Jurgen & Marcy's Independent Film Blog February 2008 Archive

It happened twice now at Lincoln Center's annual Rendez-Vous showcase: I see a movie so lovely, so understated and funny and sad, so close to perfect, that the experience makes ... Read More

The Other Boleyn Girl is a lurid costume drama that lacks both the earnestness of Shekhar Kapur's Elizabeth and the go-for-broke delirium of its sequel. The film's main goal seems ... Read More

Two of our favorite films of 2007 are out this week on DVD: Wes Anderson's wonderful The Darjeeling Limited and also Frank Oz's overlooked, you'll-laugh-so-hard-you'll-cry comedy Death At ... Read More

Ramin Bahrani's (Man Push Cart) second feature Chop Shop is set in Willet's Point, Queens, a desolate land of junk yards and auto garages. On the direct outskirts of Shea ... Read More

There were scenes in Be Kind Rewind that made Marcy laugh so hard that she was in pain. Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep) ... Read More

Juno may be the film with the highest grossing box office earnings ($135 million) in the pool of films nominated for Best Picture at tomorrow's Academy Awards. Today, ... Read More

A beautiful girl ruining her own face with a barrage of well-aimed punches, a cigarette passing between lips in a white convertible, a pig's snout pressing against a basement window, ... Read More

Out on DVD this week: three new releases from three master directors. Ang Lee's mysteriously overlooked spy thriller Lust, Caution, Jean Luc-Goddard's new wave classic Pierrot Le Fou ... Read More

Festival buddies Filmbrain, D-Kaz, and I were watching the New German Film documentary Gegenschuss on Alexanderplatz while the winners of the 58th Berlinale were announced at the Palast. Still buzzing ... Read More

As the 58th Berlinale winds down, the phrase that's been popping into Jurgen's mind is "auf dem Zahnfleisch gehen," -- literally, "walking on one's gums." In this diminished state, our ... Read More

Beyond The Frame: Dialogues With World Filmmakers, Liza Béar's captivating and comprehensive collection, contains more than 60 conversations and filmmaker profiles, which range from emerging artists discussing the ... Read More

Jurgen is happy to report that Madonna's directorial debut Filth and Wisdom, premiering at the Berlin Film Festival, isn't bad at all. Eugene Hutz of the gypsy punk band Gogol ... Read More

Mike Leigh's Happy Go Lucky had critics buzzing, but Jurgen found himself shut out of the screening at the Berlinale Palast. Instead, he caught another worthy contender for the prestigious ... Read More

In a dreamlike state, Jürgen's mad rush from theater to theater seems to be part of just another art film. In Days 4 and 5 of the Berlin Film Festival, ... Read More

Behold the star-studded cast of woefully unseen John Turturro musical Romance and Cigarettes: James Gandolfini, Kate Winslet, Susan Sarandon, Mandy Moore, Mary Louise Parker, Eddie Izzard, Steve Buscemi. American’s ... Read More

Home-wrecking karate teachers, hard-partying Finns, and two thumbs up from Daniel Day-Lewis: Jürgen is having a fine time at the Berlin Film Festival. His latest update, sent from woefully sparse ... Read More

The 58th Berlin Film Festival officially kicked off last night with the gala premiere of Martin Scorsese's Rolling Stone documentary Shine a Light. In a day packed with movies, Jürgen ... Read More

"You look nasty," the barely-teenaged runaway Joanne (Georgia Groome) tells her protector Kelly (Lorraine Stanley) in the opening scenes of London to Brighton, Paul Andrew Williams' sordid tale of two ... Read More

Eleven days, five hundred movies, Madonna, Marty, and the Rolling Stones. Never mind Cloverfield: freshly arrived in Berlin for the 58th International Film Festival, Jürgen figures out that the real ... Read More

The Great World of Sound takes aim at the dark side of American Idol, capturing the trend of desperate souls looking for a shortcut to fame, and the people ... Read More

An impossibly picturesque town in Belgium serves as the improbable setting for Irish playwright Martin McDonagh's fiendishly entertaining debut feature. Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson play two hitmen who are ... Read More

The seventeenth feature by accomplished filmmaker André Téchiné (Strayed, Changing Times) tells the story of a group of friends, gay and straight, whose lifes are changed with the onset of ... Read More