some horrific traumatic experience. Things can get quite heady — bad pun intended — when you mix traditional Southern [...]

Nagisa Oshima at the American Cinematheque

“No other director of Oshima’s generation has made more vital, inventive and challenging films, or taken more risks. He is a giant in contemporary cinema.” – Tony Rayns
“Plainly the greatest living Japanese filmmaker.” – Jonathan Rosenbaum
“Japan’s greatest living filmmaker.” – J. Hoberman
Those in the Los Angeles area can judge for themselves as Nagisa Oshima is the subject of an eight-film series from April 23-26 at the American Cinematheque’s Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. The Oshima series is being presented in collaboration with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (which will have its own Oshima series in May) and is co-sponsored by the Japan Foundation.
"I am not interested in making films that can be understood [...]

THE FALLEN IDOL d: Carol Reed

The Fallen Idol (1948)
Direction: Carol Reed
Screenplay: Graham Greene, from his short story "The Basement Room"; additional dialogue by Lesley Storm and William Templeton
Cast: Ralph Richardson, Bobby Henrey, Michèle Morgan, Sonia Dresdel, Denis O’Dea, Jack Hawkins, Walter Fitzgerald
 

Michèle Morgan, Ralph Richardson in The Fallen Idol
 

By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:
The 1948 drama The Fallen Idol is the third film I’ve seen by British filmmaker Carol Reed. I’d previously watched the dreadful Oscar-winning musical Oliver! (1968) and the stolid Charlton Heston biopic of Michelangelo, The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965). True, I’ve also seen The Third Man, the 1949 thriller attributed to Reed, though I’ve always hedged upon taking the stance that it was Reed’s film alone and not an Orson Welles [...]

WOYZECK d: Werner Herzog

Woyzeck (1979)
Direction: Werner Herzog
Screenplay: Werner Herzog; from a play by Georg Büchner
Cast: Klaus Kinski, Eva Mattes, Wolfgang Reichmann, Willy Semmelrogge, Josef Bierbichler, Paul Burian, Volker Prechtel
 

Klaus Kinski in Woyzeck
 

By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:
One of the signs of a great artist is that even when not at the top of his game he is still capable of flashes of utter brilliance. Such is the case in Werner Herzog’s Woyzeck (1979), starring his friend and bane Klaus Kinski in the third of five films made by the director-actor team.
Woyzeck is not a great film, but here and there it offers great moments. Part of the reason it fails to reach true greatness is that the story’s stage roots are too [...]

STRAW DOGS d: Sam Peckinpah

Straw Dogs (1971)
Direction: Sam Peckinpah
Screenplay: David Zelag Goodman and Sam Peckinpah; from Gordon Williams’ novel The Siege of Trencher’s Farm
Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Susan George, Peter Vaughan, T.P. McKenna, Del Henney, Jim Norton, Donald Webster, Ken Hutchison, Len Jones, Sally Thomsett, Robert Keegan, Peter Arne
 

Dustin Hoffman, Susan George in Straw Dogs
 

By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:
If there has ever been a more over-interpreted and stolidly misinterpreted film than director Sam Peckinpah’s 1971 Straw Dogs, I’ve yet to encounter it. Films like Citizen Kane and 2001: A Space Odyssey have had more ink spilled over them, but most of the ideas tossed about are on the money and far less is read into them. Also, those two classics have one big [...]

SIGNS OF LIFE d: Werner Herzog

Lebenszeichen / Signs of Life (1968)
Direction: Werner Herzog
Screenplay: Werner Herzog; inspired by Achim von Arnim’s story
Cast: Peter Brogle, Wolfgang Reichmann, Athina Zacharopoulou, Wolfgang von Ungern-Sternberg, Wolfgang Stumpf, Julio Pinheiro
 

By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:
No filmmaker’s career has been more defined and structured by the musical choices he has made than that of Werner Herzog. This claim is evident from his first full-length feature, Lebenszeichen / Signs of Life (1968), which he made when he was twenty-four — three years after having written the screenplay. (He claims he got the idea for it when he was fifteen or sixteen, apparently from a story by German author Ludwig Achim von Arnim [1781-1831].) Though made by a newcomer, Signs of Life is an [...]

NOTES ON A SCANDAL – Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett

Notes on a Scandal (2006)
Direction: Richard Eyre
Screenplay: Patrick Marber; from Zoe Heller’s novel
Cast: Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, Bill Nighy, Andrew Simpson, Phil Davis, Anne-Marie Duff
 

Cate Blanchett, Judi Dench in Notes on a Scandal
 

Directed by Richard Eyre, Notes on a Scandal is a must-see for those who enjoy a cleverly constructed plot that explores human relationships to the core.
Jaded older teacher Barbara Covett (Judi Dench) contrives to ensnare young and beautiful new teacher Bathsheba Hart (Cate Blanchett). In the meantime, 15-year old student Steve Connolly (Andrew Simpson) entices Bathsheba into a turbulent affair, while Sheba’s husband (Bill Nighy) and children all tear at Sheba’s loyalties.
Credible characters fill Patrick Marber’s clever script (from Zoe Heller’s novel): The management-minded headmaster, the happily [...]

21 GRAMS – Sean Penn, Naomi Watts

21 Grams (2003)
Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Screenplay: Guillermo Arriaga
Cast: Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Benicio del Toro, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Melissa Leo, Danny Huston, Eddie Marsan, John Rubinstein
 

 

Shot in documentary-style, 21 Grams is a bleak, convoluted, and surprisingly powerful drama about three individuals linked to both one another and to the immediacy of death: Paul (Sean Penn) is a dying man in dire need of a heart transplant; Jack (Benicio Del Toro) is a born-again ex-con who has run over a father and his two daughters as they were crossing a street; and Cristina (Naomi Watts) is the woman whose family Jack has killed. (By the way, the film’s title refers to the alleged weight of a person’s soul. That figure came [...]

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