M FOR MOTHER Mim mesle madar; Mi like Mother Rasool Mollagholipoor, Iran,m. Reputed to be one of the most popular films in the history of Iranian cinema, M for Mother is an odd blend of intriguing, boldly explored themes embodied in a vehicle that is pure, over-the-top cornball melodramatic schmaltz.

How did the infamous Iranian film censors let all of that get by? The gorgeous young actress Golshifteh Farahani, member of a family that is prominent in Iranian film and theater, plays Sepideh, the central character, who refuses abortion in order to bring her almost surely deformed child into the world. In the print I saw, the subtitle for the film's name is Mi Like Motherwhich fits better, since it has to do with a woman coaching her son to hit the right notes on his violin.

The film's director, Rasool Mollagholipoor, died of a heart attack at age 52, a few months after this film was released. Georges du Fresne captivates as a 7 year old boy who wants to be a girl in this glorified sitcom set in a Parisian suburb.

The story is well told, inoffensive, realistic as far as it goes, and very funny. The film never insists that the boy is a transsexual or homosexual in the making, instead suspending judgment on the subject, the neighbors be damned. MABOROSI Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan, A woman seeks answers to the imponderable questions raised after her first husband, following a normal day and in a cheerful mood, suicides in a train yard. The pain of losing him is all the worse for touching a nerve in her made raw from childhood memories of her grandmother leaving to return to her native village to die.

Left with a 3 month old son to raise, she ultimately remarries a widower with a young daughter living in a remote fishing village along a wild coast. She is obviously happy with him though more burdened by her past after returning to her hometown for a visit. The photography deserves special comment. In each scene the camera is stationary, in the style of Robert Bresson, and the action develops slowly, subtly.

The scene is often held for a long time. The camera never moves. Each scene is independent. Once it fades, there is no return. The result is to induce in the viewer a highly contemplative attitude. THE MACHINIST Brad Anderson, Spain, Trevor Reznik Christian Bale is seriously unwell. Odd things seem to be happening to him: He encounters a man, Ivan John Sharian who later seems not to have existed at all.

Trevor works in a machine shop. He used to get along OK with his fellow workers, though he was never one to go out for drinks and cards with the others after work. He only seems at peace in the company of women. And Marie Aitana Sanchez-Gijona night waitress in a coffee shop near the airport, where Trevor passes sleepless hours visiting with her over his coffee and pie nearly every night. With each of these women, he reveals a calmer, more tender side, even though he is so emaciated.

Other odd twists and coincidences pile up as tension builds in this taut thriller. Indeed, my only real criticism of the film is that there are so many little things piling up, more than we need, gratuitous stuff that gets a bit too noisy for me. We begin to wonder what is real and what is hallucinatory or illusion for him.

The music effectively augments the sense of foreboding and danger. There is also unusually haunting photography, by Xari Gimenez and Charlie Jimenez. Although it is filmed in color, the colors are leached thin, giving an effect more like old fashioned tinting of black and white material. And many, many scenes are darkly lit and seem to be rendered in varying tones of gunmetal blue-gray. This coloration reminded me of the visual treatment in the recent Russian suspense story, The Return.

It is clear that Trevor is in the grips of a severe psychiatric illness, but it is not one easily classifiable in conventional diagnostic terms. Part of this is simply attributable to artistic license: There are strong elements to suggest psychotic depression here extreme weight loss and insomnia, guilt feelings, irritability, agitation, probable hallucinations, possible paranoid delusions. Incompatible with this degree of depression, though, are the facts that Trevor manages to get to get to work every day and acts quite normally with women, mustering some libido on occasion as well as charm.

Even then, not all of his symptoms can be explained by the diagnosis of psychotic depression. In time certain information is revealed that lets us know there are probably dissociative elements to the illness, including, among others, clearly etched visual hallucinations not common in psychotic depression.

Could he have an anorexia nervosa-like eating disorder? Wilfully reducing his food intake while pushing himself to sustain normal physical activity? The incongruity between his extreme weight loss and normal physical motility hints at such a thing, as well as his obsessive attention to recording his daily weight in a series of post-its on the bathroom wall going down, down, down. Bale gives an astonishing performance.

I refer not only to his physical preparation for the role he lost 63 pounds, by eating a single can of tuna and one apple a daybut the keen intelligence and understated, infectious anguish he brings to the role. Only Ralph Fiennes comes to mind as someone else who could have played Trevor as well.

MAGNOLIA Paul Thomas Anderson, USHere's the mother of all psychodramas. For one thing, many of the scenes involve intense emotional outpourings; someone always seems to be falling apart or close to it.

There is a relentless underlying tone of agitation: Then there's the music, often very loud, drowning out conversation. It is also a kaleidoscopic tale, full of multiple characters whose actions intersect and intercut back and forth, Robert Altman style, until it makes your head swim at times. And it all goes on like this for 3 hours. What this ordeal is about seems to be life, or, more particularly, the botch people make of it, especially the ways in which they damage, disappoint and desert their families.

And it is about regret for such behavior. TV mogul Earl Partridge Jason Robards is dying of cancer and rues on his deathbed the way he walked out years ago on his dying first wife, leaving her to be cared for by their 14 year old son, Jack, who grows up to be the slick and dirty talking media guru Frank T.

Mackey Tom Cruisestar of "Seduce and Destroy," an est-type program to cultivate male macho predation. Earl's present spouse Linda Julianne Moore is awash in grief over losing him and also because of her past affairs.

Jimmy Gator Philip Baker Hall is emcee of a long running TV quiz show who learns he only has 2 months to live because of his cancer. Stricken with guilt for his past pecadillos, he tries, too bluntly, to make amends with his wife and estranged daughter, to no avail. Donnie Smith William H. Macy slathers in self-pity because he peaked too early, as a quiz kid years ago on Gator's TV show, and has never been able to live up to that pinnacle of childhood celebrity.

