Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino (born March 27, 1963) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. In the early 1990s he was an independent filmmaker whose films used nonlinear storylines and aestheticization of violence. His films include My Best Friend’s Birthday (1987), Reservoir Dogs (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994), Jackie Brown (1997), Kill Bill (Vol. 1, 2003; Vol. 2, 2004), Death Proof (2007) and Inglourious Basterds (2009). His films have earned him Academy, Golden Globe, BAFTA and Palme d’Or Awards and he has been nominated for Emmy and Grammy Awards. In 2007, Total Film named him the 12th greatest director of all-time. Read the rest of this entry »
Stanley Kubrick
A film is — or should be — more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what’s behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.
— Stanley Kubrick
BORN to a middle-class family in the Bronx, filmmaker Stanley Kubrick received his first camera from his physician father at the age of 13; three years later he was working as a photographer for Look magazine. (Kubrick had planned to go to college instead of to work, but had lost his place to a returning vet when he flunked a high school English class.) Read the rest of this entry »
Out of Tune
Director–Lance Mungia,
Starring-Jeffrey Falcon, Justin McGuire,
Comedy 81 min,
Rated PG-13,
color.
Reviews: “We get a lot of king wannabes on the way to Vegas,” announces a bartender in this midnight-movie wannabe, which is almost as amusing as it is self-conscious. Almost. The time is the present, but the past is alternative reality. It seems that in 1957 the [...]
Check Your Brain at the Door
Lucy Mohl
You knew it had been a dry summer when some highbrow critics jumped onboard this straightforward action thriller as if it were the last bus out of town. But it does make for a great ride: Keanu Reeves turns his zoned-out persona into a zen-like hero, pursuing a mad bomber (Dennis Hopper, [...]
Nearly Unendurable
Cloud Ten Pictures
Director–Victor Sarin
Starring Brad Johnson, Chelsea Noble, Colin Fox, Kirk Cameron
Action Adventure Fantasy Sci Fi 110 min
Based on the first book from a hugely popular series of novels by Christian evangelist Tim LaHaye and writer Jerry B. Jenkins, Left Behind: The Movie introduces a handful of characters who share the misfortune of not making [...]
Burning Down the Howie
Director–Dean Semler
Starring Howie Long, Scott Glenn
Action 89 min
I remember watching the Los Angeles Raiders and every now and then catching a glimpse of Howie Long with his helmet off. And each time I’d see his chiseled face and the intense and dangerous expression he carried all over the field, I’d think to myself: Man, on [...]
Wholly Original
October Films
Director–Lars von Trier
Starring Emily Watson, Stellan Skarsgard
Drama 156 min
Possibly the most unexpected film of the year (and winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s 1996 Grand Jury Prize), Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves is — as much as anything — an homage to fellow Dane Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 classic The Passion of Joan [...]
Road Trip
Director–Christine Choy
Documentary
My America is an often humorous and sharply observed documentary about one Asian-American’s quest to find Asian America. Inspired by Christine Choy’s Chan is Missing (Choy served as this film’s cinematographer),
The Lady and Filmmaker from Shanghai
Sony Pictures Classics
Director–Zhang Yimou
Starring Gong Li, Li Baotian
Comedy Drama 108 min
With the popularity of the contemporary gangster film ruling American cinema, it is refreshing to see a smaller, quieter film in the genre with a different cultural spin. Zhang Yimou’s Shanghai Triad tells the week long story of a young boy recruited from the farmlands [...]
A Passionate Masterpiece
Sony Pictures Classics
Director–Carlos Saura
Starring Cecilia Narova, Miguel Angel Sola
Drama 105 min
Tango draws you in, wraps its arms round you, spins you around, embraces you, leaves you panting. Carlos Saura, Tango’s writer and director, evokes the beauty and eloquence of human movement better than any living director I know.
