And for all you Halloween freaks, check this out for your Hairspray costume rental.
Vitus is "a charming Swiss drama about a piano prodigy with an off-the-charts intellect" - Kevin Crust, LA Times Critic
Those are the words of LA Times movie critic Kenneth Turan describing this French adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover", the story of the illicit love between a nobleman's wife and the gamekeeper. The movie won 5 Cesars (the French Oscars).
Top Ten Movie Picks by Kevin Thomas
Thomas was actually able to restrain himself to an actual count of 10 in his picks for Top Ten Movies for 2005.
Moore is back again examining America's healthcare system in the aptly named "Sicko." It's likely his most important, most impressive, most provocative film, and it's different from his others in significant ways. For one thing, Michael the Confronter, the man who relished face-to-face encounters with the rich and powerful, is no longer in evidence...Rather than irritate people, what Moore wants to do is have an impact on policy and in an area that touches more Americans more directly than any other he's examined. In fact, one of the challenges "Sicko" faces is that concerned citizens may feel they've heard enough on the healthcare debate to last a lifetime. (Full review of Sicko at LA Times)
As compelling as the music and concert footage is, it is the vitality of the performers as characters that enables the movie to transcend the music documentary genre. Kevin Crust's Review of Gypsy Caravan
Release Date: June 2007
Run Time: 1 hr. 50 min.
Cast: Fanfare Ciocarlia, N. Maharajan, Taraf de Haidouks, Esma Redzepova, Antonio El Pipa Flemenco Ensemble Director: Jasmine Dellal
Genre: Biography, Culture & Society, Music, Instrumental Music, Vocal Music
Noriko's Dinner Table (2005) constitutes a follow-up with thematic similarities and loose narrative connections (though not a direct sequel) to Japanese filmmaker Shion Sono's dark 2002 satire 'Suicide Club". The time-fractured narrative weaves the gothic tale of the two backward Shimbara sisters, teenagers Yuka (Yuriko Yoshitaka) and Noriko (Kazue Fukiishi). The girls inadvertently become enslaved to a website, Hayiko.com, that represents a front for a perverse theatrical group, "The Family Circle" -- whereby young girls are hired by clients to act out bizarre fantasies. As a product of becoming implicated in the site, the sisters lose the ability to recognize their own identities; one is brainwashed by being forced to watch the mass suicide of 54 young Japanese girls from the earlier Suicide Club. The picture ultimately descends into blood-soaked carnage involving the titular table and a bevy of inanimate domestic objects.
Ever the formalist, Sono divides his recit into a quintet of segments, and labels four of five with the names of key characters, each of whom narrates his or her "chapter" in voice-over.
A preoccupation with suicide seems embedded in the Japanese psyche and there's always been a darkly bizarre strain in Japanese cinema. Sion Sono's "Noriko's Dinner Table" embraces these tendencies with gusto and striking originality. Just one minute short of three hours, the film is a boldly fragmented and tantalizing saga, told from five different points of view, about what happens to a family after it has blown apart.
The result is a bravura, high-risk work that raises an array of provocative questions about parent-child relationships, the treacherous quest for happiness and fulfillment, the complex interplay between reality and make-believe and the mutability of identity. "Noriko's Dinner Table" is a tantalizing mystery tale, an acute social commentary on the world of the Internet and cult mentality — and an outrageous dark comedy. It's not a film for the impatient but rather for those who enjoy challenging, high-risk artistic ventures. (Link to the complete review of Noriko's Table at the LA Times)
"Brad Bird's 'Ratatouille' ("The Incredibles", "The Iron Giant") is so audacious you have to fall in love with its unlikely hero. If we are living in a golden age of animation — and we are — one of the reasons is writer-director Brad Bird. That's somewhat ironic, because as his new "Ratatouille" demonstrates, what makes Bird so unusual is that he doesn't really think of himself as an animator at all." Full review of Ratatouille by LA Times' critic Kenneth Turan A rat named Remy dreams of becoming a great French chef despite his family's wishes and the obvious problem of being a rat in a decidedly rodent-phobic profession. When fate places Remy in the sewers of Paris, he finds himself ideally situated beneath a restaurant made famous by his culinary hero, Auguste Gusteau. Despite the apparent dangers of being an unlikely -- and certainly unwanted -- visitor in the kitchen of a fine French restaurant, Remy's passion for cooking soon sets into motion a hilarious and exciting rat race that turns the culinary world of Paris upside down. Remy finds himself torn between his calling and passion in life or returning forever to his previous existence as a rat. He learns the truth about friendship, family and having no choice but to be who he really is, a rat who wants to be a chef.