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Jean Oppenheimer

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Simply Galling

The Dying Gaul offers three likable people who behave appallingly

By Jean Oppenheimer
Dec 1, 2005

Deception, betrayal and revenge. In his film directorial debut, acclaimed playwright/screenwriter/theater director Craig Lucas is done in by his own script, which becomes so excessively icy and cruel that it breaks, rather than solidifies, any bond it could hope to establish with its audience. A modern-day Greek tragedy -- complete...
Exhuming McCarthy

The Red Scare returns in Good Night, and Good Luck

By Jean Oppenheimer
Oct 20, 2005

Good Night, and Good Luck, a riveting movie that's as entertaining as it is socially and politically important, could not have come at a more propitious time. But more than just the right film at the right moment, George Clooney's sophomore directorial effort is dynamic filmmaking: brilliantly conceived, visually arresting,...
Truth Syrup

An intriguing cover-up tale melts into a melodramatic mess

By Jean Oppenheimer
Oct 20, 2005

It's the cover-up, stupid! It doomed Nixon during Watergate, got Clinton impeached, inspired outrage against the Catholic Church, and apparently it's just part of the day-to-day operations at places like Enron and Tyco. The initial crime is bad enough, but the conspiracy to hide it always ends up hurting more...
Countdown to 12

A Salvadoran boy awaits the birthday that renders him a warrior

By Jean Oppenheimer
Oct 13, 2005

Some films leave an indelible impression upon the heart and mind. Innocent Voices is one of those films. Set in El Salvador in the early 1980s, during that country's protracted civil unrest, the movie depicts the nightmare of warfare through the eyes of an 11-year-old boy. The fact that it's...
Artful Dodging

Polanski's Oliver Twist misses the grit of Dickens's classic

By Jean Oppenheimer
Sep 29, 2005

It's almost impossible to watch Roman Polanski's rendition of Oliver Twist without drawing parallels between the deprivations endured by the book's young protagonist and the director's own brutal boyhood. A Jew raised in Nazi-occupied Poland, Polanski first tackled the Holocaust head-on in his 2002 film The Pianist, but Oliver Twist,...
Better Mood

Wong Kar Wai delivers a sequel that far outpaces the original

By Jean Oppenheimer
Aug 25, 2005

Cineastes swooned over Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai's 2000 film In the Mood for Love, a slow-as-molasses melodrama about two tediously formal people whose spouses are having an affair with each other. Thrown together by circumstance, they find themselves falling in love but, determined not to emulate their cheating...
Follow the Music

A brash realtor rediscovers the piano in a gripping French remake

By Jean Oppenheimer
Aug 18, 2005

Thomas Seyr, the central figure in director Jacques Audiard's kinetically charged new film The Beat That My Heart Skipped, is a young Frenchman torn between a life of crime and a career as a concert pianist. It's hardly your usual dilemma -- and hardly the usual French film, come to...
Bird Droppings

Disney's Valiant effort never leaves the hangar

By Jean Oppenheimer
Aug 18, 2005

Even today, British kids grow up listening to stories about life during the London Blitz and the hardships their parents and grandparents endured during the Second World War. American children, by comparison, would be hard-pressed to tell you what nations fought on which side. It's one of the many weaknesses...
No Way Out

Last Days follows the final spiral of a tormented musician

By Jean Oppenheimer
Aug 11, 2005

Once you get past its negligible plot, scant dialogue and almost zero action, Gus Van Sant's elliptical rendering of the final hours in the troubled life of a grunge musician is rarely boring. That may seem like a backhanded compliment, but given the absence of such customary cinematic conventions as...
Mostly Miranda

Me and You can't overcome its irritating star

By Jean Oppenheimer
Jul 14, 2005

Me and You and Everyone We Know, the new film from writer-director-performance artist Miranda July, walked off with prizes at both the Sundance and Cannes film festivals. An audience and critical favorite, it follows an ensemble cast of characters, each of whom is longing to connect with another human being...
For Love of the Game

The Farrelly brothers swing straight and hit the sweet spot

By Jean Oppenheimer
Apr 14, 2005

Directed by Peter and Bobby Farrelly. With Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon. Rated PG-13.
Road Rules: Israel

A Nazi hunter finds tangled emotions in Walk on Water

By Jean Oppenheimer
Mar 31, 2005

Most contemporary thrillers aren't concerned with moral dilemmas; the emphasis is on action and intrigue. The Israeli film Walk on Water -- which, conveniently for American audiences, is primarily in English (the rest is Hebrew and German with English subtitles) -- not only raises questions about right and wrong, but...
The Kids Aren't Alright

Nobody Knows painstakingly reveals the horror of child neglect

By Jean Oppenheimer
Mar 24, 2005

Directed by Kore-eda Hirokazu. With Yagira Yuya, Kitaura Ayu, Kimura Hiei, Shimizu Momoko and You.
Bayou Polka

A rudderless German springs to life with the help of zydeco music

By Jean Oppenheimer
Mar 17, 2005

Almost as wide as he is tall, with a round but unremarkable face, Schultze doesn't look like a rebel. Truth be told, he looks like Curly of Three Stooges fame or, less kindly, a mass murderer (well, he does bear a passing but disturbing resemblance to John Wayne Gacy). Schultze...
Bayou Polka

A rudderless German springs to life with the help of zydeco music

By Jean Oppenheimer
Mar 10, 2005

Almost as wide as he is tall, with a round but unremarkable face, Schultze doesn't look like a rebel. Truth be told, he looks like Curly of Three Stooges fame or, less kindly, a mass murderer (well, he does bear a passing but disturbing resemblance to John Wayne Gacy). Schultze...
Great Clips

Tennessee schoolkids teach the world a lesson in an inspirational documentary

By Jean Oppenheimer
Feb 24, 2005

Directed by Joe Fab and Elliott Berlin. Featuring the residents of Whitwell, Tennessee. Rated G.
Horse Senseless

Racing Stripes is strictly for kids. More precisely, it's not for them either.

By Jean Oppenheimer
Jan 13, 2005

An underappreciated art, vocal performance can make or break an animated film, as well as live-action movies that "star" talking animals. It's Eddie Murphy's exuberant line readings -- not what he says but how he says it -- that confer personality upon the garrulous Donkey in Shrek. And the sheep-herding...
Blade Runners

Hotel Rwanda finds hope amid the horrors of tribal genocide

By Jean Oppenheimer
Jan 6, 2005

Over a three-month period in 1994, machete-wielding Hutu tribesmen in Rwanda hacked to death 800,000 Tutsi men, women and children. News reports, including film footage of the unfolding carnage, were broadcast around the globe. In the face of such unremitting acts of inhumanity, the world community did nothing. It wasn't...

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Jean Oppenheimer