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Comments: About a girl whose father discovers she is prostituting herself ... OR ... a movie about a guy who discovers his daughter is prostituting herself. Either way, this is a very touching film ... from Kim Ki-Duk.

The road trip and the whole car thing. "Learning to drive", "Spinning your wheels", Come on! Incredible! My favorite Kim Ki-Duk film ... so far. And to those who feel the film starts out like an after-school special, yep, that's the point.

Summary: Jae-Young is an amateur prostitute who sleeps with men while her best friend Yeo-Jin "manages" her, fixing dates, taking care of the money and making sure the coast is clear. When Jae-Young falls in love with one of those man she surpresses her feelings towards him in respect of her friend who's jealous. One Day Yeo-Jin fails in doing her job overlooking police officers looking for underaged porstitutes. In order to not get caught Jae-Young jumps out of a window almost killing herself. On her deathbed, she wishes to see the man again whom she fell in love with and turned away from. But the man only agrees if Yeo-Jin sleeps with him. She does but as they arrive in the hospital Jae-Young is already dead. Trying to understand her best friend, Yeo-Jin tracks down every man she slept with and does the same. As her father learns about this he gets on revenge with fatal consequences...

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Summary: Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic, the movie, is the year s most outrageous comedy starring the funniest, sexy woman in America today - Sarah Silverman. Sarah delivers her trademark comedy that is so outrageous you have to watch her film over and over again. Available only in its original unrated, uncut theatrical version.

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Comments: In the Last Great Invasion of the Last Great War, The Greatest Danger for Eight Men was Saving... One.

Summary: When Steven Spielberg was an adolescent, his first home movie was a backyard war film. When he toured Europe with Duel in his 20s, he saw old men crumble in front of headstones at Omaha Beach. That image became the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan, his film of a mission following the D-day invasion that many have called the most realistic--and maybe the best--war film ever. With 1998 production standards, Spielberg has been able to create a stunning, unparalleled view of war as hell. We are at Omaha Beach as troops are slaughtered by Germans yet overcome the almost insurmountable odds.
A stalwart Tom Hanks plays Captain Miller, a soldier's soldier, who takes a small band of troops behind enemy lines to retrieve a private whose three brothers have recently been killed in action. It's a public relations move for the Army, but it has historical precedent dating back to the Civil War. Some critics of the film have labeled the central characters stereotypes. If that is so, this movie gives stereotypes a good name: Tom Sizemore as the deft sergeant, Edward Burns as the hotheaded Private Reiben, Barry Pepper as the religious sniper, Adam Goldberg as the lone Jew, Vin Diesel as the oversize Private Caparzo, Giovanni Ribisi as the soulful medic, and Jeremy Davies, who as a meek corporal gives the film its most memorable performance.
The movie is as heavy and realistic as Spielberg's Oscar-winning Schindler's List, but it's more kinetic. Spielberg and his ace technicians (the film won five Oscars: editing (Michael Kahn), cinematography (Janusz Kaminski), sound, sound effects, and directing) deliver battle sequences that wash over the eyes and hit the gut. The violence is extreme but never gratuitous. The final battle, a dizzying display of gusto, empathy, and chaos, leads to a profound repose. Saving Private Ryan touches us deeper than Schindler because it succinctly links the past with how we should feel today. It's the film Spielberg was destined to make. --Doug Thomas

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Comments: For the record: Brad Pitt is a fine actor. This is a fine film. Brutal. I dare anyone to imagine going through what my man Brad experiences at the end of this film.

Summary: A film about two homicide detectives' desperate hunt for a serial killer who justifies his crimes as absolution for the world's ignorance of the Seven Deadly Sins. The movie takes us from the tortured remains of one victim to the next as the sociopathic "John Doe" sermonizes to Detectives Sommerset and Mills -- one sin at a time. The sin of Gluttony comes first and the murderer's terrible capacity is graphically demonstrated in the dark and subdued tones characteristic of film noir. The seasoned and cultured Sommerset researches the Seven Deadly Sins in an effort to understand the killer's modus operandi while green Detective Mills scoffs at his efforts to get inside the mind of a killer...

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Comments: This film stars two of my favorite Korean actors, Do-yeon Jeon and Kang-ho Song, and is written and directed by Chang-dong Lee, who gave us OASIS. Both films are character driven.

