Brooklyn Rail. March 07.

"Unlike most Japanese filmmakers more familiar in the West, Shohei Imamura was 'interested in the relationship of the lower part of the human body and the lower part of the social structure,'" writes David Wilentz in the March issue of the Brooklyn Rail. "Imamura focuses on the seemingly animalistic, often criminal lower strata of Japanese society without passing judgment, meticulously observing human nature for its own primal sake." The Brooklyn Academy of Music retrospective runs through March 29.

David N Meyer on Exterminating Angels: "Director Jean-Claude Brisseau pursues his deconstructivist-French-person-pondering-the-sexual-mysteries intellectual agenda straight-up. Unlike Catherine Breillat's explicit mega-downer Anatomy of Hell or her merely annoying Sex Is Comedy, Brisseau does not present his Big Questions interwoven into the drama. Here, they are the drama."

Karl O'Toole reviews Ken Loach's career and then finally gets around to The Wind That Shakes the Barley: "Graphic violence, Irish Republicanism, the British press all pissed off - how could I possibly dislike this film? Yet, Loach let me down."

"Daddy's Little Girls and Norbit both stretch the truth by presenting themselves as comedies," writes Tessa DeCarlo. "Tyler Perry's first non-drag film is actually a romantic drama, a love story with a serious side. And Eddie Murphy's multi-role drag extravaganza is not the least bit funny."

"Bridge To Terabithia will disturb more kids than it will uplift," writes Sarahjane Blum. "But, say I, fuck anyone who takes a kid to the movies to shut her up."

"As a pot-smoking, indignant 17-year-old he's credible, but [Kal] Penn made his name with the stoner hit Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle," writes Sara Mayeux. "The pleasant surprise of The Namesake is that Penn is equally believable as a yuppie architect."

Posted by dwhudson at March 18, 2007 6:50 AM