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Romantic love is unrequited love between those of different social positions. Western civilization has moved beyond romantic love, largely because barriers of class have broken down and women are liberated. Many parts of Asia, however, retain traditional cultures that present impenetrable barriers. In the Mood for Love, written and directed by Kar-Wai Wong, brings romantic love […]

Although not yet commercially exhibited outside the Philippines, Markova: Comfort Gay is a film about human rights violations that deserves a larger audience. Directed by Gil M. Portes, the movie is a biopic of Walter Dempster, Jr., who begins the film at the age of seventy-three; as a title at the end of the movie indicates, he

  Sérgio (played by Ricardo Meneses) is a North Lisbon garbage worker who lives in a one-room flophouse in O Fantasma (Phantom), a film noir that takes place mostly at night and has very little dialog. Although a female coworker, Fátima (played by Beatriz Torcato), is attracted to him, he is attracted to men, though he

O Brother, Where Art Thou? is nearly a camp version of portions of Homer’s The Odyssey, or so we are told at the beginning of the film, directed by Joel Coen. When the film begins, Ulysses Everett McGill (played by George Clooney), Pete (played by John Turturro), and Delmar (played by Tim Black Nelson) are escaping from

  Why did George Bush Senior take the trouble to invade Panamá at the end of 1999? If the arrest of Panamanian President Manuel Antonio Noriega is accepted as the president’s stated objective for the military action, then why so many casualties? The official bodycount is 500 Panamanians dead and over 3,000 wounded, with 23

ANNA AND THE KING—A FAIRY TALE WITHOUT LYRICS In 1862, Thailand was surrounded by imperialist powers and ruled by the Chakri dynasty. Britain controlled Burma on the East, and France was moving up the Mekong to exercise sovereignty over Indochina on the West. Dissatisfied with religious-oriented education provided to members of the royal court by

The Castle, immensely popular when it was released during 1997 in Australia, is designed as a comedy about a situation more serious than the one depicted, and our laughter at the satire quickly diminishes as the plot thickens. Good-natured working-class tow truck operator Darryl Kerrigan (played by Michael Caton) has built a house, with many additions

Earlier this year The Teena Brandon Story was a blockbuster documentary about a true story—a rape and preventable murder involving a Nebraskan male trapped in a woman’s body. Now a feature film, Boys Don’t Cry, dramatizes the same events. The film is directed by Kimberly Peirce, who also handled the screenplay. Teena Ray Brandon (played by Hilary Swank),

HAWAI`I, THAIS, AMERICANS, AND AUSTRALIANS ARE TRASHED IN BROKEDOWN PALACE Summer is rarely a time for release of serious films with explicit political agendas. A possible exception might have been Brokedown Palace, directed by Jonathan Kaplan, whose films have been twice nominated by the Political Film Society. This film, however, appears to have started with