Jesse, a writer from the US, and Celine, a Frenchwoman working for an environment protection organization, acquainted nine years ago on the train from Budapest to Vienna, meet again when Jesse arrives in Paris for a reading of his new book. As they have only a few hours until his plane leaves, they stroll through Paris, talking about their experiences, ...
Our Take: One of the most romantic and realistic romances ever made.
Craig, a puppeteer, takes a filing job in a low-ceilinged office in Manhattan. Although married to the slightly askew Lotte, he hits on a colleague, the sexually frank Maxine. She's bored but snaps awake when he finds a portal leading inside John Malkovich: for 15 minutes you see, hear, and feel whatever JM is doing, then you fall out by ...
Our Take: A little bit crazy, very funny, and one of the most inventive movies you will ever see.
Based on actual events. Brandon Teena is the popular new guy in a tiny Nebraska town. He hangs out with the guys, drinking, cussing, and bumper surfing, and he charms the young women, who've never met a more sensitive and considerate young man. Life is good for Brandon, now that he's one of the guys and dating hometown beauty Lana. ...
Our Take: It is no wonder Hilary Swank won an Oscar for this extraordinary performance, not a film for the squeamish but an amazingly powerful story
Having just served 5 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, Billy Brown (Gallo)'s first desperate post-incarceration action is to desperately search for somewhere to relieve himself. Then, to impress his dunceish, thoroughly neglectful parents, Gallo kidnaps a dance class student called Layla (Ricci) and forces her to pretend to be his wife. Layla allows herself to ...
Our Take: Director Vincent Gallo is a true original and he has made one of the most original, surprisingly beautiful modern love stories we've ever seen. And watching Ben Gazzara and Angelica Huston as an old married couple is reason alone to see this movie!
In November 1959, Truman Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the author of Breakfast at Tiffany's and a favorite figure in what is soon to be know as the Jet Set, reads an article on a back page of the New York Tome. It tells of the murders of four members of a well-known farm family in Holcomb, Kansas. Similar stories appear ...
Our Take: One of two films in two years about Truman Capote and his experience in writing "In Cold Blood." Philip Seymour Hoffman stars with an eerily powerful star turn as the title character.
William Faber became a tax accountant like his father and resolved himself to a life where nothing much ever changed. At least until the beautiful Anna walked in one day and mistook his office for the therapist's down the hall. Unsolicited, Anna begins to reveal intimate details of her life which include how she is seeking security by attempting to ...
Cathy (Julianne Moore) is the perfect 50s housewife, living the perfect 50s life: healthy kids, successful husband, social prominence. Then one night she surprises her husband Frank (Dennis Quaid) kissing another man, and her tidy world starts spinning out of control. In her confusion and grief, she finds consolation in the friendship of their African-American gardener, Raymond (Dennis Haysbert) - ...
Our Take: Todd Haynes' contemporary vision of Douglas Sirk's world is full of humor, pathos and beauty.
A drama that examines the shifting relationships between four women who have been friends all of their adult lives. Now as they settle into their early middle age, their friendship is increasingly challenged by the ever-growing disparity in their individual degrees of financial comfort. It is a poignant snapshot of the way we live today, where the safe divisions that ...
Our Take: A fresh, keenly observed, and authentic feeling ensemble portrait…rather like the Big Chill 15 years later.
Anti Hero Andrew Largeman returns to his New Jersey hometown to visit from his Hollywood existence where he is an employed, but not famous actor. He decides to stop taking the psychopharmacological drugs his psychiatrist father has long insisted he take. As his mood changes, and his feelings of sadness and regret deepen he is also open for the first ...
Our Take: Tender, funny and definitely indie. Great supporting performance by Peter Sarsgaard.
Based on the well-known comic, GHOST WORLD tells the story of neo-cool Enid (Thora Birch) and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson) who, faced with graduation take a hard look at the world they wryly observe and decide what they really want. When Enid takes an interest in the offbeat Seymour (Steve Buscemi) and Rebecca focuses her attention on their mutual romantic fixation ...
Our Take: Not only do you get to check out Scarlett Johansson before she became a blonde femme fatale, you also experience one of the wittiest coming-of-age stories of our time. Also starring the great Steve Buscemi, this comical film about suburban boredom and being an outsider is a must-see.
An ensemble cast telling 10 stories with intertwining characters. One story is about a father and son who are dating the same woman . Another features a woman who long ago gave her baby up for adoption but is now being blackmailed by a documentary filmmaker who claims to know the now-grown child's whereabouts. Written by Anonymous
Igby Slocumb (Kieran Culkin), a rebellious and sarcastic seventeen-year-old boy, is at war with the stifling world of "old money" privilege he was born in to. With a schizophrenic father (Bill Pullman), a self-absorbed, distant mother (Susan Sarandon), and a shark-like young republican big brother (Ryan Phillippe), Igby figures there must be a better life out there - and sets ...
