In 1948, director Vittorio De Sica made The Bicycle Thief, the quintessential blueprint of neorealism, a drama widely considered one of the greatest films ever produced. It was shot in the streets of Italy with non-professional actors, and tells about the haves, the have-nots, and the desperate. For the uninitiated, the classic tale is motivated […]
Years ago, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) turned a chance meeting on a train into a romantic 24 hours wandering the streets of Vienna. At the end of Richard Linklater’s engaging Before Sunrise (1995), the young one-night lovers go their separate ways Jesse back to the U.S. and Celine back to France their
There truly is nothing quite like a Brendan Fraser movie, is there? Encino Man, Dudley Do-Right, Mrs. Winterbourne these are the films that a generation uses to mark the passage of time. It’s nigh time we added another sparkling gem to the 30 picture oeuvre that is The Brendan Fraser Experience and that gem is
Often considered the best animated film ever and the only one to ever be nominated for Best Picture on a return viewing years later, Beauty and the Beast doesn’t seem to be quite the masterpiece we once thought. Dig through the cacophany, though, and you will indeed find one of the better animated experiences of
When Jean Cocteau began to direct Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la bête) in 1946, he was known primarily as a poet and a painter. After the film was released he instantly became one of the finest French directors of his era. As it stands today Beauty and the Beast is still one
It seems like eight years after Short Cuts, everyone decided to try to one up Robert Altman’s slow moving masterpiece. In the space of six months, we have seen the releases of three films that have been Short Cuts esque. First we had Magnolia. Then we had the beautifully photographed yet sluggish 1999 Madeleine. Now
I hate math. I’ve always hated math. It gives me a pounding headache. It would take a miracle to convince me of its value. But A Beautiful Mind has accomplished the impossible after watching the film, I have a new appreciation for math as an art, and for mathematicians as artists. Seldom do movies contain
With a cryptic title like Beautiful Girls, one starts to wonder to whom this film is being marketed. Is it the frat boy model-ogling crowd? Is it a self help flick for teenage girls? Is it soft porn? The answer, of course, is none of these: Beautiful Girls is a date movie, and quite a
We’re two movies into Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s Project Greenlight, and I’m ready to call the experiment a success. At what, I’m still not sure. The behind the scenes antics captured each week for the multi part HBO series provide an unprecedented insight into a movie’s arduous journey from script to screen. Week to
In 1965 Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo made this film tracing the efforts of the native population in Algeria, the 2nd largest nation in Africa, to rise up and liberate themselves after their French colonialist masters reneged on a promise to cut them loose. As much for its style as its even handedness, his film raised
