One of the most critically praised and provocative films of last year, described by one critic as “the most deliriously entertaining, hottest erotic thrillers in ages”. Nicole Kidman has the role of her career in this one, and is ably supported by Antonio Banderas and Harris Dickinson.Read More »
Anna is a young widow who is finally getting on with her life after the death of her husband, Sean. Now engaged to be married, Anna meets a ten-year-old boy who tells her he is Sean reincarnated. Though his story is both unsettling and absurd, Anna can’t get the boy out of her mind. And much to the concern of her fiancé, her increased contact with him leads her to question the choices she has made in her life.Read More »
Jane Campion directs this notable adaptation of the Henry James novel, The Portrait of a Lady of 1881.
Independent woman Isabel Archer (Nicole Kidman) refuses two suitors, Lord Warburton (Richard E. Grant) and Caspar Goodwood (Viggo Mortensen), when they propose marriage. Instead she travels to Florence, where family friend Madame Merle introduces her to Gilbert Osmond (John Malkovich) and his daughter Pansy. Soon Isabel finds herself falling for the mysterious Osmond. They are engaged to be married within three months, but much unhappiness lies ahead.Read More »
A woman on the run from the mob is reluctantly accepted in a small Colorado community in exchange for labor, but when a search visits the town she finds out that their support has a price.Read More »
Quote:
The film follows the exploits of two young BMX experts, P.J. (Angelo D’Angelo) and Goose (James Lugton), and their friend Judy (Nicole Kidman) after stumbling upon a box of police-band walkie talkies. A small group of incompetent bank robbers were hoping to use the walkie talkies to snoop on police traffic and they will now do anything to get them back.Read More »
Quote:
The underlying vision of the production has the audacity we expect from Von Trier, a daring and inventive filmmaker. He sets his story in a Rocky Mountains town during the Great Depression, but doesn’t provide a real town (or a real mountain). The first shot looks straight down on the floor of a large sound stage, where the houses of the residents are marked out with chalk outlines, and there are only a few props — some doors, desks, chairs, beds. We will never leave this set, and never see beyond it; on all sides in the background there is only
blankness.Read More »
It’s hardly an earthshaking revelation that we live in a culture where fame (or its cheaper companion, notoriety) is the secular equivalent of sainthood. But “To Die For,” Gus Van Sant and Buck Henry’s brilliant satire, makes that discovery seem like a clarion call from the heavens or—more appropriately—a rock-’em, sock-’em TV sound bite.
Henry’s script, based on Joyce Maynard’s novel, is assured, sophisticated and mercilessly glutted with funny zingers. Van Sant’s fluid, subtly wicked direction is a personal redemption of sorts; he’s the one responsible for the legendarily abysmal “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.” But what gives the movie its sharpest, sweetest edge is Nicole Kidman.Read More »
Synopsis:
India Stoker (Mia Wasikowska) was not prepared to lose her father and best friend Richard (Dermot Mulroney) in a tragic auto accident. The solitude of her woodsy family estate, the peace of her tranquil town, and the unspoken somberness of her home life are suddenly upended by not only this mysterious accident, but by the sudden arrival of her Uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode), who she never knew existed. When Charlie moves in with her and her emotionally unstable mother Evie (Nicole Kidman), India thinks the void left by her father’s death is finally being filled by his closest bloodline. Soon after his arrival, India comes to suspect that this mysterious, charming man has ulterior motives. Yet instead of feeling outrage or horror, this friendless young woman becomes increasingly infatuated with him.Read More »
Online review of film:
Eventually it may be that Noah Baumbach could turn into this country’s answer to France’s Eric Rohmer, turning out a steady diet of small, circumspect dramas about the lives and neurotic times of New York-era literary bourgeoisie. That’s one of the things that comes to mind as one takes in Margot at the Wedding, Baumbach’s fourth time out as writer/director and one that seems to set a template for the future. It’s a chill breeze of a film steeped in ugly inter-familial squabbling and the blinkered mentality of its self-absorbed characters who can generally only raise their gaze from their own navels long enough to find something lacking in the person they’re addressing.Read More »