A young man (Robert Petkoff) impulsively quits medical school and immediately finds himself involved with a number
of attractive women, all of whom want strange things from him (like holding onto a box for weeks and never looking
inside it).

Along the way he meets up with various eccentric characters, the most fun being the late, great Peter Boyle's
charming homeless man/ex-cowboy.

This is the kind of whimsical film that might have found more acceptance in the US if it had been made in French and
shown with subtitles. We seem to have more patience for foreign films that trade in smiles and light-hearted ,slightly
absurd romantic tangles, with sexually aggressive, quirky and lovable women who may be inscrutable, but who are no
less endearing for being so.

This is not a film that will change your life, but it is one you may very well enjoy.

Amazing effects and stunt along with and solid performances balance out some artistic lapses and ethical questions
in this true story of one family’s experiences of the horrendous Tsunami that killed 300,000.

The downsides; there’s something a little off-putting about choosing a white, privileged family as a focus, while at the
same time showing almost exclusively other white people as suffering and afraid in a disaster that killed far more local
people than tourists. The Thai’s are certainly shown in a good light, kindly helping all these suffering whites, but even
in the hospital, almost every face we see in a bed is a white one. That hint of odd racial insensitivity is also underlined
by replacing the original family, who were Spanish and dark, and making them into a gorgeous blond English family, a
telling choice in a ‘true’ story.

On a more general level, the film can feel manipulative, from the tear jerking score, to the multiple “will they spot each other?”
shots that feel like a horror film’s self-conscious suspense creating frames, but that technique feels strangely artificial in this
more naturalistic setting. There’s no question it’s exciting and at times moving, but it felt to me like one of those films I
would have felt even more deeply if it wasn’t pushing so hard to win my emotions.

I'm a big fan of Judd Apatow. But this quasi-sequel to "Knocked Up", following up on the Pete and Debbie characters
a few years later is a really frustrating movie. There are so many good moments, moments that are laugh out loud
funny, or touching and real, that you want to scream when it keeps sliding into over-cute, or pushing for laughs, or
cliché, or overly verbose, stopping to state literally what the audience has figured out long before.

I felt like Apatow's tendency to make comedies that last over 2 hours is starting to catch up with him. The film feels
needlessly padded. Every major storyline makes its point at least one more time than it needs to.

That said, this is still way better than most Hollywood films. There are a lot of strong performances and solid writing.
I appreciated how honest it is about how messy and hard life, marriage and families are. When it's good it's great. But
20 or 30 minutes shorter, with more focus and less falling into rim-shots, repeats and easy heart tugs and it could
have been a classic.

While it may be heresy, I think I like this better than Bergman's much better known and loved
follow up comedy "Smiles of a Summer Night".

"A Lesson in Love" has a wonderful mix of dry sophisticated wit, and much wilder almost
screwball comedy dancing together more smoothly than I would have thought possible, --
all the while dealing surprisingly explicitly with such usually unfunny subjects as infidelity
and the loss of passion in marriage.

Indeed, if you made a comedy, not a tragedy out of `Scenes from a Marriage" it might have
been a little like this.

Only in the third act does the film run out of steam a bit, starting to feel a bit forced in its
story twists. But I can't remember ever smiling, or laughing, so much at a Bergman film before.

The professional reviews for this were so ecstatic that I may have been
a bit over-hyped, and felt a twinge of disappointment in seeing it,
which is not to say I didn't quite enjoy it

Entertaining and beautifully made, this is another modern black & while
silent film, this one an adult re-telling of the Snow White myth.
There's no denying the technical virtuosity on display, and the ways
that film-maker Berger finds to update the tale to Spain in the 1920s,
center the story around bullfighting, and still stay true to the
original story are clever and sometimes very amusing.

What was missing for me was a deeper layer of emotion, I appreciated
and respected the film, but it was too much a fairy tale for me to
believe in it, yet too real for me to be carried away into a fantasy.
That said, it's good enough that I will gladly re-visit it.

Intelligent, interesting and occasionally moving, this tells the story
of boxer Emile Griffith, a gentle warrior, who accidentally killed a
man in the ring, and who may have been gay at a time (the early 60s on)
when an admission of that by an athlete was unthinkable.

Indeed, one of the frustrating and sad things about the film is that
Griffith still insists on keeping his sexuality mysterious, which keeps
the film from deeply exploring a potentially very powerful part of
Griffith's story. It feels awkward that the subject is so front and
center in some ways (he was mocked with a slur for being homosexual by
the man he beat to death in the ring), yet so danced around in others.