And that's only the half of it. The acting is terrific including fine cameo turns by Michael Bowen, Henry Gibson, Luis Guzman, Albert Molina and Michael Murphy. But there is little sense of narrative, and insufficient character development. How could there be, since the film spans the actions of these people for about one day? For quite awhile this quick cut, cross sectional view of the characters, frenzied with emotion, is difficult to empathize with: But in the last hour of the film their pasts are made sufficiently known to us to alter that.

When not too loud, the music, including nine songs by Aimee Mann, is often quite interesting, especially the haunting number "Save Me," which underscores a redemptive theme of forgiveness for past transgressions that emerges toward the end, although with the suggestion that it is not always easy to determine whom or what to forgive.

This theme is introduced after an apocalyptic torrential rain of giant frogs levels the playing field for everyone still left standing by that point. The film begins with another theme: The narrator suggests that these events were not coincidences at all but part of some less-than-visible design.

This is Jung's familiar theme of synchronicity: The frog rainstorm appears to serve such a purpose here, altering the course of events for a number of the characters in favorable and forgiving ways. So in this obviously moral tale, what's the take home message, the lesson to be learned? Stanley Jeremy Blackmanthe newest quiz kid celeb, pleads with his exploitative, nasty stage door father to treat him more kindly, but that possibility seems doubtful at best. It looks like Stanley may be doomed to a life like Donnie Smith's There are decent, determinedly helpful people in this story: Police Officer Jim John C.

Reilly and Nurse Phil Phillip Seymour Hoffman are two of them, as is the young kid who attempts to save Linda's life even as he is robbing her. But they are in the minority and seem to be battling against tough odds.

Does it take a plague of frogs from the sky - some sort of divine intervention or wild serendipitous good luck - to save us from ourselves and our evil ways? Perhaps Anderson is trying to tell us that it takes a bit of each of these ingredients - the combined forces of good luck, forgiveness and the dogged determination of a few good people - to redeem us, to the extent that redemption is possible.

And by indirection, he seems also to be saying that prevention - a civil and loving attitude toward one's intimates in the first place - is a whole lot better than the struggle to repair the damage caused by the absence of such caring. MAN FACING SOUTHEAST Eliseo Subiela, Argentina, An alien thought to be delusional is brought to a mental hospital, where his encounters with a psychiatrist take surprising turns.

This theme was realized in more effectively in the recent film K-PAXwith Kevin Spacey as the alien and Jeff Bridges as a more convincing psychiatrist. THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM Otto Preminger, US, Frankie Machine Frank Sinatraa lowlife poker dealer and heroin junkie in a scuzzy urban neighborhood, returns to his old haunts after a successful stint of drug rehab.

He is driven to distraction by the incessant demands of Zosch Eleanor Parkerhis manipulative, histrionic wife, who has been feigning paralysis for several years, since an auto accident in which Frankie was the driver, in order to hold on to him. Frankie is taken in by his lover, Molly Kim Novakwho nurses him through cold turkey withdrawal. This film is etched with deep contrasts. On the positive side, it was the first mainstream Hollywood film to treat the subject of opiate addiction seriously, and as such it was both controversial and successful.

It is based on a novel by Nelson Algren that won the National Book Award in Algren was fascinated by the underbelly of Chicago street life at mid-century and got the details right. The screenplay did not compromise the basic honesty with which he had described the junkie life. Shot appropriately in black and white, with seedy sets created on a soundstage, the film faithfully portrays the nearly universal experience of heroin addicts of that era, before the first methadone maintenance programs appeared in the early s.

Like Frankie, almost all the patients were from an inner city milieu. And also like Frankie, following inpatient rehab. Yet, as many addicts have attested, even revisiting the site where they used to score heroin would provide cues that could instantly stir up overpowering sensations of drug craving. In fact, it was this monotonous scenario of failure that led Dr. Marie Nyswander, who had been a psychiatrist at the Lexington hospital, to think of outpatient methadone maintenance as a strategy that might protect against relapse while providing social aid to help addicts cope with their daily lives.

He cannot tolerate the anger and anxiety he feels, trapped again in a vortex of failure without apparent solution. The drug soothes his dysphoria while simultaneously it becomes its driving force. The vicious cycle of addiction is nowhere better observed in film than here.

The signs and symptoms of craving, intoxication and withdrawal are also demonstrated with exceptional accuracy, down to changes in pupillary diameter wide during anxious moments or withdrawal, narrowed to pinpoint after a fix. Credit the filmmakers for pursuing the details authentically and Sinatra with a fine portrayal.

On the negative side, much of the acting in the film is extremely melodramatic and not credible. Most of the supporting characters are played over the top, like figures in a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. Of the other two principals in the love triangle, Novak does fairly well. Her Molly is understated, and her reticent devotion to Frankie feels genuine. Eleanor Parker, on the other hand, effuses in her typical, undifferentiated, turbo-charged emotional style.

Malingerers usually act sick and distressed. They typically appear pained or frail. Fault Preminger for orchestrating so many horridly hammy performances. You start to dread its next appearance. This film called for Miles Davis, not a blaring piece Hollywood orchestra.

Seen again, September, C; portrayal of heroin addiction: THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST Aki Kaurismaki, Finland, Wait till the Bushies see this movie, which conveys the sociopolitical message that if you're down and out, don't rely on government to help you, turn instead to volunteers in your community and faith-based programs.

One can only hope that the implications are not the same in Finland! Kaurismaki, maker of quirky, unpredictable, often rough-and-tumble frolicing films Leningrad Cowboys Go America, Total Balalaika presents something here that is at once more somber yet full of fun as well: Think a moment about something really different for you, the Finnish economy: Given such thin and brittle circumstances, it is not shocking to discover a bunch of very marginal folks up that way.

