Jurgen & Marcy's Independent Film Blog July 2004 Archive

The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, the Band, and Buddy Guy take a train across Canada in the exuberant rock'n roll documentary "Festival Express," which chronicles the legendary 1970 concert tour. ... Read More

Often called "the Italian 'Gone With the Wind,'" Visonti's 1963 "The Leopard" tells the epic story of a Sicilian prince and his family during revolutionary upheaval. Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, ... Read More

Adapted from Michael Cunningham's novel, Michael Mayer's "A Home At the End of the World" is an earnest and often moving debut, but the film quickly sinks into the dreaded ... Read More

This week's top new DVDs include three by "French Hitchcock" Claude Chabrol ("The Story of Women," "La Ceremonie," and "Masques") as well as Thomas Vinterberg's "The Celebration," the harrowing Dogme ... Read More

Yes, the Coen Brothers' "The Big Lewbowski" has spawned a subculture of its own. After annual events in Kentucky and a stint in Las Vegas, the gathering of Dude-freaks moves ... Read More

Multitalent Takeshi Kitano ("Hana-Bi") takes on the classic role of the cane-sword wielding masseur in "The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi," a period samurai drama that revives the longest-running series in Japanese ... Read More

After 28 consecutive months of midnight screenings at the Pioneer Theater in New York's East Village, Richard Kelly's hip brain-twister "Donnie Darko" returns to theaters tomorrow in a director's cut ... Read More

A thoroughly depressing experience, Barbara Albert's "Free Radicals" traces the impact of a freak accident on the lives of a community of Austrians. An official selection at the 2003 New ... Read More

Julie Lopes-Curval's ensemble drama about locals living in a run-down working-class resort town on the French seaside is deceptively simple and leisurely paced, but if you have the patience, the ... Read More

Winner of the 2004 Sundance audience award for Best Drama, Joshua Marston's harrowing first feature tells the story of a 17-year old Colombian girl who becomes a drug mule. ... Read More

At the independent box office, "Metallica: Some Kind of Monster" took the top spot of the weekend, packing theaters in New York and San Francisco. On a per-screen-average, Richard ... Read More

Raging stadium rock, shredding guitars, and headbanging basslines meet hissy fits and painful soul-searching as heavy metal heroes Metallica seek out therapy in Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's new rock ... Read More

Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," now in wide release, continued to set records while on a per-screen-average, the incendiary documentary was surpassed by Richard Linklater's "Before Sunset" over the holiday weekend, ... Read More

Nine years after they spent a night together in "Before Sunrise," Richard Linklater's transcontinental lovers Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy meet again. Older and sadder, they talk their way through ... Read More