Kurt Cobain Talks Like a Regular Guy in About a Son

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:37:00 -0400
The voice of a generation talks like a regular guy in About a Son (By Camille Dodero)

Broken

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 17:02:04 -0400
It's hard to say who suffers most after boy meets girl at the beach. Is it Hope (Heather Graham), who turns to heroin and can't get a singing gig because of those damned track marks? Is it Will (Jeremy Sisto), who goes psycho after Hope dumps him? Or is it audiences, who are subjected to the most dubious plays on character names since Nearing Grace? Hungry for dope but short on cash, boy keeps girl in check with a maxim from his youth: "Where . . . read more (By Ed Gonzalez)

The Good Night

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 17:00:48 -0400
Director Jake Paltrow's feature debut has all the hallmarks of an earnest young man's feature debut, and while that is not necessarily a bad thing, I can only imagine that it fit Sundance like a fingerless glove when it had its premiere there earlier this year. Paltrow, a veteran TV and film scriptwriter, has chosen the quirky relationship drama as his milieu, and cast older sister Gwyneth as deathly drab Dora, the female half of the film's . . . read more (By Michelle Orange)

Strange Culture

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:59:39 -0400
On the morning of May 11, 2004, Steve Kurtz woke to find his wife dead of a heart attack. Hope Kurtz was a healthy woman in her mid-forties and, like her husband, a founding member of Critical Art Ensemble (CAE), "a collective of five artists of various specializations," per their website, "dedicated to exploring the intersections between art, technology, radical politics, and critical theory." Steve practiced Bio Art, a form of installation art . . . read more (By Nathan Lee)

MOMI Does Desplechin

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:58:18 -0400
Plus: Cranes flies at BAM (By J. Hoberman)

Michael Haneke's Other Career

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:56:03 -0400
The small-screen pleasures (and pain) of Michael Haneke's other career (By Scott Foundas)

My Kid Could Paint That: Basic But Fascinating Questions of Art and Authenticity

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:51:07 -0400
Basic but facinating questions of art and authenticity in My Kid Could Paint That (By Nathan Lee)

Nina's Heavenly Delights

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:47:48 -0400
"A difficult choice, between perfection and heavenly delight," crows the announcer at an Indian-cooking contest during this movie's climax. Sadly, Pratibha Parmar's Nina's Heavenly Delights offers neither. What it does offer is an estranged daughter, a dead father, a disappointed mother, a secret marriage, a secret lesbian, and a secret Scottish country dancer. This overloaded plot begins with the homecoming of Nina (Shelley Conn), a Glasgow . . . read more (By Abigail Deutsch)

Finishing the Game

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:46:52 -0400
It's 1973. The dirt has barely settled on Bruce Lee's grave, and the exploitation rush is on. A producer with some priceless footage, the only existent fragment from Lee's incomplete final opus, launches the search for a stand-in to complete the film. Finishing the Game imagines the ensuing hunt in vintage-grainy faux-documentary trappings, flatly riffing on the boom of Lee knockoffs that surfaced in the wake of Bruce's last gasp and the . . . read more (By Nick Pinkerton)

Desert Bayou

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:45:56 -0400
Alex LeMay's Desert Bayou makes a fitting sequel to Spike Lee's opus When the Levees Broke. The film opens by reprising the indelible and shameful tableaux of horrors that unspooled in the days following Hurricane Katrina, but then quickly moves on to depict the plight of several African-American evacuees. Relief at rescue immediately turns to disbelief. Rushed to the airport by FEMA, the delirious group discovers, only as the plane is taking . . . read more (By Lisa Katzman)