At the start, a man is beaten nearly to death by a violent gang of thieves. He has a dense retrograde amnesia to show for it we know him only as "M" - he doesn't know his name or origins but otherwise he recovers, thanks to the ministrations of a kindly couple who live in an old steel freight container.

The fact that he has no anterograde amnesia, unlike Leonard Shelby in Mementoshows his amnesia is psychological, not caused directly by any brain damage. These folks help him get beyond the surly, contemptuous treatment he receives from the police and employment office clerks.

Along with its social edge, the film also includes several fine comic bits, including deadpan rapid fire vaudeville-style exchanges between M and his landlord, a running dog routine featuring Hannibal a nod to the Lecter filmsand several humorous scene entrances and exits. And, as befits Kaurismaki, there is an eclectic sound track spanning Salvation Army band tunes, s torch songs, and rock-and-roll. Winner of the Cannes Grand Jury Prize in On second thought, I guess we're fortunate that the geniuses currently running our federal government are about as likely to watch a subtitled Finnish film as they are to hug a tree.

Somber, verite-style drama about a group of maladjusted teens and the staff who work with them in a psychiatric hospital. Lyle Joseph Gordon-Levitt attacks another player at a baseball game, brutally injuring him with a bat. For this he is dispatched to the small hospital in a rural setting, where he meets a number of other kids with various behavior disorders.

Chad is supposed to be bipolar though his behavior never clearly portrays this.

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In fact no one looks at all manic in this seriously mistitled film. David Monroe Don Cheadle is the psychologist whose work with the kids is shown primarily in group therapy meetings. Cheadle makes his character a credible therapist, a caring man who approaches his charges realistically, without platitudes or cliches.

The tense and eruptive atmosphere on the ward is intimately conveyed by the actors and by the handheld digvid photography, with its many abrupt angle changes and effectively shaky close-ups. Gordon-Levitt gives a good account of an alienated, furious young man who gradually opens up to a more caring attitude toward others and himself. We meet him just when he is being fired from his factory job. Yes, Juha becomes a working class gigolo, catering to the needs of older women and even a teen with Down Syndrome, whose parents have hired Juha to teach the girl about sex, though all she wants is to kiss him.

Things fall apart when Juha is injured twice in one day and lands in the hospital. A believable drama with enough comedic touches to steer clear of becoming maudlin.

A MAP OF THE WORLD Scott Elliott, US, Sigourney Weaver Alice and Julianne Moore Alice's best friend, Teresa give moving performances in a story that is emotionally compelling even if not a great flick.

Alice finds herself, as she puts it, at the bottom of the world when, in succession, her friend Teresa's daughter drowns while Alice is caring for her; she is jailed on charges of child abuse by an angry mom who claims Alice sexually misused her son in Alice's role as a school nurse; the entire town turns against her and her family; and her husband is forced to sell the dairy farm that had been his dream to own and run, to find the cash to get Alice out of jail and pay for her legal defense.

The family needs to resettle elsewhere anyway to begin again, which they do after Alice is acquitted. It's surely a soap opera story, but the quality of the turns given by the principal actresses saves it from being maudlin.

As a character study, Weaver's Alice shows a fine example of someone whose flip and often wryly humorous candor, general penchant for disorganization and impulsivity lead her repeatedly into trouble. Early on we see that she can be bold: Next she quits her job, sending her dependent family into a tizzy. She meets a guy from the city one evening at a local dance. When he presents her with an opportunity to make much more money and travel to the U. Having established these matters in the first half hour or so, the film thereafter is devoted to the drama of mules.

Preparing for her flight, she is given laxatives, her throat is sprayed with a local anaesthetic to make the task easier, and she then manages to swallow and keep down 62 bags. If she disappears with the drugs, her family back home will be harmed. She discovers on her flight to Newark that her friend Blanca Yenny Paola Vegawho worked with her back home at the flower factory, is also aboard; she too has signed on as a mule.

So is Lucy Guilied Lopezan experienced mule Maria met earlier. And another woman — 4 mules in all on this one flight. The traffickers do this, calculating that if one is seized at the U. Serious problems unfold after everyone reaches Newark. Yenny and Lucy pass through without incident.

The fourth woman is caught and led away in handcuffs. Lucy subsequently dies as a result of a drug overdose, when a drug bag ruptures inside her and she absorbs a huge amount. In the end, Yenny returns to Colombia but Maria, at the last minute, decides to stay behind, to return to Queens, where she has met a few helpful people already.

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Writer-director Marston had only a NYU film school diploma and one short grad school film under his belt when he decided to make this film, his first feature. He literally spent years — at least two — researching his subject. He met a woman in New York who had been a mule. He talked to authorities. His screenplay and the photography and editing are superb. The story unfolds straightforwardly. No gimmicks, no flashbacks, no fancy or hectic intercuts.

The pace is deliberate, the style declarative, realistic and clear. It is sure work. He handles his actors with great skill. The three principal women offer fine performances. Moreno first film acting experience. She hails from Bogota, where she studied acting at a theater. Someone there sent word to the casting agency for this film in New York, suggesting her for the role of Maria.

She has an extraordinary screen presence. With regard to her acting, Ms. Moreno is able to convincingly convey a nuanced range of attitudes and feelings: MARTY Delbert Mann, US, POSSIBLY ALSO SOCIAL PHOBIA.

One of the great character studies to emerge among s American films, Marty featured Ernest Borgnine in the title role. Marty is the quintessential bachelor, 34, with no prospects, living at the family home in New York City with his widowed mother, while six sibs have married and gone their ways.