But there's plenty here to hold your interest. Griffith's career arc,
his jovial, likable personality, the great use of archival footage, the
emotional and career complexities of taking a life all make for a
documentary that while perhaps not all it could be (and a bit
repetitive at times) is still very worth watching.

Generally I'm not a fan of 'procedurals' (shows without a continuing story, where each episode stands on it's own and is
about procedure; legal, medical, etc), but this is as close to an exception as I'll get.

Give credit to excellent writing, directing and acting, and having supporting characters that are rich and really add
something to the show. When it's at it's best this can be downright terrific, bringing me to tears more than once, and
making me laugh out loud a few times too. It can be very, very smart.

While the 2nd season represented growth, mostly by focusing even more on our running characters and their ongoing stories,
it can still be hit or miss. Every 3rd episode or so is really special. That's a higher batting average than the first season.
The other episodes are still good, almost always watchable, (one or two really don't work), but often you can see the twists
coming a mile off, or the jokes get a little stale.

The show is at it's best when the episodes are really about the often funny, sometimes heartbreaking inner lives of
our running characters, and not simply about brilliantly (and inevitably) catching the bad guy/gal. Or when it's dealing
with the more human side of forensics - the grief and pain of those left behind. That's when this well made show moves way
beyond 'clever crime of the week' status.

One of those documentaries that grows in impact as it goes along. For the first hour or so I found
this study of the Nazi's plundering and stealing Europe's great works of art, along with the allies
attempts to spare art during the war, intellectually interesting, but a bit dry and even repetitive.

But as the film moves on to the aftermath of the war, and we get more of the human side of the
story; great art treasures are returned to the lands whose cultures they represent and we see the
joy that it brings, both sides of the Russian debate about keeping the art they took from Germany
as a sort of reparation for the horrible human cost of the war, restorations still going on 60 years
later with care and passion, a Christian German who has made it his mission to return beautiful and
intricate Torah scroll caps to their rightful Jewish owners, the film blossoms into a very human
examination of just how important art is to human beings and to our sense of selves.

Ultimately, what starts feeling like a somewhat academic exercise ends up as a very moving and
personal documentary

Extraordinarily disturbing and affecting examination of the case of a Catholic priest who sexually abused numerous
children, and the fact the Church knew, and did nothing about it.

The film expands to examine the larger issue of the Church’s constantly covering-up abuse by priests on a huge scale.

Masterfully directed, this hits home emotionally, as victims and their parents bravely tell their stories, while at the same
time we get to know the perpetrator – who is clearly disconnected from reality and mentally ill (he does not deny the
abuse, but seems to utterly misunderstand its seriousness), making those above him who covered his activities seem
in many ways more culpable and hateful than this clearly disturbed individual - not that he gets off lightly.

At the same time, it’s not a purely emotional exercise, with some fascinating experts, especially one priest who is an expert
in Church history and law examining how and why things have devolved to this awful state of affairs, where the Church seems
to be consciously putting its own image ahead of the safety of children.

Not an easy film to watch, but a deeply powerful, angering and important one.

...which, historically, a lot of the best films do.

For me, this film has two unusual qualities;

1) Its greatest weakness is also its greatest strength. It takes pains to keep its distance, to stay neutral and
unemotional. It refuses to assign easy labels, to people or issues, even (as has been much discussed) being
ambiguous about the use of torture. It gives very little back-story, even of the lead character. It doesn't work to win
you to a point of view, to make you want to cheer your approval,or shake your head in shame, or even like or dislike
the characters.

For most of the film I found the effect (as one might expect) oddly alienating. I was gripped by the story, but I didn't
feel strong emotions, or care about characters in the way a 'normal' film would have made me. And while watching,
this felt like a weakness. I felt distracted, disappointed, even bored at times, regardless of the dramatic nature of the story.

Yet that same quality led me to feeling powerfully haunted by the film when it was over -- to ponder violence and its
effects on human beings, the thin lines between perseverance and obsession, the inability to ever have a clear morality
in time of war. It forced me to think, uncomfortably, messily about a lot of things, for myself.

2) It's a film where, to a large degree the whole movie is redeemed by its final images,

Spoiler in next line!

In finally articulating the lost beyond words state of our lead character, suddenly all the emotion
she never allowed herself and us is paid off in seeing that hard facade crack.

End spoiler alert

Ultimately a very brave, and very un-Hollywood film in pace, style and content. This is war,
and people in war stripped of easy answers and even traditional 'excitement'.

There are flaws (e.g. a lot of very pretty people who look more like actors than warriors), but
these are minor compared to seeing an uncompromised and deeply challenging vision.