Chris--Are you saying there is not body part selling going on? I thought that's what they were doing, and the heart in the toilet was a botched operation or a quick disposal?
Type: Posts; User: John DeSando
Chris--Are you saying there is not body part selling going on? I thought that's what they were doing, and the heart in the toilet was a botched operation or a quick disposal?
I still believe the heart in the head is a metaphor for lives thrown away and refound, and of course for finding "love'' that has been discarded. You have to buy the fact that Frears, for all his...
In this “Camp” the summertime learning is supposedly about performing in musicals. A regimen of one show every 2 weeks (“Follies,” “Dreamgirls,” and “Promises, Promises,” for example) should have...
“Dirty Pretty Things” is a thriller interrupted by a love story. The immigrant Brit working class is sometimes depicted by this film’s director Stephen Frears (“My Beautiful Laundrette”); the native...
Johann--That article was from last week's New York Times. Glad you liked it. JD
Johann--thanks for the contact. You are right about writing in Ozon's film--It is paramount. It's just that as a "semiologist," so to speak, I go crazy when I see a filmmaker actually caring enough...
This is the best slow movie you will see all year. The devilish-eyed, manic actor John Malkovich directs his first feature, `The Dancer Upstairs,' with mature visual depth and some character...
Swimming Pool
Focus Features
Rated R
John DeSando, WCBE’s “It’s Movie Time”
Not since "The Graduate" has a swimming pool carried as much motif heft as it does in Francois Ozon's film of the...
“28 Days Later,” by British director Danny Boyle (“Trainspotting”), is the best horror/zombie film since George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead," and maybe better. The eerie set design is...
Forget TV reality shows: Andrew Jarecki’s “Capturing the Friedmans” is as real as hidden family dysfunction could be on film. Out of a seemingly-normal Great Neck, N.Y., middle-class family comes a...
Jerzy Kosinski wrote of a boy escaping all over Europe from Nazi oppressors in his classic “Painted Bird,” an alleged autobiography influenced by Roman Polanski’s flight as a boy. Polanski’s “The...
If you’ve ever written for publication or tried, Spike Jonze’s “Adaptation” is the best film I’ve seen since “Barton Fink” to depict writer’s block. The joy of the creation is a Darwinian journey...
“Everybody’s got to have a home” is an idea oft repeated in art. Earlier this year, a man ran for his life and family over the frozen tundra in “Fast Runner.” For my last review of 2002, I see we...
“About Schmidt," starring Jack Nicholson, is a credible reflection on middle class retirement and self-awareness. I am moved by the static images of this retired insurance man, staring off into the...
I vote we award Oscars to the three female leads of “The Hours” and move on to the next year’s balloting. Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer of the same name, David Hare’s adaptation, and Stephen Daldry’s...
As I stood a while ago in Windsor looking across the water at Detroit's hollow Renaissance Center, I thought, `A renaissance about what?' I just didn't know that Eminem would soon help reshape music...
Any attempt to make a biopic of an artist is bound to be imperfect because I always want immediate access to the source of inspiration and complete art deconstruction of the artist's important...
The 50's never looked so good or so insidious as in Todd Haynes' "Far from Heaven." Julienne Moore plays a stereotypically Women's-League do-good mother of 2, Cathy, whose life starts the deep...
If you cannot forget Catherine Deneuve’s devastatingly beautiful wife in “Belle Du Jour,” then don’t ruin that image with her silly wife of the victim in the Agatha Christie rip-off, director...
Michael Moore (“Roger & Me”) knows no shame. In this funny, flawed, and ultimately important documentary about guns in America, “Bowling for Columbine,” Moore’s greatest moment is when he corrals...
We can talk about Hollywood endlessly from our experience with its movies and the endless gossip in our media. Some of us even have family members in the business, but we haven’t completed our...
How many times have you heard this philosophy in film: "All I have is memory"? "The Fast Runner" is just such a memory film of the Iglooik people telling a 1000 year-old story of feuding brothers,...
Responding to my recent web review of "The Emperor's New Clothes," in which I praised the cinematographer's shot of a sunrise, a crew member gently wrote to me he and some other special effects...
In `The Good Girl,' Jennifer Anniston plays a clerk at the Retail Rodeo in a remote part of Texas; her life is as second-rate as the makeup she sells and the preaching the manager pushes over the...