He spends his days working in a neighborhood butcher shop and his evenings hanging out with his lifelong pal, Angie, another misfit with too many quirks to attract a steady girl. After military service in WWII, he had returned home with no sense of direction for his life. He thought of college. But his loneliness got the best of him back then. He had dark periods of depression, and more than once considered throwing himself onto the tracks in front of an oncoming subway train.

No longer prone to depressive bouts, he still is a sensitive man, often cries sentimentally about things. The story takes place over the course of a single weekend. They have a lot in common — lonely ones left along the romantic sidelines of life.

They spend hours together at the dance, then at a coffee shop, talking. Marty opens up in an almost manicky outpouring about his life, and it is here we learn about his background, frustrations and hopes. They lightly kiss goodnight. Next day everybody close to Marty seems unnerved by his good cheer and interest in this new girl, Clara.

He mopes around the house until evening. That night he hangs aimlessly around the tavern with Angie and the other guys, as usual, no one knowing where to go or what to do. He dashes inside the tavern to the phone and rings up Clara. Anglie sticks his nose into the phone booth and Marty slides the door shut. This final scene fades. This perfect story was written by the great Paddy Chayefsy.

It captivated people everywhere. Seen again November, MARVIN'S ROOM Jerry Zaks, US,98 min. Several themes and conditions are probed in this well enacted psychodrama, adapted from a stage production by the playwright, Scott McPherson. Older sister Bessie Diane Keaton finds that she has leukemia and must undergo chemo.

This will compromise her ability to care for her seriously demented father, Marvin Hume Cronynand her forgetful, soap opera addicted old aunt Ruth Gwen Verdon. This leads her to break a two decade silence with her estranged younger sister Lee Meryl Streep in Ohio, whom Bessie now asks to come to Florida to be tested for bone marrow compatibility.

Lee grudgingly responds, brining along her two sons for testing as well. They are young Charlie Hal Scardino and his older brother Hank Leonardo DiCaprio. The brothers are a study in contrasts. Charlie is meek, compliant, eager to stay out of trouble. Hank, contrarily, is an angry, defiant, and beneath it all, depressed teen who misses his father, a man he idolizes in a highly distorted manner. Hank blames Lee for the divorce that occurred and cannot accept the truth that his father was an abusive man who often injured Hank as a kid through beatings.

Hank and Lee are perpetually at war. Lee does all the wrong things, attempting to control Hank, criticizing him at every turn, offering no love or tenderness. Indeed, there is little love in her life. She struggles just to survive, keep food on the table, and push ahead to finish beautician school. In fact Lee and Hank are a lot alike: Hank, in a fury early in the film, actually burns down the house to retaliate against his mother and is packed off to a public mental hospital for care.

Bessie is a different sort. It marks the beginning of a transformation in Hank that eventually comes to include a revision in his regard for his mother. Streep is also quite outstanding here. Cronyn deserves special praise for the clinical authenticity of his role as a person with late middle stage dementia. He is essentially non-verbal and somnolent.

His frequent exaggerated startle responses vividly portray the distressing catastrophic reactions so common in many demented persons. For me, there is an ever present tendency in many of her roles for her emotional expression to register as pathos, an almost maudlin sentimentality. Bessie is such a teary, self effacing goody goody.

And yet any of us can think of people we know who are like her. And we can only wonder how many helpless people around us would suffer if it were not for the self-sacrificing generosity of caretakers like Bessie. This was a first — and to date the only — feature film for Mr. Zaks, the director, who has had a celebrated career as a director of Broadway comedies and who has also directed several TV dramas.

Matador is a silly movie. It pairs up Julian Noble Pierce Brosnanan internationally operating hit man, an assassin for hire to dispose of people anywhere in the world, and Danny Wright, Greg Kinneara good natured, common middle class guy.

The film is noteworthy because Mr. Brosnan does a truly splendid job of portraying a man with a decidedly antisocial personality he habitually lies, cheats and, of course, kills people with aplombbut also a man who is reaching a point in his sordid life where his conscience is starting to catch up with him.

He has panic attacks and bad dreams, in which he himself is the target of the assassin. His anxiety bouts begin to interfere with his ability to get his work done, which incurs a stern response from his handler, Mr.

Randy Philip Baker Hall and the anonymous bigshots who pay the bills. This depiction is clinically authentic. I have worked with sociopaths who, in middle life, can become vulnerable to severe depression, remorse, and anxiety disorders as they recall their misdeeds. What is masterful here is that Brosnan not only nails the psychopathology accurately, but he does so with a nearly over-the-top humor that is delectable. ANXIETY DISORDERS; OCD, GAD, PANIC.

Nicolas Cage excels in portraying men with various mental troubles. He was convincing as a suicidal alcoholic in Leaving Las Vegasand as a PTSD sufferer in Bringing Out the Dead. Here he gives another believable turn as Roy, who suffers from a panoply of symptoms in the anxiety disorder spectrum. Roy is burdened by agoraphobia and is also fearful of dirt and disorder.

He is a compulsive cleaner and organizer, and must count one-two-three before opening any door or window. Without medication or attention to his rituals, or when his purposely isolated life is disrupted by the intrusions of others, he develops myriad symptoms of anxiety and panic: Roy is a paradoxical guy: He also smokes like a chimney, a pretty dirty habit for an otherwise fastidious fellow.

He works with Frank Sam Rockwellhis devoted longtime partner, to swindle unsuspecting folks out of a few hundred dollars apiece in various scams. One day, Frank hooks a sucker for a much bigger potential payoff.

There are surprises in store for Roy and us viewers, but to reveal them would spoil the fun. The film is enjoyable enough, and a fine showcase of anxiety problems by Cage, who stays in character. His symptoms do wax and wane, but the changes make sense in light of the changing circumstances that surround him.

