Lost In Space
Where are June Lockhart and Billy Mumy when we need them? Something, even a couple of players from the original “Lost In Space” series, is clearly needed to jolt the makers of this lame spin-off out of an obvious myopia. Fresh off the fiasco of last year’s bombastic flop Starship Troopers, another big studio has…
Love and Death on Long Island
Writer-director Richard Kwietniowski’s Love and Death on Long Island is a comic variation on Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, the famous novella about an aging writer who rather inexplicably, and fatally, becomes obsessed with an attractive young boy. As with the Mann story, the homoerotic aspect of the film, adapted from a novel by Gilbert…
My Sex Life…or How I Got Into An Argument
There’s much more arguing than sex in this three-hour wedge-of-life film about 20-something Parisian intellectuals and their romantic interactions. It has a verbal promiscuousness which is reminiscent of the French New Wave in its early-’60s prime, and indeed its director and co-screenwriter, Arnaud Desplechin, has said in an interview that “for a French guy to…
Niagra Niagra
From the moment Seth (Henry Thomas) and Marcy (Robin Tunney) meet while shoplifting, the tragic blueprint of their lives is apparent. In a film this dour (even the color seems to have been drained away), little more than fleeting happiness can come from their union. It’s a wonder then that Niagara Niagara, the debut from…
The Players Club
With his writing-directing debut, The Players Club, Ice Cube pulls off a mighty seduction, with a fiery climax to boot. Inside the club of the title, Cube and his director of photography Malik Sayeed construct a vivid realm around female protagonist Diana Armstrong (LisaRaye), who under the stage name Diamond turns to exotic dancing in…
The Real Blonde
The Real Blonde is about what’s fake: the carefully calculated images that Americans, as willing or unwitting consumers, ingest every day. In our commerce-driven culture, images of success, power, beauty and desire are sold alongside any product. Writer-director Tom DiCillo takes a skewed look at our image-making industry, particularly its most vapid outposts: fashion photography,…
Philophobia
Arab Strap singer and philophobe Aidan Moffat makes a good case for the sanity behind his fear of love and romance. These 13 chronologically linked “songs” are performed more like spoken word that only falls short of poetry between a few distracting singsong rhymes. Outside of that, this confessional work is pure throbbing loneliness, reaching…
Edmund Place
The circa-1882 brick and stone house in the historic Brush Park district has gone upscale, serving such items as rack of lamb with grilled vegetables, veal tenderloin and shrimp and chicken etouffee.
The Newton Boys
What makes The Newton Boys such an anomaly isn’t simply that it’s a film about criminals who don’t embrace violence. The biggest surprise may be that the bank robbers at the heart of writer-director Richard Linklater’s new film — who during five years (1919-24) became the most successful bandits in U.S. history — wanted to…
Taste of Cherry
Abbas Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry has been popularly hailed as verifying the health of the art film for 1997, which is not to say that it’s boring. The best word to describe its pacing and modest theme is “tranquil.” The Iranian-born Kiarostami’s easy hand is well suited to this winner of the Palme d’Or at…
Ride
Here’s a bit of unabashed hip-hop zeal for ya. Any film starring Snoop Doggy Dogg, Sticky Fingaz and Fredro Starr of the rap group Onyx, Luther Campbell and the Lady of Rage can’t be half bad. To top all of this off, Ride’s writer and director, Millicent Shelton, is an African-American woman. Shelton graduates from…
Fly-splat!
STREB makes dances in the Evel Knievel mode….
Detroit awakens?
A compilation album that isn’t stocked with leftovers, throwaways and demo rejects? To quote Richard Lewis, “Hey, what’s going on around here?” Among these 19 tracks cut at Ghetto Recorders by 12 local (mostly) underground rock artistes, there are almost too many highlights to squeeze into this short space – two superb Dirtbombs tracks that…
Las Brisas
This neighborhood spot west of the mainstream Mexicantown cantinas has a peasant exuberance about it. While the expected tacos, botanas and enchiladas are available, the menu and atmosphere come alive on weekends, when such dishes as birria (steamed lamb or goat with mole sauce) and carnitas (braised pork) are added.
Shin Shin
The modest quarters belie the superior quality of the fare served by Julia and Ming-Li Hsu in their one-room spot on the western edge of downtown Windsor. Everything from the seafood soup to sautéed green beans and shrimp with dried hot pepper sauce is well-prepared and served in a caring manner.
The Long Way Home
When a film wins an Oscar, we expect it to shine, as well as move us toward a new understanding of the world. And The Long Way Home, which took this year’s Academy Award for best documentary feature, does illuminate quite a few dark corners of modern history on its way to a hopeful though…
