`Quiet’ a made-for-TV-style loser
"The Quiet" is a movie of good intentions and awful results. The sophomore feature of well-regarded indie director Jamie Babbit ("But I'm a Cheerleader"), this nutty little domestic melodrama--about Dot...
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BOW WOW!
Dog and movie lovers, take note: Lassie has come home. Writer-director Charles Sturridge's "Lassie" revives a well-worn, sometimes grand tradition begun in 1938, when Eric Knight's first Lassie story was...
`Forsaken Land’ offers a sighting of a potentially major new talent
An extraordinary debut film from Sri Lankan writer-director Vimukthi Jayasundara, "The Forsaken Land," is a stark, lyrical and affecting portrait of war's aftermath as seen from the edges of the...
`Double Indemnity’ twin bill includes ’73 remake
Film noirs don't come any better--or tougher and more seductive--than Billy Wilder's 1944 movie of James M. Cain's blistering crime novel "Double Indemnity," available now in a two-disc special edition....
It may be `Iowa,’ but it’s not heaven
"Iowa," a Chicago premiere, is a flashy-looking low-budget indie about drugs, love and crime in small-town Iowa. But, speaking as an ex-small-town Midwesterner, I found it hard to buy. Writer-director-star...
“Bullrider” (PG)
Who's in it: Adriano Moraes, Justin McBride, Mike Lee (right) What it's about: This documentary explores the world of professional bull riding, showing the action at the 2004 Professional Bull...
Disparate films share family and angst
Sometimes perverse and darkly funny, sometimes wistful and yearningly romantic, writer-director Oskar Roehler's saga of a dysfunctional German family--transsexual Agnes, his/her two brothers and their self-indulgent dad--gives us both a...
This box set smells like … a winner
"Apocalypse Now Redux"--the longer "director's cut" of Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam War masterpiece "Apocalypse Now"--is one movie that easily deserves to rank alongside "Citizen Kane," "The Rules of the Game,"...
2 films reflect their urban settings
New York and Chicago are two big cities with definite movie personalities; they shine right out in two new DVD releases. Spike Lee, a New York and Knicks loyalist, has...
A fish, 3 band mates and a bit of shock treatment on tap
Gales of laughter are one critical response hard to fake. Three of the funniest movies ever made--by actual titter-guffaw count--are among the new DVD releases: the pulverizingly laugh-packed "Richard Pryor--Live...