Sueño, directed by Renée Chabría, attempts to present a wide range of Latino music with a plot consisting of personal stories of several recent immigrants to Los Angeles from México, though the cinematography is grainy, and the sound quality does not do justice to the music. When the movie begins, twentysomething Antonio (played by John […]
Jeffrey Kramer, the director of Smile, was so impressed by his teenage daughter’s experiences as a volunteer with an overseas medical charity, Operation Smile, that he decided to make a film to publicize opportunities available to enterprising teenagers of Generation X. The film initially focuses on two dysfunctional families, one in Jingxi, a working-class provincial town
The Second Industrial Revolution took off in the middle of the nineteenth century, with machines ultimately producing increased power to support the mass production of the twentieth century. Detractors have pointed out that, as a consequence, hitherto unimaginable corporate greed trampled on the individual worker and over the pristine environment. Steamboy, an animé directed by Katsuhiro
The norms governing gay life have not been written authoritatively, so expectations are sometimes based on a model of straight relationships that may be inappropriate. The soap opera Queer as Folk, which began on cable in 1999, grapples with the adjustments made by young gays as they encounter the unexpected. Slutty Summer, directed by Casper Andreas, presents
Sense of Need is a film about a Palestinian named Yusuf, known as Joseph while studying music in San Francisco. Directed and written by Palestinian newcomer Shady Srour, the film takes several minutes to present streams of consciousness at various traumatic times in Joseph’s confused mind before filmviewers will realize that he suffers from performance anxiety
Shôjo, directed by Eiji Okuda, is perhaps the Japanese answer to the classic Lolita (1962, 1997), though with a much better karma. A fifteen-year-old girl, Yoko (played by Mayu Ozawa), meets fortysomething Tomokawa (played by the director), a cop eating at a restaurant, and immediately asks for sex. Evidently, her question has been answered affirmatively before with
Sahara, directed by Breck Eisner, is an adventure film hyped as an Indiana Jones clone, based on the 1992 novel of the same title by Clive Cussler. The plot is overshadowed by action, with guns blazing, in which the American hero, Dirk Pitt (played by Matthew McConaughey), Pitt’s longtime sidekick Al Giordino (played by Steve
Saving Face, directed by Alice Wu, is an amusing soap opera that portrays Chinese in New York breaking free from Old World conventions. At the center of the film is the expulsion of a forty-eight-year-old widower “Ma” Pang (played by Joan Chen) from the house of her father (played by Jin Wang), because she is
Musicians are celebrated for pouring their emotions into their music. Saraband, directed by eighty-six-year-old Ingmar Bergmann, goes behind the orchestra pit to view those emotions. The film has subtitled acts and could just as easily be performed on stage as on screen, though the actual origin of the film is a broadcast on Swedish television. In
Purple Butterfly (Zi Hudie), directed and written by Ye Lou, takes place in Manchuria in 1928 and Shanghai in 1931 and 1937. The focus is on the conflict between China and Japan. In 1928, Itami Hidehiko (played by Toru Nakamura), whose father played a role in developing the Manchurian railroad system, is in love with fellow