Hounddog

2007 • Director: Deborah Kampmeier
Indie  • Rated R • 105 minutes
Color • Language: English
Deerjen Films / Empire Film Group
Starring Dakota Fanning, Dave Morse

Hounddog is filled with the usual tropes and stereotypes about the South, blacks, and poor people. The always annoying Dakota Fanning gets to stomp and parade and do her best showboat singing as though the film were written just for her precious grandstanding. If you like insipid, you'll love this. Rating: C

Broken Flowers

2005 • Director: Jim Jarmusch
Indie  • Rated R • 105 minutes
Color • Language: English
Five Roses / Focus Features
Starring Bill Murray, Julie Delpy

Bill Murray plays an aging businessman who receives an anonymous letter telling him of a nineteen-year old child he never knew he had. As he calls on his ex-girlfriends in order to solve the mystery, the film goes from sunny comedy to a contemplative and darkening drama.
Rating: A–

Barry Lyndon

1975 • Director: Stanley Kubrick
Drama  • Rated PG • 184 minutes
Color • Language: English
Hawk Films / Warner Brothers
Starring Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berenson

Barry Lyndon is one of Kubrick's epics. At over three hours, it's worth the time and attention he paid to this, his adaption of a Thackeray novel. Ryan O'Neal is convincing as an Irish ruffian who goes from rags to riches and back to rags in 18th century Europe. Just short of a masterpiece. Rating: A–

Broken English

2007 • Director: Zoe R. Cassavetes
Indie  • Rated PG-13 • 97 minutes
Color • Language: English
HDNet Films / Magnolia Pictures
Starring Parker Posey, Melvil Poupaud

There's nothing offensive per se about this film. It's directed well enough, but it doesn't have an interesting story. It's about a thirty-something (Posey) who finally finds the man of her dreams. She chases him from New York to Paris and miraculously finds him in a most contrived manner.   Rating: C+

Cashback

2006 • Director: Sean Ellis
Indie  • Rated R • 101 minutes
Left Turn Films / Gaumont
Color • Language: English
Starring Shaun Evans, Emilia Fox

Ben, (Biggerstaff) jilted by his girl, loses his bearings and finds himself adrift on the night shift at a supermarket. There it takes a turn into fantasy (he can slow time), romance, and a bit of comedy. It fails to deliver in any category but radiates a bit of charm nonetheless. Rating: B–

Lola

1981 • Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Foreign  • Rated R • 115 minutes
Color • Language: German (with subtitles)
Laura-Film/Tango Film Production
Starring Barbara Sukowa, Armin Mueller-Stahl

Lola isn't as strong as the other films in Fassbinder's trilogy. It's less bewitching than Veronika Voss and weaker in story and symbolism than Maria Braun. However, with its hallucinatory colors that range between neon and pastel, this film is certainly the most beautiful to behold. Rating: B+

Jackie Brown

1997 • Director: Quentin Tarantino
Drama  • Rated R • 154 minutes
Color • Language: English
Starring Pam Grier, Samuel L. Jackson

The film is nicely paced, and the story breathes naturally despite the length. Pam Grier is brilliant as a money smuggling stewardess who's been put in a tight squeeze by the Feds. There's trademark Tarantino violence, but it's barely noticed because we're too busy hoping Grier's character gets her big break. Rating: A–

Blow

2001 • Director: Ted Demme
Drama • 123 minutes • Rated R
New Line Cinema
Starring Johnny Depp, Penelope Cruz

Think Scorcese, specifically Goodfellas, in terms of direction and tone. But without the vision. Or the artistry. Or the acting. Or the epic grandeur. Maybe Blow was planned as homage, but even so it falls flat with a familiar story and a familiar ending.  
Rating: C

Veronika Voss

1982 • Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Foreign • 104 minutes • Rated R
Laura-Film/Tango Film Production
Starring Rosel Zech, Hilmar Thate

Another of Fassbinder's excursions into post-war Germany, Veronika Voss digs deeply into the obscenity of the Third Reich and German attempts to cut connections to their past. While it's film noir in expressive black and white, complete with breathtaking contrasts, it borders on gothic horror in trappings and spirit. 
Rating: A–

The Land of Plenty

2004 • Director: Wim Wenders
Drama • 124 minutes • Unrated
IFC Films and Reverse Angle
Starring John Diehl, Michelle Williams

