Why is Spain’s Queen Juana known as Juana the Mad? Juana La Loca (retitled in the United States as Mad Love) seeks to answer the question. The film begins with a short scene of Queen Juana (played by Pilar López de Ayala), who in the year 1555 feels sorry for herself, as she has been imprisoned in a […]

The Intruder is an Iranian film about a movie actor, Dagdar, who gets mysteriously phone calls from someone who identifies herself as “The Intruder.” When The Intruder calls Dagdar’s wife, however, the phone is silent. When Dagdar answers the phone, a threat is announced–exposure of his past. Rather than calling the police, who might leak the

“There are two types of people in Alaska: those born here and those escaping from something.” So says the woman who runs the lodge where LAPD detectives Will Dorner (played by Al Pacino) and Hap Eckhart (played by Martin Donovan) have booked rooms upon their arrival in Nightmute, a halibut fishing town in Alaska near

At the age of ninety-three Manoel de Oliveira continues prodigiously to write and direct films, but his I’m Going Home appears to speak with a different voice. When the film begins, aging Gilbert Valence (played by Michel Piccoli) is offering yet another acclaimed performance on stage, the role of the king in Ionesco’s Exit the King. After

The Importance of Being Earnest, based on the 1895 play by Oscar Wilde, has been brought to the screen by director Oliver Parker. The movie follows the story, though with a few changes. Three love affairs blossom, run afoul of social mores of the era, and ultimately are consummated. Wilde was trying to make fun

Those who remember the television series I Spy starring Bill Cosby and Robert Culp from 1965-1968 will hardly recognize the 2002 spoof with the same title, starring Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson and directed by Betty Thomas. The film is also a spoof on this year’s Bad Company, starring Anthony Hopkins and Chris Rock, a plot that I

  Gay life in Japan used to be entirely in the closet. Okoge (1992), for example, depicted formidable obstacles blocking acceptance of gay people. In contrast, Hush!, directed by Ryosuke Hashiguchi, portrays an open recognition of the legitimacy of gay life, though with twists and turns that are uniquely Japanese. When the story begins, we see Naoya (played

What do a novelist, a homemaker, and a poet have in common? The Hours, directed by Stephen Daldry, poses the question and gives an implicit answer–sensory overload leading to clinical depression. The novelist is Virginia Woolf (played by Nicole Kidman), the homemaker is Laura Brown (played by Marianne Moore), and the poet is the latter’s son

The Hot Chick, directed by Tom Brady, begins with a 50 BC scene in Abyssinia in which a betrothed princess avoids an unpleasant marriage by giving her special earrings to her slave, thus transferring identities. The next scene switches to four catty, narcissistic, and naughty high school cheerleaders, in which the prettiest is Jessica (played

When a man has both a wife and male lover, loving the latter more than the former, convention dictates that he maintain the appearance of normal heterosexuality while making up stories so that he can spend as much time as possible with his true love. In the Italian film His Secret Life (Le fati ignoranti), directed