One day Ted Brooks (played by Cuba Gooding, Jr.) learns in Snow Dogs that someone named Lucy Watkins has named him as an heir to her estate in Tolketna, Alaska. A dentist practicing in Miami, he now realizes that he was adopted, and that Lucy was his birthmother. Accordingly, he goes to Tolketna for a reading […]
Insofar as Scarlet Diva is autobiographical, the message is that a goodlooking actress cannot avoid becoming a junkie and a slut. The author, director, and actress playing the title role is Asia Argento, a talented Italian who comes from a family of artists. The most quotable epigram in the film is “An artist is a prostitute.” When
When the Soviet Union launched space satellite Sputnik in 1957, the expression “the Russians are coming” gained currency. The successful film The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), though about extraterrestrials, was subsequently interpreted as a paradigm for the situation in which Russians might try but fail to conquer the United States, and I Married a Monster from
What were living conditions like in France during World War II? Safe Conduct (Laissez-Passer), directed by Bertrand Tavernier provides a 170-minute window into that era through the eyes of a film company; incidents in the movie are based on actual events from 1942-1944 and are based on the book by the famous novelist Jean Devaivre. In
The Ring, directed by Gore Verbinski, is a remake of Hideo Nakata’s Ringu (1998), in turn based on a novel by Koji Suzuki. The film pushes the envelope from the “I see dead people” theme of The Sixth Sense (1999) into The Blair Witch Project (1999) mystery. When the film begins, Katie (played by Amber Tamblyn), the best friend of Rachel
Perdition” is the name of a fictional settlement along a quiet Lake Michigan beach in the film Road to Perdition. The movie, however, begins in suburban Illinois, and the principal characters, Michael Sullivan (played by Tom Hanks) and twelve-year-old Michael, Jr. (played by Tyler Hoechlin), end up in Perdition by a route that can best be
How does someone drift into the condition known as schizophrenia? Revolution No. 9 is an attempt to provide a picture of the transformation from sanity to psychosis. The film is divided into nine parts, each beginning with a numbered title. James Jackson (played by Michael Risley) and Kim Kelly (played by Adrienne Shelly) are sweethearts, to be
The Nazi horrors have spawned many heroic true stories. The Pianist, directed by Roman Polanski, is one such tale of survival in the face of adversity. When the film begins and ends, Wladyslaw Szpilman (played by Adrien Brody) is playing the piano for a Polish radio station. Midway through the performance, bombs explode, the broadcast is
The Other Side of Heaven brings to the screen the true story of John Groberg, a Mormon missionary to Tonga from 1953 to 1956, based on his memoirs. The film follows a “the adventures of” formula, with beautiful scenery, though the movie was actually filmed in the Cook Islands, not Tonga. The film begins in 1953
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Outta Time is a low-budget thriller, directed by Lorena David, featuring handsome and muscular Mario Lopez, who plays a college student named David Morales. David is pleasing his mother Gloriana (played by Dyana Ortelli), who lives in Tijuana, because he is close to graduating from college, the first in his family to so. David’s athletic scholarship