festivals/conventions

A terrifying attempt at a children’s movie… or a horrible attempt at satire. It’s hard to tell which — either way, you should run in the other direction as fast as you can and never look back. Nick Giannopoulos is apparently the creator of “groundbreaking” live comedy in Australia, and here he makes his debut … more…

Bend it like Bruce. Lee, that is. Arguably the two most popular forms of entertainment — martial-arts movies and soccer — are two great tastes that taste great together in Honk Kong phenom Stephen Chow’s outrageous comedy. Chow — as writer, director, editor, producer, and star — creates a goofily appealing world of out-of-shape shaolin … more…

Oh dear. Director David Sigal and screenwriter Jean Mandel made a film about a bunch of vapid kids at a modeling competition, and the result is a vapid film. Unattractively naive and obsessed with themselves for so little reason, these teens see being sized up like livestock by the competition judges and abused by makeup … more…

All praise Evan Oppenheimer for daring to acknowledge what too many people tiptoe around: that black humor is often the best way to deal with grief. Another New Yorker coping with 9/11, Oppenheimer gives us a Manhattan comic book artist, Drew (Erik Palladino), who works through his own grief by creating a reactionary vigilante character … more…

Gay men are dying under suspicious circumstances in Manhattan, and district attorney Parker Posey is determined to prosecute someone. When one AIDS sufferer (Don McKellar) meets his death by apparent suicide, Posey is on the case, and what she finds is indescribably heartbreaking and unexpectedly comforting. Set in Chelsea and shot on DV in downtown … more…

It’s a nonstop action movie for kids, featuring an appealing gang of misfits led by the spunkiest 13-year-old girl since Pippi Longstocking, so of course it’s slated for a Hollywood remake. I’m glad I had the chance to see the Danish original before it gets watered down and prettied up and made boring and bland. … more…

With their intimate and compelling look at several powerful women in what is still the man’s world of high finance, Xan Parker and Elizabeth Holder demonstrate that even when discrimination isn’t holding women back, their own specially female fears and concerns do a fine job of competing with their drive and ambition. For these four … more…

If I ever worried that there might be something, you know, wrong with me and my passion for movies, I can now rest easy. Because this funny, sad film — by Angela Christlieb and Stephen Kijak — assures me that I am nothing but the greenest amateur compared to the cinemaniacs profiled here. Jack, Eric, … more…

In 1992, Brit Nick Broomfield’s Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer documented how the sensational media coverage of the woman who was supposedly America’s first female serial killer may have compromised her defense, how nearly everyone around her, from her mother to the police, was more interested in selling their stories to the … more…

A brief and sweet slice of New York City street life, with whipped cream on top, from filmmaker Eva Saks. A little girl, Amanda (Blaire Restaneo), having agonized over a bake shop full of delectable goodies, carries her treat proudly as she walks with her mother (Orlagh Cassidy) near Central Park, jealously protecting the confection. … more…