When Ichthyandros was a child, his scientist-father Dr. Salvador explains, “he developed an incurable lung disease. To save him, I gave him a transplant of shark’s gills.” The success of the operation launched Salvador’s dream of an underwater republic, with Ichthyandros its “first citizen.” A young man now, Ichthyandros alternates his life amongst his lair […]
Monthly Archives: January 2010
Despite a few showy though by no means expressive shots, including the opening bravura one, Hangover Square is surely the lamest film by John Brahm that I’ve seen. Set in Edwardian London, meant thereby to capitalize on the success of Gaslight (George Cukor, 1944), this moody thriller is a clever variant on Dr. Jekyll and […]
“Construction, deconstruction, construction, deconstruction . . .” Winner of best film and best director prizes at India’s National Film Awards, Bengal writer-director Rituparno Ghosh’s Utsab is an exquisite, rich, vibrant tapestry of a mostly middle-class family—two sons, two daughters, spouses and offspring—that has gathered together under matriarch Bhagabati’s expansive roof during Durga Puja, the annual […]
Vapid, wooden Gregory Peck gave some of the most execrable performances in Hollywood history, in Duel in the Sun (King Vidor et al., 1946), Gentleman’s Agreement (Elia Kazan, 1947), Moby-Dick (John Huston, 1956), The Big Country (William Wyler, 1958), Beloved Infidel (Henry King, 1959) and To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan, 1962), among others. Sometimes […]
Despite the opening montage of trenchant Goya etchings portraying, often phantasmagorically, the inhuman nature of war or of human nature at its worst, Polish writer-director Władysław Pasikowski’s Demony wojny według Goi more or less resolves itself into a conventional actioner whose centerpiece consists of the oversized posturing of Bogusław Linda as Major Edward Keller, the […]
Dennis Grunes 