ME, MYSELF AND IRENE Bobby and Peter Farrelly, US, To give him a break from routine, Charlie's boss sends him to accompany Irene Renee Zellwegera suspect who is wanted in another state. Throughout, Carrey flips with dizzying speed between Charlie and Hank, and Zellweger tries valiantly to adapt to each of these very different people. Their acting in these wildly varying encounters is the one good thing about the film, aside from the antics of Charlie's three black sons, all smart their father the dwarf was a Mensa chapter president and all given to using the term "motherfucker" in every sentence.

Just to offer some of the subtle comic flavor of the film, sight gags include a gigantic dildo what Irene uses as a blackjack, and a sheriff's deputy left handcuffed and pants down by Charlie's teenage sons, with a chicken stuffed up his ass. Although this movie was assailed with great fanfare by NAMI as a slur against the mentally ill, in no way does Carrey seem like a person suffering from schizophrenia, nor are mentally ill persons put down in the film.

Granted, "Hank" becomes sexually aggressive toward Zellweger, and at one point scares a child and drives a car though a barbershop window, but his aggression is otherwise all bluster This film could be construed as a far more serious affront to law enforcement officers, African Americans, and dwarfs, than to the mentally ill.

But the largest group slandered by this movie is the viewing public. We are cheated by stale thin gruel here Thanks a lot for getting back to it, guys. The only reason I include this film is because NAMI made such a fuss about it. For more on that topic, see my article, " Me, Myself and Laurie: NAMI Takes on Hollywood. F; portrayal of schizophrenia: ME MYSELF I Philippa [Pip] Karmel, Australia, Pamela Rachel Griffiths is a single something who is a highly successful journalist.

But she longs for Robert, a man she left 13 years ago, who was her "Mr. Right," and wonders what might have been.

Struck unconscious by a car, she awakens magically transported into the life she would have had with this man, complete with three children. And there are some clever scenes, e.

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It would all have been fresh and funny 25 years ago. This is not to say that the women's movement has driven male chauvinistic excesses into full retreat anywhere, and certainly hardly at all in the developing world. But is the Aussie women's movement really so far behind the times that this film can be popular there in the year ?

This is not a good film. It is a soap opera about an enduring twisted friendship between two women who grew up together. Marina is a classic borderline personality; Holly is merely dull. Almost everyone needs a good spanking. The dialogue is predictable, the photography undistinguished, and the pop musical score putrid.

Nevertheless, the film does nicely capture one sort of expression of borderline personality seen in people, usually women, with major identity problems.

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Namely, it is the tendency to form pathologically close attachments to other people, without whom the person does not feel whole or complete. Marina demonstrates this identity problem in a highly instructive manner. ME YOU THEM Andrucha Waddington, Brazil, Sigmund Freud was once cornered at a London cocktail party and asked to state in plain terms what was necessary for a person to live a life free from neurosis.

His reply was elegant and deservedly famous. This is a film about love and work, both in great abundance. The script was inspired by the true story of a woman living in a tiny hamlet in rural Brazil who had taken three husbands, concurrently.

After reading of her situation in a newspaper, co-screenwriter with Waddington Elena Soarez actually sought out this woman, visited with her over several days, and found the four adults living in apparent harmony with a gaggle of their children. She bears a son who does not resemble Osias, an observation that is not lost on him.

Distanced from him all the more, Darlene grows restive. Conveniently, Zezinho, Osias's middle aged cousin by marriage, comes to live with them. He is a passive sweetie who takes over cooking and brings a hot lunch to Darlene in the fields each day. She takes him as a clandestine lover and bears him a son as well. Enter Ciro, a virile young fellow who comes to cut cane. Osias invites Ciro to stay for awhile as a way to distract Darlene from Zezinho, for Osias, no dummy, suspects what's going on.

Whereupon, of course, Darlene takes up romantically with Ciro, much to Zezinho's chagrin. When she bears Ciro a son, it is no secret to anyone. Tensions by this point have understandably risen. The film is gorgeously photographed, with careful attention to details as well as breathtaking panoramic views of the desolate, bleached countryside. The opening credits are exquisite, with text running next to a lit lantern in the foreground of a darkened room, as someone dresses in the shadowy background.

We catch the daily rhythms of household chores, from washing clothes by hand in a muddy pond to Zezinho shaving Osias. Soulful folk sambas drive the dancers at the local tavern on Saturday nights.

There is abundant grace, humor, accommodation and beauty throughout this film, and, in the daily rhythms of love and work, one cannot help believing that these people have figured things out pretty well, however much a fable we are inclined to think this story must be. My partner wasn't as enthused about this film as I was.

One thing that bothered her were the violations of women's rights suggested by Darlene's situation. Things like Darlene's acquiescence to Osias's demands that she run every aspect of the household while he lazes about. And this on top of her other major burdens, from working full time during sugar cane harvest to her involvement in an endless cycle of pregnancies and child rearing. Female sensibilities may very well be rubbed wrong here for just cause.

But I also think that it is a conceit of this film to suggest that Darlene is very much in charge of her life. She is, in the first place, portrayed as a very strong woman, physically, sexually, psychologically, socially. She doesn't need to remain stranded in that isolated hamlet. She had proven earlier in her life that she could make it alone in the city. She returned to visit her mother, not necessarily to stay.

She made a pragmatic choice to marry Osias, although it is true that he turned the tables on her, failing to keep his promises about sharing power, after the wedding. Nevertheless, she is not afraid of him and to a considerable degree does as she pleases. She likes to boogie, and on Saturday nights she dances close with any man she chooses, no matter that her husband is looking on and obviously not happy about it.

So who's exploiting whom in this circumstance? Above all, Darlene likes tail, and she arranges to get a lot of loving, at home and away. The other thing that dampened my partner's enjoyment of the film was her increasing apprehension that Darlene might be killed. For what my partner knew, but I did not, is that to this day in Brazil a man can kill his wife for something like being cuckolded, and, if he can avoid arrest for a short time, he will thereafter be a free man.