The characters in this film are subtle and understated for the most part, and they rely on each other to complete and fully reveal themselves. Do-yeon Jeon's character, the recently widowed mother, is restless and affected, her world is heavy and she is intense yet fragile. Kang-ho Song's character, the guy who is infatuated with her, is carefree, loose, thick, and thoroughly durable. We see him as a complete boof but somehow don't mind him tagging along all the time. He seems necessary.

The plot of this film doesn't even matter. It's just a vehicle, a world, for the characters to inhabit, yet there is an intricate story line. The only problem I have with this film is the length of the prayers. "Our father who art in heaven" says enough, no need to go all the way to "for thine is the Kingdom and the Glory" blah blah. Having said that, however, the scene where Do-yeon Jeon goes to the prison to forgive the man who committed the most heinous of crimes against her is one of the strongest and smartest statements on religious belief I've seen.

Do-yeon Jeon won best actress at this year's Cannes.

Summary: Sin-ae moves with her son Jun to Miryang, the town where her dead husband was born. As she tries to come to herself and set out on new foundations, another tragic event overturns her life.

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Comments: I will call this my all-time favorite movie. I don't think I'll ever tire of watching it. Such a smartly written film. People often ask how I can watch a movie over and over again. I tell them it's the same way I listen to a piece of music over and over again. Once you've heard the lyrics to a song you know what it's about, right? Something about the experience just makes your mind and body feel good. Movies do that too.

Summary: Romantic comedy set in London in the late 16th century: Young playwright William Shakespeare struggles with his latest work "Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter". A great fan of Shakespeare's plays is young, wealthy Viola who is about to be married to the cold-hearted Lord Wessex, but constantly dreams of becoming an actress. Women were not allowed to act on stage at that time (female roles were played by men, too), but dressed up as a boy, Viola successfully auditions for the part of Romeo. Soon she and William are caught in a forbidden romance that provides rich inspiration for his play.

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Comments: No one makes it alone.

Summary: A disturbing film about a recovering drug addict trying to regain control of her life, Sherrybaby succinctly depicts what can happen when want and desire aren't offset by control. In this bleak indie film, Sherry Swanson (Maggie Gyllenhaal, Stranger Than Fiction, Secretary) has just been released from a three-year stint in prison. Dressed in her inappropriate uniform of a halter top and oh-so-high platform heels, she goes to brother's house to see her 5-year-old daughter, Lexie (Ryan Simpkins). Sherry is determined to be a mother to her child, but without a home, job, or any other form of stability, she grows frustrated and jealous of her brother and sister-in-law's roles in Lexie's life. Tall and willowy, Gyllenhaal brings a sad desperation and simmering sexuality to the role. Sherry's middle-class childhood was a blur of sex and drugs, and she seems incapable of breaking out of that destructive trap. While the script by first-time feature film director Laurie Collyer isn't wholly original, the picture moves at a good pace, giving insight as to why Sherry's resigned to using sex to get what she wants. While the family secret doesn't come as a complete surprise, it is somewhat perplexing that no one addresses it. Ultimately, it's Gyllenhaal who makes you care about a character that most people would've given up on. --Jae-Ha Kim

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Comments: From two American masters comes a movie like no other

Summary: The work of two great American artists merge in Short Cuts, maverick director Robert Altman's kaleidoscopic adaptation of the stories of renowned author Raymond Carver. Epic in scale yet meticulously observed, the film interweaves the stories of twenty-two characters struggling to find solace and meaning in contemporary Los Angeles. The extraordinary ensemble cast includes Tim Robbins, Julianne Moore, Robert Downey, Jr., Jack Lemmon, and Jennifer Jason Leigh—all giving fearless performances in one of Altman's most compassionate creations.

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Comments: In search of wine. In search of women. In search of themselves.

Summary: With Sideways, Paul Giamatti (American Splendor, Storytelling) has become an unlikely but engaging romantic lead. Struggling novelist and wine connoisseur Miles (Giamatti) takes his best friend Jack (Thomas Haden Church, Wings) on a wine-tasting tour of California vineyards for a kind of extended bachelor party. Almost immediately, Jack's insatiable need to sow some wild oats before his marriage leads them into double-dates with a rambunctious wine pourer (Sandra Oh, Under the Tuscan Sun) and a recently divorced waitress (Virginia Madsen, The Hot Spot)--and Miles discovers a little hope that he hasn't let himself feel in a long time. Sideways is a modest but finely tuned film; with gentle compassion, it explores the failures, struggles, and lowered expectations of mid-life. Giamatti makes regret and self-loathing sympathetic, almost sweet. From the director of Election and About Schmidt. --Bret Fetzer

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Comments: Do you have the crazy?

