Month: March 2000

Tumbleweeds, happily, does not fall into this category. Written by Angela Shelton and Gavin O’Connor, and directed with a delicate precision by O’Connor, this funny and poignant story about a young girl who helps her mother grow up maneuvers this dangerous story territory perfectly, hitting all the right notes and sidestepping all the potential traps.

Life in the theater has not changed much in the last century. As someone who has worked in theater production, I can’t tell you how many times I laughed with recognition at the foibles of actors, the demands of writers, and the soap opera that goes on backstage that’s depicted in Topsy-Turvy.

It’s a crime and a shame that you probably won’t have the chance to see All I Wanna Do until it hits video. Why can’t you see this movie? Because Hollywood doesn’t think there’s a market for films about teenage girls that doesn’t feature them as sex toys for teenaged boys or — more frequently — for men old enough to be their fathers. It’s a crime, because while the industry celebrates — as it did last night at the Oscars — yet another movie about a man’s midlife crisis, which prominently revolves around his lust for a young girl, it refuses to tell stories from that girl’s point of view. And it’s a shame, because every young girl (and boy) should see this film.

So, I feel totally comfortable in saying that although X is very stylish, it is also utterly incomprehensible. Not that the three writers credited here (Asami Watanabe, Nanase Ohkawa, and Rintaro) don’t try to explain, through their robotic characters, over and over and over, what’s going on.

Talk about an international production. Such a Long Journey is directed by an Icelander, was financed with Canadian money, and is set in India and stars an Indian cast. With that kind of pedigree, it’s no surprise that the story it tells is universal.

Think back to the movie that made you fall in love with movies. Do you remembering feeling how it seemed like you had never seen a film before, how what you were seeing onscreen now seemed more real than anything you’d seen before? It’s like falling in love with a person — he or she, the object of your affection, suddenly seems more vivid than everyone else. That’s how The Color of Paradise made me feel… like I was being granted a revelation, shown a secret that few are entrusted with, of hidden perfection.

At a time when Hollywood’s idea of romance is a highly contrived ‘comedy’ starring the likes of Julia Roberts or Sandra Bullock, or teen sex romps in which love is the furthest thing from the hormone-addled characters’ minds, it’s so wonderfully refreshing to find an intelligent, grown-up, genuine love story. As with the recent and similarly mature End of the Affair, mass audiences will likely decry Waking the Dead as ‘slow’ and probably even ‘boring,’ but anyone who craves a moving and involving romantic movie will love it.

Self-absorbed Generation Xers can be so, well, tedious. Doesn’t matter that I am one myself — self-absorbed Xer, that is — one of our defining qualities is that we pretty much can’t stand one another. That’s probably why Winter Sleepers — from Tom Tykwer, the writer and director of Run Lola Run — left me cold. The gaggle of young people the film revolves around just aren’t narcissistic in any kind of interesting way.

Oh, men and their midlife crises… Will we never see the end of this as suitable subject matter for comedies, tragedies, and everything in between? While middle-aged men dominate the production of film, probably not. So, is The Muse a satire on this particular brand of male insecurity, or is it more of the same-old, same-old?