MEAN CREEK Jacob Aaron Estes, US, Almost everything in the movie is just a bit off. The idea for it was drawn from his own recent experience of being bullied repeatedly by a huge man at pickup basketball games in his San Francisco neighborhood.

George Josh Peck, a 17 year old actor is an unhappy, surly fellow who strives to share his misery by hassling all the other kids around. Early in the film he beats up Sam Rory Culkin, age Marti Scott Mechlowiczringleader of the group, insists they bury the body and pretend nothing has happened. Marti, fearful of imprisonment, robs a convenience store and presumably goes on the lam. Most have impressive acting resumes. And it seemed to take forever for the other kids to make a half hearted effort to save George after he fell into the river.

The film is decently photographed, but the music - gloomy and foreboding - is relentlessly manipulative. Someone in the audience asked Estes if he had considered using this film to teach middle schoolers about morality and groupthink. He said yes but it would be an unlikely occurrence, given its R rating based on sexual references and foul language.

The question gets at another issue, perhaps, namely that there is a none-too-subtle didacticism to the film. Filmed in Estacada and other sites near Portland. Still, the film has substance and is six cuts above the usual trash served up to young teens by Hollywood.

Nolan has made an unusual murder mystery how much money do mortuary makeup artists make California lowlifes. Leonard wants to find the killer. Trouble is, he cannot remember anything for longer than a derivatives options tutorial moments.

To compensate, he takes notes, snaps endless numbers of Polaroid photos, tracks things on a huge map, even has tattoos of clues written in his skin. Still, not only does the killer elude him, but the people who claim to want to help him typically prove to have their own nasty, self-serving agendas. The film starts in the present, goes a few minutes forward, fades, then goes back hours or days, starts mercato valutario forex again for a few minutes, and then spirals or cycles backward once again.

One set of givens is added to another, but in reverse order. We are as puzzled precious metals stock trading systems author carter confused by the disorder of things as Leonard.

This is the film's special strength: But in the long run it is just flashy gimmickry layered atop a neo-noir story about aramex dubai stock market bunch of sleazy people. Call of duty black ops edit game options, the whodunit mystery is more or less solved by the end, but we needn't dwell on spoiler details here.

The film reunites two stars from the film, The MatrixCarrie-Ann Moss Trinity and Joe Pantoliano Cypher. Memory disorders like Leonard's, by the way, are common in alcoholics Alcohol Amnestic Disorder but unusual in head injuries. Clinically, co-writers Christopher and Where to trade currency futures Nolan who are brothers deserve a prize for getting organic amnesia right.

Every other film I know of that features traumatic amnesia, where brain injury is allegedly the cause of memory loss, only demonstrates retrograde amnesia mind's a blank for everything prior to the knock on the headbut memory works fine afterwards. Sorry, folks, but that only occurs in psychogenic amnesias. SOME KIND OF MONSTER Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, US, Inthe legendary heavy metal rock band Metallica had reached the nadir of their year association.

No new album or tour for several years. Heck, they were barely able to speak to one another. A new album and tour were envisioned. The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills were hired to make a promotional film that would cover the recording sessions and tour. Before group sessions with Towle could even begin, however, long time bass player Jason Newsted quit the band. Metallica producer Bob Rock, a journeyman bassist himself, was tapped to fill in for the album.

The film gradually morphed into a full scale documentary, a rare two-year long, fly-on-the-wall chronicle that is part psychodrama and part musical odyssey as the band struggles to create new songs while living through a period of acrimony and doubts about their future together. After watching this film, you'll better appreciate such things as the effort that goes into making a rock album, the difficulties of keeping dueling alpha male musicians somehow working in harmony, and the huge profits to be made if you are lucky enough to become a useful performance coach for a mega-band like this one.

This film progresses well as a realistic, often humorous story of Kresten, a young man who thought he had escaped his roots — growing up on an impoverished farm, where his mother suicided, his only sib is schizophrenic, and his father is in decline. He has just married into a wealthy family when news arrives that his father has died, forcing his return to the farm to arrange care for his brother.

Not a great film but it features an excellent portrayal of Rud, the schizophrenic brother, by Jesper Asholt. MISTER FOE Hallam Foe David Mackenzie, UK,95 m. Things work themselves out in this play that is part romantic comedy, part whodunit, with themes of voyeurism and suicide circling about as well.

Filmed in Edinburgh, Glasgow and the border country near Peebles, Scotland. Here's a new recipe I recommend. Like the Biblical meal for 5, this recipe can serve an unlimited number of viewers.

But there is a darker side to this work that, lest you only think of Spain, is pertinent to our own economic circumstances here in the U. But above all he shows a fierce loyalty and devotion to both his friends and his principles. A wonderful acting turn.

This film keeps getting better and better as it progresses. MONSIEUR HIRE Patrice Leconte, France, Alice Sandrine Bonnaire is a beautiful but cunning, psychopathic woman who seems paradoxically titillated when she discovers she is the object of noctural spying by a neighbor, M.

Hire French comedian Michel Blanca sad, lonely, homely bachelor dressmaker. He becomes the prime suspect in the murder of a young woman in the neighborhood. Free riding stocks trade himself suspects that Alice's petty gangster boyfriend is the culprit and wants to protect her against this man.

But Alice has another agenda, and boldly pursues Hire to to help protect the boyfriend. She even frames Hire at the end, after he has offered her his devoted love and protection. The film leaves an unanswered question: What on earth are the mice for in his dressmaking salon?