Lotsa fun. I didn't know this was going to be a, not a comedy but a very funny movie. It's got blood and more blood, a decapitated talking head, dead bodies everywhere, and kill scenes with realistic and unnerving sound effects that will make you wince.

At times AJ Brown seemed to be channeling Bruce Campbell of Evil Dead fame. He even kind of looked like him in certain moments. The Signal has a surreal, over-the-top sensibility like Evil Dead, but it's humor is not derived from that. This film is witty and subtle; the humor more cerebral than gut funny. Scott Poythress turns in a wonderfully comedic performance as the 'third wheel'.

Summary: A science fiction horror film told in three parts in which electronic devices broadcast only a mysterious transmission, turning people crazy. The film is broken up into three "transmissions" each of which had different directors during shooting. Each part manifests one of the following genre: visceral thriller, black comedy, and mystery-love story.

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Comments: Stealin' Stones and Breakin' Bones

I was surprised at how goddamn funny this film was. Brad Pitt coupldn't do a british accent well enough so they just let him mumble ... and turned it into a character trait. It's funny.

Summary: Turkish and his close friend/accomplice Tommy get pulled into the world of match fixing by the notorious Brick Top. Things get complicated when the boxer they had lined up gets the shit kicked out of him by Pitt, a 'pikey' ( slang for an Irish Gypsy)- who comes into the equation after Turkish, an unlicensed boxing promoter wants to buy a caravan off the Irish Gypsies. They then try to convince Pitt not only to fight for them, but to lose for them too. Whilst all this is going on, a huge diamond heist takes place, and a fistful of motley characters enter the story, including 'Cousin Avi', 'Boris The Blade', 'Franky Four Fingers' and 'Bullet Tooth Tony'. Things go from bad to worse as it all becomes about the money, the guns, and the damned dog!

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Comments: Can you really trust anyone?

A perfectly cast film by David Mamet. If you like Mamet, you'll like this.

Summary: Joe Ross is a rising star. He's designed a process that will make his company millions. He wants a bonus for this work, but fears his boss will stiff him. He meets a wealthy stranger, Jimmy Dell, and they strike up an off-kilter friendship. When the boss seems to set Ross up to get nothing, he seeks Dell's help. Then he learns Dell is not what he seems, so he contacts an FBI agent through his tightly-wound assistant, Susan Ricci. The FBI asks him to help entrap Dell. He accepts, a sting is arranged, but suddenly it's he who's been conned out of the process and framed for murder. Bewildered and desperate, he enlists Susan's aid to prove his innocence.

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Comments: I had to watch this film once, visit IMDb and read all I could from other folks attempting to explain it, then watch it again before arriving at a score of 5. The first viewing left me bewildered. I was pissed that I didn't get it because I liked watching it so much.

The Spider Forest is a place where the souls of those who die alone or unloved live in limbo as spiders until someone remembers them. That's a kinda cool premise. The Spider Forest is also the cobwebbed memories each of us navigate as we attempt to deal with trauma, guilt, shame, etc. Maybe.

This is one of those Korean films which could not exist or be told in linear narrative. There are shots and scenes that come out of nowhere and seem not to touch anything around them until much later in the movie and it is frustrating. So why watch it again? As one can imagine, these out-of-nowhere scenes look completely different after you've been to the end once. All the nuances of the very simple story blossom the second time through.

The film is beautifully shot and the acting top notch. SPOILER ALERT !! Jung Suh, from Green Chair and the Isle is beautiful and captivating in a very understated performance in dual roles, which, by the way, is a huge spoiler (notice this info is absent from the credits) that doesn't spoil a thing. This film is incredibly complex without being obtuse. It is more of a journey than a story. I will be watching it many more times.

Summary: Deep in the forest, a man and woman have been brutally attacked in a cabin and left to die. Arriving too late, Kang chases the killer only to be hit by a speeding car. Barely surviving surgery, he now finds himself a prime suspect. He cannot shake the feeling that there are strange gaps in his memory regarding that night and the killer's identity. While police set out to confirm his story, he begins his own quest to remember the truth about the murder and himself.

