In My Name is Joe, the problems of working-class Glasgow, Scotland, during the period of high unemployment under Margaret Thatcher’s era are highlighted. Although the film was highly acclaimed in Britain when released in 1998 and relegated to an art film theatre circuit in the United States in 1999, because the setting and dialog are unfamiliar […]

The Messenger – The Story of Joan of Arc In the fifth century, the Frankish kings siezed control of much of France, but had to defend the territory against attacks by Viking warriors. In 991 the French capitulated in the Treaty of St. Clair-sur-Epte, establishing the dukedom of Normande, and the Norsemen soon took over

If humans had been replaced by artificial intelligence copies to bring about a rational world, what would uncloned humans do? This is the premise for the sci-fi film The Matrix, directed by Andy and Larry Wachowski, though we are supposed to understand that it is the 21st century, and that the machines waged war on the

Lucie Aubrac During World War II the Germans occupied France and ruled through a puppet government. Some French collaborated with the Germans; others resisted. A dramatic episode of the French Resistance in 1943 is brought to the screen in the 1997 French film Lucie Aubrac, which opened in the Los Angeles area during fall 1999. The

Limbo   Beautiful Alaska is the location of Limbo, a film that features characters who have failed to succeed in the lower forty-eight states and have decided to try out the challenge of America’s last frontier. John Sayles, who wrote, directed, and edited Limbo, as usual selects a small town (here Port Henry, but actually Juneau) as

Director Barry Levinson, who won the Political Film Society’s award for Good Morning Vietnam and nomination for last year’s Wag the Dog, can forget neither his Baltimore roots nor his Jewish parents, orthodox on one side and heterodox on he other. In Liberty Heights, his fourth effort to remind the rest of us that many Jewish Americans in the

Life, directed by Ted Demme, presents a different Mississippi—where black men are imprisoned whether guilty or otherwise. Different except in one fascinating respect—Ned Beatty is again cast as an unprejudiced white prison superintendent. The film focuses on two inmates of a prison farm, played by Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence, New Yorkers in Mississippi to

What would happen if everyone on earth died except for one man? The premise of The Last Man, the film deals with not only Alan (played by David Arnott) but also two other survivors-Sara (played by Jeri Ryan) and Rafael (played by Dan Montgomery). Before discovering the other two survivors, Alan robs a store to get

The King of Masks Confucius once said, “Women are worthless.” And Chinese men believed him—at least not until The King of Masks, the English title of a Chinese film made in 1996 but released in Los Angeles in 1999. Entitled Bian Lian (changing masks), the setting is Sichuan province in the 1930s, with a few scenes

Films about Hawai`i are rare, and films in which Hawai`i-identified characters bring aloha to the U.S. mainland are even more rare. In Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967), a happy mixed-race couple met and dated in Hawai`i, and then flies to San Francisco to receive approval for their proposed marriage, which came in the same year when