And why does he arrange to kill them beside the railroad track before his planned departure for Switzerland with Alice? She was executed in October,after 10 years on death row. But what makes this film most memorable is the performance of Charlize Theron as Wuornos. It is absolutely one of the most stunning turns by any actress that I can recall. Theron until now has distinguished herself primarily as a gorgeous young woman, exquisite eye candy, with passable, though unplumbed, acting talent, poised somewhere on the cusp between starlet and star.

I had seen her in several small roles: None of these performances prepared me for her personification of Wuornos here. Much has already been written about this: Photos of Wuornos next to Theron in total money makeover message board, with makeup requiring 90 minutes of prep time daily during the shoot in newspaper articles show the uncanny similarities in their looks.

Her raw speech, her hair trigger temper, her grandiosity, her deep capacities for outrage, tenderness and love. This relationship and its consequences make a fascinating psychodynamic motif.

Her earn money by surfing internet of murders, though understandable in light of the violence repeatedly perpetrated upon her, is monstrous. She wins our sympathies even as her behavior sometimes repels us. Selby is not capable of love, not at her age, not when her personality is so unformed. How do you throw in for life with a lover who kills for the rent money?

For more on this film, see my article, "A Ride on the Ferris Wheel. Life and Death of a Serial Killer. MONSTER'S BALL Marc Forster, US, Hank Billy Bob Thornton follows in his hardbitten father's Peter Boyle footsteps as a death row corrections officer at the state prison near a small rural Georgia town.

Hank's son, Sonny Heath Monetary policy and stock market booms does the same. It is Sonny's first, and he has a disturbed visceral response, which Hank and his father label as a sign of weakness. Long simmering alienation between Hank and Sonny erupts, and Sonny kills himself.

Hank is transformed by the impact of this event, even to the point that he resigns from his job. Leticia Halle Berry is the ex-wife of the man recently executed.

As if this were not enough, she further suffers the accidental death of her son. This occurs under conditions that bring her into chance contact with Hank. They gradually move toward one another, two desperate and needy people who each have no one else to turn to but one another. Berry, Thornton and Boyle are excellent. Berry's range of expression is immense and unerring. The story unfolds quietly, matter-of-factly.

Its ending, leaving us with wonder about what the future holds for this unlikely couple, sets the right note of final ambiguity. The Ball, according to what Hank describes to Sonny in the film, is the name given to a party held by the corrections officers who participate in an execution, held the evening before.

But Roger Ebert says it originated in old England as a reference to a condemned man's last night on earth. An underappreciated film how much money do mortuary makeup artists make based on the true story of a Portland family. As the film opens it is 3 days since a crazed man shot and killed Diana at a local coffee shop, while attempting to shoot his estranged wife, a waitress there.

We then follow these three people over the next few hours and days, is the stock market open tomorrow on veterans day over subsequent weeks and months one of the fine aspects of this film is how its pacing of time shifts from slower to faster as the film unfolds.

Joe and Diana had planned to marry and settle here in her hometown. The wedding invitations had already gone out. Joe was to join Ben in business. But here, more importantly, the focus is on the contradictory nature of grief and the absurd manner in which friends blurt out inanities in their well intended but useless efforts to offer emotional support. Death and loss are awkward events that can evoke powerful yet paradoxical and convoluted emotional responses, and it is the special strength of this movie that it deals with these complexities in a fresh and honest manner.

And the story line compounds the twists and turns that demand an honest accounting. Silberling drew this story from personal experience. He grew close to her parents in the following years. Besides a is emc a good stock to buy deeply anchored in honesty and psychological realism, including many amusing little details of daily life, this film is made outstanding by uniformly first rate acting all three principals as well as Holly Hunter and Ellen Pompeo.

Some critics feel that the greater gravitas of In the Bedroom made that a superior film. The more paradoxical themes explored here, with a light side set against the dark, is more real. Roger Ebert gets the last word: It is sentimental but feels free to offend…. THE MORNING AFTER Sidney Lumet, US, THEME: A former cop comes to her rescue.

Fonda received her seventh Oscar nomination for her quite ordinary performance here. Says a lot more about political perseveration in the Academy than it does about their judgment of acting. A sequel in the worst sense to the hilarious film, Elling. In Ellingtwo psychiatrically institutionalized men were outplaced to share a state sponsored apartment in the community. The humorous core of Elling was the odd couple relationship between the agoraphobic, enervated, prissy Elling and his apartment roommate Kjell, an oafish but kindly, fearless, and sex crazed virgin.

Their escapades were full of fun, and the more sober subtext of naifs aiding one another to get along in the larger world was as tender as it was satirical.

Mom is properly concerned that after she passes, Elling might not be able to fend for himself. She decides the best thing is to arrange a trip abroad, on a group tour to Majorca, to help desensitize Elling to being out and about in public and enhance his coping skills. Of course he predictably resists the idea, then goes along, but finds fault in every instance of their adventures. There is no real chemistry of any sort between Mom and Elling. Without a character like Kjell to play against, Elling becomes tiresome to watch, not fun.

MORVERN CALLAR Lynne Ramsay, UK, I had read nothing optimal binary search tree in c program this film beforehand.

Curious title, I thought: Then I noticed that the eponymous woman was being played by Samantha Morton, and that neither she nor anyone else was saying much. And then the all but voiceless lead Pre-cog in Minority Report.

We've had a run of those lately. The slow early pace of the film does express Morvern's grief. It seems clear that she loved her deceased mate, Jim. But even in the party scenes, there are times when Morvern seems to disconnect, the camera finding her alone, staring off, pensive.

Ultimately Morvern leaves a pouty Lanna behind in the Spanish backcountry, and after that M. She and Lanna separately return home to old routines. But Morvern has changed; she feels restive. Whereas Lanna is content to stay put in their small seaside hometown, because everyone she knows is there, Morvern wants her horizons to expand.