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Comments: Boldly Go. Again. (2006 remasters tagline)

Summary: The adventures of the U.S.S. Enterprise, representing the United Federation of Planets on a five-year mission in outer space to explore new worlds, seek new life and new civilizations, and to boldly go where no man has gone before. The Enterprise is commanded by handsome and brash Captain James T. Kirk. His First Officer and best friend is Mr. Spock from the planet Vulcan, and Kirk's Medical Officer is Dr. McCoy. With its crew of approximately 430, the Enterprise battles aliens, megalomanical computers, time paradoxes, psychotic murderers, and even Genghis Khan!

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Comments: Why stop making sense? Why a movie? Why a big suit? Where do the odd movements come from? What will the band do next?

Summary: David Byrne walks onto the stage and does a solo "Psycho Killer." Jerry Harrison, Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz join him for two more songs. The crew is busy, still setting up. Then, three more musicians and two back-up singers join the band. Everybody sings, plays, harmonizes, dances, and runs. They change instruments and clothes. Bryne appears in the Big Suit. The backdrop is often black, but sometimes it displays words, images, or children's drawings. The band cooks for 18 songs, the lyrics are clear, the house rocks. In this concert film, the Talking Heads hardly talk, don't stop, and always make sense.

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Comments: Smart and funny

Summary: Everybody knows that your life is a story. But what if a story was your life? Harold Crick is your average IRS agent: monotonous, boring, and repetitive. But one day this all changes when Harold begins to hear an author inside his head narrating his life. The narrator it is extraordinarily accurate, and Harold recognizes the voice as an esteemed author he saw on TV. But when the narration reveals that he is going to die, Harold must find the author of the story, and ultimately his life, to convince her to change the ending of the story before it is too late.

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Summary: Strawberry Shortcakes is a sometimes quirky, touching and shocking look at the lives of four women in modern-day Tokyo. Satoko (Chiziru Ikewaki), unlucky in love, works as the secretary at an escort agency, where she isn't as glamorous as her co-workers, but she hasn't given up hope that she might find a man who finds her special. Akiyo (Yuko Nakamura) who is one of the prostitutes working there (who sleeps at night in a coffin in her apartment) has found the man she wants to be with, an old college friend who, like her, hasn't made much of his life – but he only sees her as a friend. Saddened by this, Akiyo increasingly humiliates and abases herself, taking on even the most revolting of clients. Humiliation is also the fate of Chihiro (Noriko Nakagoshi), a pretty but superficial young woman, scorned by her colleagues at work for her pleasant but servile manner with the management. She is also heading for disappointment by putting too much faith in a casual relationship she is having with a young co-worker. Chihiro lives with Toko, a graphic artist, designing covers for book publishers. Toko (played by the original manga artist Kiriko Nananan herself), seems to be successfully getting over a broken relationship, but she's blocking the pain through bouts of bulimia and by throwing herself into her work.

The film certainly manages to involve the viewer in the lives of its characters, putting them through all manner of humiliation, disappointment and resignation as well as a few moments of self-revelation, but the depiction of these women's lives is superficial and their outlook is limited and essentially the same - each of the women are ultimately just looking for love. The film has an episodic feel, never really finding a flow, skipping from one character to the next without really developing their situation or being realistically representative of life as it is lived by most modern women in Japan.

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Comments: Sore de wa minasan, sayonara [Well then, goodbye everybody.]

This is one of the funniest albeit confounding movies I have seen in a long long time. It's ridiculous to argue this movie is a mature and well-thought out essay on contemporary culture with an emphasis on the 'problem' of teen suicide. The Writer/Director is a skilled artist in the vein of Kim Ki-Duk. Both take a subject and present images on film that touch on that subject. They are intentionally ambiguous and incomplete.

Is it creepy and gross that 50 high school girls throw themselves in front of a train? Maybe. But it's so over the top it's funny; blood flying everywhere. Later on in the film the kids joke about the train skidding along on "Human Grease." Eeeeewwwww! When the kids jump off the school building, you can actually see stage hands tossing buckets of blood at the windows! Watch the scene where the detectives are at the station trying to prevent the next mass suicide. It's all comedy. "Do you have a tattoo?" ... "No she doesn't. I've seen her naked." One detective yawns long and wide. The oldest guy plays the perv when he sees a girl with a tattoo on her chest, but it's the young guy who complains: "Cheap tattoos, everyone's got 'em these days." It's that young detective who's the comedy relief throughout the film, ready to call ralph on the big white phone at any time.

