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In This Dispatch:
- What's New: Tyson, Julia, and more.
- What We're Watching: Grey Gardens, Husbands, One Day You'll...
- Explore: Locarno Film Festival.
- Contests: Thirst winners.
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Cult/indie director James Toback's stylistically inventive portrait of the enigmatic, controversial boxer Mike Tyson. It is, Roger Ebert asserts, "a documentary with no pretense of objectivity. Here is Mike Tyson's story in his own words, and it is surprisingly persuasive." Adds AO Scott, the film "offers a rare and vivid study in the complexity of a single suffering, raging soul. It is not an entirely trustworthy movie, but it does feel profoundly honest." See more here. |
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Scott Foundas in the Village Voice: " Tilda Swinton doesn't merely act the title role in French director Erick Zonca's Julia--she devours it, spits it back up, dances giddily upon it, twirls it in the air. It's a big, all-consuming performance, and in the hands of a lesser actress and filmmaker, it might have consumed the movie, too. But Julia is nearly as electric as its heroine." See also our Zonca interview podcast. |
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"What happened?" It's a question that's haunted fans of the cult classic Grey Gardens ever since David and Albert Maysles' cinema verité portrait of Big Edie and Little Edie debuted in 1975. The HBO original movie Grey Gardens endeavors to show just how this mother-daughter duo ended up living like a cross between the Collyer brothers and Miss Havisham in a derelict mansion in the Hamptons by filling in the Bouvier Beale women's glittering Park Avenue pasts. So we see mother Edie canoodling with a sybaritic music teacher straight out of 1930s screwball comedies like The Awful Truth and My Man Godfrey, as well as what happens after her husband leaves her. Young Edie escorts her little cousin Jacqueline Bouvier to... read review >> |
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Long unavailable, John Cassavetes’ 1970 film at last comes to DVD today, courtesy of Sony. Cassavetes stars in the film, his followup to Faces, along with Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara. IFC posted an insightful look at the film from Michael Atkinson: "It's a film about escape -- spittle-flecked and soused as it is -- and Cassavetes knows all escapes are futile searches and yet we try escaping, over and over again, all of which is as accurate a way as any to describe Cassavetes' thematic vision." |
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Israeli director Amos Gitai can be one of the world's most graceful and effective filmmakers, as in his extraordinary war film Kippur (2000), or in certain sections of his Natalie Portman-starrer Free Zone (2005). But he's equally susceptible to ham-fisted episodes, as with the clunky Kedma (2002). Unfortunately, his new film One Day You'll Understand (a.k.a. Plus tard) also earns that dubious distinction... read review >> |
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Ronald Bergen gives us a report back from the Locarno (Switzerland) Film Festival, giving us the flavor of the town that hosts the fest as well as the numerous new films from all over the globe. Ronald pegged as "the standout film of the competition an Irish-Netherlands co-production called Nothing Personal (a two-pronged title), the first feature from the Polish-born Urszula Antoniak." More >> |
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Congratulations to the winners of our Thirst contest: Rastanaut, DMapp, Shawn Grover and Steven Park. We have another cool new contest going up next week (hint: it's 40 years later, man). More details on GreenCine and in this space then. |
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300 Dispatches Ago
[DVDs released 6 yrs ago]
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