Our Take: In what many call a modern day adaptation of Catcher In the Rye, Kieran Culkin stars opposite an all-star cast as he fights against his bourgeois surroundings, his manic parents, a tormented upbringing, and the world itself.
When young Frank Fowler (Nick Stahl) becomes romantically involved with an older single mother (Tomei), his parents (Spacek and Wilkinson) are concerned. But when the relationship takes a sudden and tragic turn, the Fowlers are forced to confront the harsh reality of their situation and the inescapable consequences of their actions. An uncommonly suspenseful and disturbing film powered by a ...
Our Take: Just when you think this movie is one thing, it becomes quite another, and then turns direction again. Sissy Spacek and Tom Wilkinson are both amazing.
A wealthy but dysfunctional family teeters on the brink of collapse in this emotional drama leavened with a strong dose of dark comedy. Federica (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi) is the daughter of a wealthy Italian business magnate (Roberto Herlitzka) who relocated himself and his family to France in the 1970s, after a wave of kidnappings among the rich and prominent led him ...
Our Take: In this age of heiresses becoming celebrities here is a movie that paints an honest and unvarnished portrait of growing up rich.
Judy Berlin allows the audience to take a glimpse of a day at once strange and ordinary with the residents of Babylon, Long Island. Judy (Edie Falco) is an aspiring actress who is quitting her job as a "pilgrim" in a local historical museum's display to take her chances in Los Angeles. Her mother is a gifted but bitter schoolteacher ...
Madeleine (Embeth Davidtz), a sophisticated Chicagoan who owns a gallery devoted to "outsider art," goes south in an effort to woo an eccentric painter (Frank Hoyt Taylor) to her gallery. She brings along her husband, George (Alessandro Nivola), a native of the area, and the couple stays with his family. Peg (Celia Weston), George's mother, gives Madeleine a rather chilly ...
Our Take: No matter how far we go, it seems we never leave home. This adorable and character-rich film follows a Chicago art dealer and her younger newly-wed to North Carolina where each are confronted with the complexity and beauty of family relations, the struggle for identity, and what truly matters most.
Fed up with her fruitless search for "Mr. Right" and tired of blind dates from hell, attractive journalist Jessica Stein whimsically responds to a classified ad - from Helen! Making and breaking new rules of dating as they go, the two women muddle through an earnest but hilarious courtship that blurs the lines between friendship and romantic love in this ...
Our Take: Jessica is a "nice Jewish girl" who never expected to be gay... or did she? This is a wonderful, touching family dramedy.
Lolita (Marilou Berry) is the 20-year-old daughter of Étienne Cassard (Jean-Pierre Bacri), a wealthy and well-known editor and writer, and most of the people she meets seem to be more interested in her dad than in her; her zaftig figure doesn't help her self-esteem much, either. Lolita is a gifted singer and has been studying with a voice coach, Sylvia ...
Our Take: Director Agnes Jaoui and star Jean-Pierre Bacri (real-life husband and wife) are the most popular and sucessful comic duo in France. Look At Me proves why: it's smart, funny, moving and unflinchingly honest in its depiction of love of all kinds. It was a smash at the Cannes Film Festival and it's one of the most satisfying movies we've seen in a long time.
Bob Harris (Bill Murray) and Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) are two Americans in Tokyo. Bob is a movie star in town to shoot a whiskey commercial, while Charlotte is a young woman tagging along with her workaholic photographer husband (Giovanni Ribisi). Unable to sleep, Bob and Charlotte cross paths one night in the luxury hotel bar. This chance meeting soon begins ...
Our Take: Sofia Coppola has captured the essence of disorientation and isolation which can plague us all in this visually arresting, beautifully acted drama.
Me and You and Everyone We Know is a poetic and penetrating observation of how people struggle to connect with one another in an isolating and contemporary world. Christine Jesperson is a lonely artist and “Eldercab” driver who uses her fantastical artistic visions to draw her aspirations and objects of desire closer to her. Richard Swersey (John Hawkes), a newly ...
Our Take: Director Miranda July started out as a visual artist and it shows- unlike a lot of artists who turn to movies she didn't make a "weird" movie. She applied her artistic sensibility to a very funny and romantic story that features the most hilarious depiction of online dating you may ever see. This miraculously poetic and award-winning debut film explores the outwardly generic yet internally brave dreamers of companionship and human connection who must reconcile their fantasies of love and happiness.