The middle section, with what many have described as Rocky-Horror meets Clockwork Orange, isn't all that funny, except Genesis, himself, is a laugh riot. He sings "Because the Dead .... shine all night long" in English, with a lisp, and it's hysterical. The whole scene is a modern dance masterpiece. OK, rape isn't funny and stomping on little kittens upsets me, but that's just schlock factor. A genre cliché. A childish move thrown in to appease the non-thinkers.

All three songs by the pre-teen pop group Dessert, Desert, are as good as you can get. They are catchy and funny. This is a happy film with a happy ending. A connection is finally made between young and old, the pop group's work is done and the most suicidal of the teen-agers, the one whose boyfriend surprised her by landing on her when he jumped off a building but doesn't die until he's had time to discuss the irony of the event with her, (tell me that isn't pure comic genius), she doesn't commit suicide. She takes the train home like a good kid. She's the one who delivered the line: If your woman had a bent nose would you ask her why?

The kid who coughs after every sentence when he is speaking to the detectives, it doesn't mean anything, it doesn't imply anything; it was not one of the Dessert girls trying to disguise her voice, it was just plain creepy for the sake of being creepy. It creeped me out and it's a perfect example of one of those things that just screams for some profound interpretation when there isn't one.

Summary: 54 high school girls throw themselves in front of a subway train. This appears to be only the beginning of a string of suicides around the country. Does the new all-girl group Desert have anything to do with it? Detective Kuroda tries to find the answer, which isn't as simple as one could hope.

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Summary: Surviving Desire is actually three short films, two of which--"Theory of Achievement" and "Ambition"--demonstrate writer-director Hal Hartley at his most quirky and abstract. They consist mostly of a series of dialogues, presented out of context, about things like Brooklyn real estate, nonlinear art, and contrasting male and female approaches to suicide. Fans of Hartley will enjoy them; newcomers will probably find them baffling. The third film, however--"Surviving Desire," from which the collection takes its title--is one of the most charming pieces Hartley has made. This hour-long story follows Jude (Martin Donovan), a college teacher obsessed with a single paragraph from The Brothers Karamazov, who's fallen in love with Sofie (Mary Ward), one of his students who's writing a short story about him. As the romance plays itself out, philosophical conversations turn into metaphysical Abbott and Costello routines, Jude breaks into spontaneous dance, a rock band in the street serenades a woman in her apartment window--and gradually a rueful and whimsical sense of life and love rises out of Hartley's erratic rhythms. Hartley is an idiosyncratic filmmaker who's not to everyone's taste; this short film is probably an ideal introduction to his work. Some of his movies seem to be working too hard for a sense of poetry and end up feeling stilted, but in "Surviving Desire" all of Hartley's devices take flight. --Bret Fetzer

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Comments: This one gets 10 stars on a 5 star scale. No humans, and the story centers on a lion cub, and nothing is more adorable than a lion cub, especially one that's got a great personality and gets lost in the swamp. A thoroughly engaging and enjoyable dramocumentary. My favorite.

Summary: Film about a family of lions living in the swamps of the Okavango delta, seen through the eyes of a cub born just before the annual flood.

Location: Okavango delta, Botswana habitat

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Comments: cocktails first. questions later.

Summary: For anyone who wants to catch a glimpse of the Los Angeles "lounge" scene that was in vogue during the early and mid-1990s, here's the movie that virtually defined that brief but colorful nightlife milieu. As an added bonus, it just happens to be a very funny, observant story about love, loss, and male bonding among a group of friends who struggle to find decent jobs by day, and lurk through Hollywood's hottest nightclubs by night. A sort of latter-day Rat Pack, they include Mike (writer-actor Jon Favreau) and his closest buddy, Trent (Vince Vaughn), who are waiting for the big show-biz break that seems to be eluding them. Mike's twisted up about the girlfriend he left back East to pursue his going-nowhere standup comedy career, and Trent uses the word "money" as an adjective ("Man, we look totally money tonight") with such frequency that you may find yourself slipping into lounge-lizard mode after watching the movie. One of the most noteworthy indie-film success stories of the '90s, this time-capsule comedy seized its moment in the spotlight, launched several promising careers, and continues to maintain its lasting appeal. --Jeff Shannon

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