Teetering on melodrama for the duration of the film without quite crossing over, The Land of Plenty presents two opposing views of the world in the aftermath of 9/11. Speaking the best lines of the film, Williams pulls her character inside out, offering poignancy and highlighting the complications of the truth. Rating: B+

The Girl on the Train

2009 • Director: André Téchiné
Foreign • Unrated • 101 minutes
UGC / Strand Releasing
Color • Language: French (with subtitles)
Starring Émile Dequenne, Catherine Deneuve

A Parisienne claims to have been assaulted by a group of minorities. The film progresses slowly, but that's not its fatal flaw. Rather, it overreaches in wanting to discuss the media, prejudice, lies and anti-Semitism, but only hints at the issues without fully exploring any of them.  Rating: B

The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum

1975 • Directors: Schlöndorff and von Trotta 

Foreign • 106 minutes • Rated R 

Bioskop Film 

Starring Angela Winkler and Mario Adorf 

Few films capture the potential tyranny of the press in this manner. A young woman's life is destroyed by Die Zeitung ("The Paper") in its quest to sensationalize her connection to a wanted man. It's moody and drama-filled, and Winkler is expressive as Blum. Based on the Heinrich Böll novel. Rating: B+

Wings of Desire

1987 • Director: Wim Wenders
Foreign • 130 minutes • Rated PG-13
Road Movies Filmproduktion, Argos Films
Starring Bruno Ganz, Solveig Dommartin 
More Than Fifty

Wings of Desire is a beautiful but airy film. If you're interested in something plot driven, this one will drive you to madness. Two angels in Cold War Berlin watch mortals fuss and struggle. It's pretty and vivid, filled with the oblique observations and dreams of the disturbed. Rating: A–

The Station Agent

2003 • Director: Thomas McCarthy
Comedy-Drama • 88 minutes • Rated R
Miramax Films
Starring Peter Dinklage, Patricia Clarkson

This is a smart lo-budget film about a dwarf who inherits a train station in rural New Jersey. There's little weepy-eyed sentimentality. Instead it's a tightly woven story about how his sudden appearance sparks changes for several people with whom he comes in contact. Michelle Williams is excellent as small-town librarian. Rating: B+

Pan's Labyrinth

2006 • Director: Guillermo Del Toro
Foreign • 119 minutes • Rated R
New Line Cinema
Starring Ivana Baquero, Sergi López

I don't care for CGI or fairy tales, especially those pitched to adults. However, buried in the glop, there's a human interest story set in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War that recalls the labyrinthian tales of Borges and the magical reality of Garcia Márquez. Rating: B

Winter Light

1963 • Director: Ingmar Bergman
Foreign • 80 minutes • unrated
Janus Films
Starring Ingrid Thulin, Gunnar Björnstrand

A country pastor finds that each time he demands answers from God he is met with unrelenting silence. Illusions, lies and dreams are obstacles to the pastor's conclusion that there is no God. This as he evaluates his relationship with a woman who loves him with a desperate fervor. Rating: A–

The Man Who Wasn't There

2001 • Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen
Drama • 118 minutes • Rated R
Working Title Films
Billy Bob Thornton, Frances McDormand

It's an insidiously captivating film that stays a step ahead of even the most astute viewers. It involves a violent chain-reaction set off by a poorly planned blackmail in the late Forties in Smalltown, USA. It's not one of the most beloved Coen Brothers films, but a good one nonetheless. Rating: B+

Daredevil

2003 • Director: Mark Stephen Johnson
Action • 103 minutes • Rated PG-13
20th Century Fox
Starring Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner

As a teenager I read Frank Miller's gritty interpretation of Daredevil and watched other superheros follow that success. This film attempts to be faithful to that vision, and mostly succeeds, despite the banality of Affleck and despite the presence of one of the leading lesser lights of Hollywood, Jennifer Garner. Rating: B

Heaven's Gate

1980 • Director: Michael Cimino
Drama • 219 minutes • Rated R
United Artists
Starring Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken

Synonymous with excess and failure, Heaven's Gate is an epic western that cost United Artists near $120 million in today's dollars, without recouping a fraction. However, lost in the mythology is the fact that it's neither the worst film of all time nor an unjustly maligned masterpiece: it's simply quite good.
Rating: B+