Jurgen & Marcy's Independent Film Blog May 2006 Archive

Children "blown away," villages torched, civilians raped and killed: the stream of atrocities the young men recount with stern faces and an unnerving matter-of-fact tone is horrifying. In 1971, before ... Read More

The Wind That Shakes The Barley, a drama about the Irish civil war, received the Palme d'Or at the ceremony tonight. Ken Loach, the esteemed 69-year-old English filmmaker who has ... Read More

In Emmanuel Carrère's La Moustache, a married man shaves off his mustache. To his pyschic distress, his wife does not notice, propelling the clean shaven hero into an unexpected ... Read More

Collapsing ice shelves, disappearing coral reefs, and Al Gore: Davis Guggenheim's global warming documentary might sound depressing, but the film, which features the former Vice President giving an impassioned and ... Read More

Gael Garcia Bernal's upcoming projects--Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel and Michael Gondry's Science of Sleep--are so hot it would be easy to overlook the tense little independent film that opened last ... Read More

Felicity Huffman received an Acadamy Award nomination for her moving performance as transsexual in Transamerica. Also out on DVD today: not one, but two stirring documentaries about miners, a compelling ... Read More

Michael Cuesta, who explored a painful sexual awakening in L.I.E., has deep insight into youth. His new film 12 and Holding follows the stories of three twelve-year olds forced to ... Read More

Instead of writing a straight-up review, we discussed Dominik Moll's outstanding Lemming. The director of With a Friend Like Harry returns with a disturbing, surprising thriller about a perfect couple ... Read More

Audrey Tautou first captivated international audiences with her gamine smile in Amelie. She has arrived, big time, co-starring with Tom Hanks in that movie people are busy talking (and protesting) ... Read More

Eccentric teens, existential despair, and a frisky cheetah: this week's new DVDs offer a number of peculiar choices. Hipsters can rejoice in the release of Napoleon Dynamite: Like, the Best ... Read More

The rain-drenched English countryside hides awful secrets in Shane Meadows's uncompromising revenge thriller Dead Man's Shoes. Paddy Considine plays a returning soldier who hunts a gang of small-town dope dealers ... Read More

Sydney Pollack's documentary about the world-famous architect Frank Gehry has the relaxed familiarity of a conversation between friends. The resulting film is a visual treat, taking us across the globe ... Read More

Actor Richard Grant's directorial debut film is guilty of numerous crimes: sweeping theme music, meaningful close-ups, endless sunsets, and a boatload of quirky supporting characters who fail to entertain. Emily ... Read More

Two of the best and most woefully underappreciated films of 2005 arrive on DVD this week. Terence Malick's lyrical take on the Pocahontas story in The New World is flat-out ... Read More

The teenager and the cowboy: Evan Rachel Wood and Ed Norton fall in forbidden love in this modern-day Western that plays out like Badlands by the way of Koyaanisqatsi. Down ... Read More

One my favorite films of 2005 comes to DVD this week: Asif Kapadia's The Warrior is a tale of revenge and redemption set in feudal India that tackles its themes ... Read More