1999 Madeleine, is a film that I am sure I will praise when I have seen the entire, 10-film sequence. It is also a film that, at this point in time, is so incomplete, such an incompetent piece of storytelling, that part of the audience uttered a few laughs when the words “To Be Continued” […]
Rob Cohen’s The Fast and the Furious tapped into a subculture of gearheads and speed freaks as it transformed Vin Diesel and Paul Walker into overnight sensations. Its $145 million domestic gross guaranteed a sequel, even after Vin hit the brakes on his involvement. Not surprisingly, Diesel’s presence is missed in John Singleton’s lame 2
Following the funeral of his son-in-law, a father empathizes with his daughter by relating how he moved past the death of his wife, her mother. He reassures her that in spite of the hard times ahead, “life goes on.” She retorts, “That’s a lie. Life doesn’t go on.” Welcome to everyone’s life. Death is a
Like most art forms, music is complimentary, or commentary, for the age in which it is presented. Analogous to painting, the moving image, and literature the great arts we all lean on for sympathy and entertainment we find ourselves attracted to what we relate to or wish for, and end up with extra propulsion to
The motivation for this documentary was that, quite simply, Kinski was a madman, and working with him during shooting could be an exhausting, irritating affair, complete with scenes like this: “My Best Fiend” feels a little hollow, as if it was missing spools of footage, and a more complete analysis of Kinski’s life. Perhaps –
“Wild Blood (Sanguepazzo)” is the 2008 WWII drama from director Marco Tullio Giordana, highly anticipated in the Lavazza Italian Film Festival because it’s the latest movie featuring shapely Italian actress Monica Belluci. Belluci plays the tragic figure of real-life actress Luisa Ferida, a strong-willed country girl that came to Rome to become an actress. She
The film opens with a whirlwind of images: philosophy undergraduate student, Marta (Isabella Ragonese), finishes her degree with the highest accolades, expects to be showered with offers from research institutions, only to find rejection in academia. She realizes that her classmates, less idealistic, have taken the lowly road to gold. After four years of quiet
“Woyzeck” deals with a German rifleman, named Woyzeck, who, at 40 years old, is still at the lowest rank in the army, penniless and poor. He has a child with a young woman, out of wedlock, and gives her all his money, little as it is, to take care of the child. Woyzeck is not
The teen sex comedy genre reached epic heights in the 80s, when a flurry of releases made being a teenager seem wild again; the genre always seemed to pit boys against girls, in the quest to see who could have risky, unprotected sex. Since then, however, the hedonism and irresponsibility of those days have been
I can easily classify “The Girl by the Lake”, by Italian director Andrea Molaioli, as a suspensful murder mystery, however there’s nothing really typical about it. When a clue gets discovered or unravelled, it’s not a spectacular moment and there’s no dramatic music. In fact even when the inspector solves the case you’re almost uncertain
