Epinions Recent Reviews for houstoncritic

Wolf or Woodsman

Sun, 16 Jan 2005 03:45:01 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author houstoncritic - As we all now know, and as we all should see in the brilliant bio-pic, "Kinsey," few things in the human psyche are more complicated than sexuality. We are what we love, perhaps. Or, better yet, we are defined by what arouses us. Homosexuality, once...

Dangerous Passage

Wed, 4 Aug 2004 10:21:35 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author houstoncritic - Maria Alvarez (Catalina Sandino Moreno) is a seventeen year-old Columbian girl who works in a factory stripping thorns and leaves from long stem roses being packaged for florist shops. When she raises her hand one day and tells her boss that she needs to...

Down on the Farm

Mon, 26 Jul 2004 17:48:37 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author houstoncritic - It would be an easy thing to declare that the underlying theme in the film “The Mudge Boy” is about the early stirrings of gay behavior in an adolescent boy who—at least to others, including his own father—consider him just a little too...

Clearing the Past

Sat, 17 Jul 2004 22:08:47 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author houstoncritic - No matter how we otherwise live our lives, most of us—those of us who have reached middle-age at least—wake up in much the same way as everyone else in the morning. We reluctantly, and creakily, get out of bed, splash water on our faces, rush our...

Opening Pandora's Box

Thu, 15 Jul 2004 11:05:56 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author houstoncritic - Ted Cole is a successful children’s author who has recently separated from his wife after the couple had suffered for years over the tragic deaths of their two teenaged sons. But unlike his wife, whose depression and withdrawal from life has made her...

Androidgenous Love

Sun, 30 May 2004 12:49:28 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author houstoncritic - Not long ago I met a young teenage girl and her mother as we stood in line at an office supply store. The girl was holding what appeared to be a newborn, but closer inspection revealed that it was in fact a robotic infant built to simulate the mewlings...

The Latchkey Heart

Sun, 25 May 2003 22:39:33 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author houstoncritic - Megan and Lily are two latchkey sisters who get to see their divorced, financially struggling mother only at the bitter end of her long day. The high school-aged Meg is forced to play surrogate parent for an elementary school-aged Lily: a troubled,...

The Last Tango in Duvall

Tue, 15 Apr 2003 00:54:15 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author houstoncritic - Several years ago, with his interminable, three-hour, butt-numbing soporific “Angelo My Love,” Robert Duvall’s fascination for Gypsies certainly drained away any ambivalence or sympathy the audience might have had for his subject. And again,...

Portrait of the Monster as a Young Man

Wed, 5 Mar 2003 00:54:00 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author houstoncritic - Walter Chaw, online colleague and fellow Epinioneer (mangiotto), once accused me—while commenting on my outburst of indignation in a review of a particularly unsettling (read: disgusting and mortifying) film—of committing an act of “literate...

The Unquiet of War

Wed, 19 Feb 2003 03:08:36 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author houstoncritic - The one frequently recurring character in Graham Greene’s oeuvre is that of an Englishman, or a mixture thereof, who has become quietly accustomed to his adopted surroundings: usually somewhere off in the far-flung regions of the third world. At odds...

Mal Enfants

Sat, 4 Jan 2003 02:36:08 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author houstoncritic - The liaison between George Sand, né Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin, baronne Dudevant and the poet Alfred de Musset lasted only a bit longer than a year (1833-34). George had a string of lovers throughout her lifetime; the longest of which was the nine years...

A Better Brosnan: Stirred, not shaken

Sun, 29 Dec 2002 21:04:43 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author houstoncritic - As Americans we hold a great many of our civil rights to perpetual. And that’s what makes most of us presumptuous, smug and ignorant of just how tenuous citizen’s rights really are in the world in general. In the Western world, the rights of the...

El Crimen Del Padre Amaro: Innocents Abroad

Sat, 21 Dec 2002 01:23:56 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author houstoncritic - There is a very special irony in reviewing this film for a mostly American audience. “The Crime of Father Amaro” has caused quite a stir in its native Mexico; has been resoundly denounced by the Church and the hard core faithful for its brutal,...

