A CANADIAN HISTORY PROFESSOR EXHIBITS WISDOM IN THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS Rémy (played by Rémy Girard), a history professor in Montréal, is dying of liver cancer. How will he spend his last days? The Barbarian Invasions (Les Invasions barbares), directed by Denys Arcand, provides an upbeat scenario to answer that question. His spouse Louise (played by […]
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MONSTER QUESTIONS WHETHER A LESBIAN SERIAL KILLER SHOULD HAVE BEEN EXECUTED Serial killer Aileen Wuornos, who was executed in Florida in October 2002, has recently been honored by two films. Monster debuted in late 2003. Aileen: The Life and Death of a Serial Killer, came out in early 2004, an update of sorts of the
Million Dollar Baby, directed by Clint Eastwood, is an exposé of the world of boxing, with many explanatory voiceovers throughout the film by Morgan Freeman. Although the plot appears to be about the career of the title role, Maggie Fitzgerald (played by Hilary Swank), the center of the story is really Frankie Dunn (played by
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The House of Flying Daggers (Shi mian mai fu), directed by Yimou Zhang, is pure cinematographic eye candy, featuring lavish costumes, spectacular scenery, magnificent choreography, and handsome people. The story operates at two levels. When the film begins, the year is 859, and the Tang dynasty is in disrepute because of corruption. A rebel group,
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Why would an apolitical medical student from an affluent family in Buenos Aires become a revolutionary? The Motorcycle Diaries (Diarios de Motorcicleta), directed by Walter Salles, not only explains why but also reminds filmviewers that the same injustices, which affected him so profoundly, still exist. With one semester to go in order to complete medical
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Želary, directed by Ondrej Trojan, is the name of a village in rural Czechoslovakia where antifascist Eliška (played by Ana Geislerová) hides from the Nazis during World War II from May 1943. When the film begins, twentysomething Eliška is a nurse at a hospital who is being courted by a physician named Richard (played by
The Aviator, directed by Martin Scorcese, is a biopic about arrogant multimillionaire Howard R. Hughes, Jr. (played by Leonardo DiCaprio, whose characterization seems that of a boy playing a man’s part). The film begins when Hughes is a child in Houston, where a fatal contagious disease is rampant; he is bathed by a doting mother,
The documentary Bush Family Fortunes is based on the book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: An Investigative Reporter Exposes the Truth About Globalization, Corporate Cons, and High-Finance Fraudsters (2004) by Greg Palast, an American who lives in London because he can report the truth about the failure of American democracy to the BBC and elsewhere in the world
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The Iranian film Boutique, directed by Hamid Nematoolah, appears to be a nonpolitical story about the owner of a shopping mall clothing store, Shapouri (played by Reza Rooygari), and one particular lovesick employee, Jahan (played by Mohammad-Reza Golzar). Jahan lives with four men, who are not particularly pleasant companions, and he envies a friend who is
The Aryan Couple, directed by John Daly, is a fictional account of an episode that might have happened in the 1944 occupied Hungary where the film takes place, presumably near the town of Györ. Josef Krauzenberg (played by Martin Landau) has agreed to sign over the assets of his industrial-financial empire and personal property, including