Keeping Track (May 3, 2012)
by HELEN GEIB
Last Week at the Movies
Last Week at Home
High and Low- my favorite Kurosawa to finish up a four month film club director’s retrospective Read more 
Two Lists, Ten Favorites: Films of Martin Scorsese
by GEOFF GEIB, NIR SHALEV and HELEN GEIB
An occasional feature where the writers compare their five favorite films by some of the greats of world cinema.
Martin Scorsese (b. 1942)
GEOFF’S TOP FIVE
To be clear, this list is pointedly different than a list of my five best Scorsese films would be, and there is no better evidence to this than the omission of titles like Taxi Driver or The Last Temptation of Christ, which, while great, great films, are hardly ones that scream out for multiple viewings while distractedly typing away on the computer and trying not to overcook the penne. The following five I could stop, start in the middle, or watch endlessly on a loop and never want for more. Read more
On DVD/Blu-ray – Review of The Edge (1997)
by NIR SHALEV
Billionaire Charles Morse (Sir Anthony Hopkins), his supermodel/trophy wife Mickey (Elle Macpherson), her photographer Robert Green (Alec Baldwin), and his crew arrive at an enormous and beautiful lake house in Alaska. They are surrounded by beautiful mountains and lakes that stretch to forever. Charles is book smart; almost too smart. His people skills, outside the business world, are essentially non-existent. He’s awkward, quiet, always inquisitive, and always reading one book or other. But he sees the way in which Robert looks at Mickey. Read more
Photo Play: Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
by HELEN GEIB
This month on Photo Play: April showers bring… umbrellas.
Capsule Movie Review – Safe (2012)
by HELEN GEIB
Hollywood never tires of peddling left-wing paranoid conspiracy theories. Safe‘s is only the most outlandish element of an over-complicated plot also involving the Chinese mob, the Russian mob, crooked NYC cops, official corruption at the highest levels, a scruffy tough-guy hero, and a cute Chinese girl who is a math savant. Read more
Thinking Outside the Multiplex in Indiana (April 27, 2012)
by HELEN GEIB
My pick for the week is below. What’s yours?
My Top Pick for the Week
The word “unique” is bandied about pretty freely these days, but if there’s one filmmaker around who’s earned the description it’s Canadian auteur Guy Maddin. Read more
Keeping Track (April 26, 2012)
by HELEN GEIB
Last Week at the Movies/Last Week at Home
Clearly I spent far too many hours doing yard work last week since I didn’t watch anything at home. Nothing new drew me out to the multiplex, but the “Dickens Bicentennial Celebration and Variety Show” was a wonderful theater experience with a film component: a 1913 Vitagraph called The Adventure of the Honorable Event, from an episode of The Pickwick Papers. Also on the program was a magic lantern show, lantern slides and a dramatic reading of A Christmas Carol, for a trip through pre-cinema history. Read more
Trailers for Movies I Like: Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995)
by HELEN GEIB
A monthly series. Title self-explanatory.
**********
On DVD/Blu-ray – Let the Bullets Fly (2011)
by NIR SHALEV
“Pocky” Zhang (Jiang Wen), a notorious bandit, robs a train that’s transporting a man who’s soon to be inaugurated as governor. He assumes the identity of that man and with the help of his newly acquired counselor Ma Bangde (Ge You), they ride on to Goose Town where Zhang takes up the governor’s position. However, Goose Town’s tyrannical local nobleman Master Huang (Chow Yun-Fat) plays mind games with Zhang from the get-go. Together with his six brothers, Zhang starts a war of wits and periodical gunfights with Huang. (Almost every character in the film is equipped with the Luger pistol, later to be popularized by the Germans.) Only one will survive. Read more
Photo Play: My Best Girl (1927)
by HELEN GEIB
This month on Photo Play: April showers bring… umbrellas.
On the Night Court doorstep…