The Frida of Fantasy

Tue, 5 Nov 2002 03:07:01 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author houstoncritic -

There is an overwhelming sadness in all of Frida Kahlo’s paintings. To stand in front of one is to experience much different emotions than one has when gazing upon the psychotic worlds of Edvard Munch or Francis Bacon. Where Munch and Bacon...

Lard Soap: The retelling of oneself.

Sun, 6 Oct 2002 13:04:03 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author houstoncritic - Jia Hongsheng, played by Jia Hongsheng himself, was a heroin smoker who put his family through hell a few years ago until he finally kicked his habit. A Chinese actor once noted for playing thugs in B movies and television, Hongsheng slumped so deeply in...

The Salton Sea: The Illustrated Widower

Sun, 15 Sep 2002 03:05:33 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author houstoncritic - There are some things in this world worth waiting for. Ageing ungraciously as one stands in line at an Angelika Film Center to purchase an overpriced bottled water as fat and sodium addicts continually cut in front of you is certainly not one of them...

Dulling the Brightness

Sun, 25 Aug 2002 01:57:00 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author houstoncritic - A few years ago, before a packed house in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s Brown Auditorium, John Sayles participated in a q & a period after we had viewed an advanced screening of his new film “Limbo.” One questioner asked: “Is the mise en scène of...

Once Again

Thu, 1 Aug 2002 01:43:57 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author houstoncritic - Earlier this week, as it was reported in my fair city’s local media (though, no doubt its sensational nature has propelled it into national coverage by now), a middle-aged woman, having caught her husband red-handed as he was about to engage in a hotel...

A Comfortable Old Suit

Fri, 19 Jul 2002 01:16:07 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author houstoncritic - Amongst all the speculation about Napoleon’s final end: be it from gout, heart failure, malaria, mercury poisoning, syphilis, strangulation or the general toxic humors of a battle scared and ageing body, there is now the hint—perhaps tongue in cheek—that...

The Failure of Success

Thu, 6 Jun 2002 13:04:06 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author houstoncritic - There appears to be something in the American psyche that causes it to recoil from foreign cinema. With those few exceptions—mostly British films with familiar faces, and the occasional action-oriented Oriental—America does not care for films produced...

Love in the Time of Adversity

Thu, 30 May 2002 02:00:57 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author houstoncritic - I can think of no cinematic equivalent to the imagery of Walter Salles’s filmmaking. To me, his images are not based upon the existing canon of film work that has preceding him, but upon the canon of classical Western painting. Where Martin Scorsese may...

Nine of a Kind

Tue, 21 May 2002 00:25:16 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author houstoncritic - There is a singular difficulty in trying to review a film like “Nine Queens” without giving away too much of the twists and turns that make up this delightfully surprising plot. This film comprises so many of the classical con-job movie elements that it...

Maelstrom: Fish Story

Sun, 12 May 2002 12:59:11 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author houstoncritic - Bibi Champagne (Marie-Josee Croze) is the young and beautiful daughter of a famous mother who was all the rage in the fashion industry in Canada. But as often happens in real life, Bibi can no longer cope with the pressures of filling such large shoes...

Nausea Every Moment.

Mon, 6 May 2002 23:16:44 GMT

rating: 1/5 by: Epinions Author houstoncritic - There is a certain vulgar pleasure in occasionally viewing a grotesque film. It certainly offers the viewer a break from the usual and often mundane screen fare. We should all thank our lucky producers for such work as “Angel Heart,” “Silence of the...

Joshua Treed

Tue, 23 Apr 2002 03:43:00 GMT

rating: 2/5 by: Epinions Author houstoncritic - When I think about the big picture—and I mean the Really Big Picture—I like to imagine how fortunate we are, those of us who live on the Earth, not to have been struck by the Shoemaker-Levy Comet fragments that collided with Jupiter a half-dozen years...