Reviewer: James Van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ****

Back in the spring of 2002, a film from USSR-born Israeli writer/director Dover Kosashvili opened in New York City, later arriving on DVD and cable channels. Late Marriage (Hatuna Meuheret) -- an enormously sexual, smart and angry broadside against Israeli fundamentalism -- knocked the socks off a lot of us, though it may have appeared at the time that its strong and sexy leading man Lior Askenazi (Walk on Water) was the linchpin many of us remembered most. For his part, Kosashvili went on to make Matana MiShamayim (English title: Gift from Above) in 2003, which, though nominated for eleven Israeli Film Academy awards, was not much seen outside its home country.

Continue Reading Anton Chekhov's The Duel

Reviewer: Steve Dollar
Rating (out of 5): ****

Always the sun...the torpor...endless day and endless night of salt and sea, eternity of heat, the land without succor, forever beneath the arid stars, the pyramids of salt stacked in the night without end, oh Araya...Araya.

Yes, I'm making some fun at the expense of Jose Ignacio Cabruja's somber narration of Araya. The rediscovered 1959 documentary about a desert archipelago in northeastern Venezuela, whose salt reserves have made it a hot spot for pirates, conquistadors and traders since the 16th century, draws much of its tone from this voice-over. Cabruja didn't write the script, with its hypnotic rhythms and poetic loops of language, but he definitely gives it a grave, grandiose magnetism that sounds practically self-parodic today. Yet it's also one thing that makes the film truly gripping to watch.

Continue Reading Araya

A nicely odd collection of titles out on DVD this week,with classic films from Italy, France, Japan, Latin America, plus indie, horror and... Jason Statham.

Continue Reading New and Coming Releases: May 17, 2011.

Reviewer: Jeffrey M. Anderson
Rating (out of 5): ****

The documentary Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno made its U.S. premiere at the 2009 New York Film Festival, made some festival and arthouse rounds in 2010, and finally had a San Francisco opening in 2011. It began, ostensibly, when film archivist Serge Bromberg found himself stuck in an elevator with Henri-Georges Clouzot's widow, and she told him about the late director's ordeal shooting L'Enfer (Inferno, or Hell) in the mid-1960s. The new documentary unveils a great deal of amazing-looking footage for the first time, as well as interviewing some of the surviving players.

Continue Reading Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno

 by Steve Dollar

When it was first released 25 years ago, Something Wild seemed very much a part of the zeitgeist. As "morning in America" drifted into the senile platitudes of Ronald Reagan's second term, and Top Gun and Back to the Future cleaned up at the box office, some filmmakers were reconsidering the national identity, in particular, the apple-pie verities of small towns in what might now be called Red States - aka, the Heartland.

Continue Reading Something Wild: Pandora's Jukebox

A very fine day for new releases, indeed, especially after last week's quiet list. Criterion releases a cult film, there's dysfunctional romance, dark crazy stuff from Korea, lovely French animation and more. Plus more releases coming soon, and we'll be adding to that as we go.

Continue Reading New and Coming Releases: May 10, 2011.

Reviewer: James Van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): **

Simon Rumley's Red White & Blue is a half-step up from this writer/director's earlier The Living and the Dead, a slight tale about a very odd dysfunctional family which the filmmaker buried under a bundle of repetitive visual tics and back-and-forth time trips. Rumley and his well-cast lead actor offer some interesting situations and characterization before the film's raison d'etre – a raft of unpleasant tortures/murders – begins. From what I can gather, Rumley's themes encompass everything from America's sex/drug/rock-and-roll mentality to its current mid-east wars, general state of health (pretty sick) and employment opportunities.

Continue Reading Red, White and Blue

Reviewer: James Van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ****

What a presence, in any of his films, has Stellan Skarsgård. This unusual actor -- he of the firmly under-stated performance and increasingly jowly visage -- has, to my knowledge, never given a bad performance, even in dreadful movies like Angels and Demons or silly ones like Mamma Mia!. The actor turns 60 this year and has 109 roles to his credit (including the original Insomnia and Dogville), but I doubt that he has ever been better than he is in A Somewhat Gentle Man, the new Norwegian film cogently directed by Hans Petter Moland (who also directed Skarsgard in the lesser known Aberdeen) with a fine script by Kim Fupz Aakeson.

Continue Reading A Somewhat Gentle Man

A small group of DVDs out this week, but a few there are very worthy, including Brian DePalma and Jodorowsky. More titles added to the coming soon list here shortly!

Continue Reading New and Coming Releases: April 26, 2011.

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ****

Seeing Ricky -- Francois Ozon’s mysterious little fable of an unusual baby and the family into which it comes -- a second time, I liked the film better than in my first encounter back in November of 2009 at BAM’s preview of new French films. Among the movie’s many delights in this age of multi-million-dollar special effects, is a creation so simple yet endearing and splendid: the special effect in question is just a baby. But what a baby.

The meaning that Ozon hopes to provide via this little wonder is another matter, and part of the movie's charm and weight comes from the fact that the writer/director leaves quite a bit of his message open-ended. Ricky is also a film of ideas: about religion (a new and "special" birth), homosexuality (a subject frequently touched on in Ozon's work, and here perhaps depicted as a different kind of "other"), the media (oh, those destructive bastards!), the family (Ricky serves each member of his rather well). Each aspect of the film works, even if not completely.

Continue Reading Ricky