At the end she moves on into a larger world of possibilities. This film, as you can see, resists easy pigeonholing: Morton is quite convincing in showing movement of her character, gradually and believably emerging from her shell of humdrum living complicated by bereavement. Morvern is a curious character study.

Yet she seems rootless and amoral, though perhaps no more so than many of her contemporary age mates. I think she also has more than a touch of larceny in her heart. She might have wanted to know what had happened to her Jimmie, innit. And whatever happened to the idea of honoring the deceased wishes for funeral and burial arrangements? What a Christmas present, after all! I think this slant does help illuminate some of Morvern's conduct.

THE MOTHER Roger Michell, UK, THEME: Once her husband passes, May, in her late 60s, seems lost, numb, aimless, unable to return to her suburban house. All of this seems predictable: She goes into the city London to stay with Paula, a single mom with unfulfilled pretensions of becoming a writer. Neither Paula nor Bobby, a busy fellow with a busy wife and two kids, really have time for Mom.

Again, no surprises here. Gradually we learn more. In a creative writing class run by Paula, May for the first time puts to paper the dreadful experience she recalls of feeling her life ruined by the drudgery of homemaking.

She even speaks of feeling suicidal on occasion in earlier years. May is nothing if not matter of fact, unsentimental. It is easy to believe that she would have wanted Paula to stand on her own two feet, and that the dependent Paula would have reacted to this form of supportive love as no love at all. May does so and takes a liking to Darren, a man half her age, serving him lunches and snacks on the job.

This continues, perhaps for weeks. They have sex one evening and it is a horrid experience for May, quite opposite to the satisfaction she finds with Darren. Darren tells May he needs time out, if only he could get off the treadmill of work and bill paying for six months.

May offers to finance just such a sojourn: These precarious circumstances cannot stand, of course. In a fury, Paula confronts her mother and hits her. Also in a rage while high on cocaine, Darren makes it clear to May that he wants the money she is willing to use for their getaway, but has no intention of going anywhere with her. May is defeated, crushed, of course. In the final scenes, obviously superfluous now, standing on the outside observing the busy activities of everyone else — Bobby and his family, Darren, Paula - May retreats, goes home to her house.

She packs a bag and, in the final scene, option trading company sa nv walking away from the house, neither confident nor broken. May obviously and justifiably yearns for fulfillment sexual, artistic, companionate in widowhood that she was unable to find earlier in life.

And sexual acting out during bereavement is common. But May is also portrayed as a realistic and intelligent woman. Or even in leaving her sketchbook around for the others to see. For him to turn out to be so mean spirited and selfish, qualities perhaps evoked by his cocaine use but not caused by it, is surprising, unexpected. Film critics understandably suffer from the boredom induced by seeing hundreds of films set to familiar formulas.

It is not uncommon for a movie to get high marks just because it deviates from established patterns. The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Errol Morris, US, Morris keeps getting better as a filmmaker, and nothing he's done so far is more important than this extraordinary study of the human capacity to hold blindly to convictions, to cherished beliefs, in the face of all the available facts and logic.

Here once again, as in Fast, Cheap and Out of ControlMorris discovers and interviews a person with a truly weird occupation.

Fred Leuchter found a niche no one was filling: The first half of the film chronicles the development of this unusual lifework. Leuchter grew up in the shadow of such a prison, in Massachusetts, where his father worked as a guard. As a child he once sat in the prison's electric chair and explored death row cells where, among others, Sacco and Vanzetti had been housed.

Forexpros usd thb learned pickpocketing skills from inmates. Leuchter is nothing if not impassioned - he shows in many ways a tendency to commit himself headlong to deep involvement in anything he tries, whether or not it is in his best interests.

He drinks 40 cups of coffee a day and smokes 6 packs of cigarettes. He grew up believing in capital punishment. But from his contact with inmates, he formed the view that prisoners on death row were no different from other people, and deserved not to suffer while being monte carlo simulation in excel without using add ins. Hence his occupation, motivated it seems by a peculiar innocent humanity.

But, as Leuchter himself is the first to admit, the fact that he became proficient in designing one form of machine electric chairs provided no guarantee that he could design machines operating on very different principles lethal injection machines, gas chambers, lynching platforms.

Yet he iowa feeder cattle auctions recruited to design all of these by officials in several states, by default really, since there were no other experts to consult. By the same logic, there is no reason to expect that this untrained and uncredentialed man, lacking licensure in engineering and having had no formal training in chemistry or chemical analysis, or forensic science, could act competently as an expert witness to determine scientifically whether people were gassed at Nazi concentration camps, simply because he had consulted on the design of a prison gas chamber or two.

But that is exactly what he agreed to become, in a career turn that has been his undoing. This story makes up the second half of Morris's film. Ernst Zundel, a German national living in Canada and an outspoken Holocaust revisionist, was indicted under an intriguing Canadian law, an exception to free speech, which holds that it is a felony to publish material the goal of which is to cause harm to a racial or ethnic minority.

In tracts denying the fact of the Holocaust, Zundel had violated this law, the government contended. And Zundel's defense lawyers sent for Leuchter, hoping he could somehow disprove that gas was used in the camps, that they were not death camps but rather slave labor camps, an assertion they thought might let Zundel off the hook.

Leuchter fairly jumped at the chance, ironically spending his honeymoon in surreptitiously analyzing the design of the gas chambers at Auschwitz and chipping away material from their crumbling walls, defacing the ruins while illegally collecting these specimen to have them later tested for cyanide. As shown later, he hadn't the slightest idea what he was doing.

He didn't know the most rudimentary facts about cyanide, for example, that it only penetrates stone to a thickness of 10 microns, far more shallow than the diameter of a human hair, so that his deeply chipped, pulverized rock samples could not possibly test positive. Nor did he review any of the Nazi archival material that alludes to cyanide gas procured for the camps.

His report offered in testimony at the Kundel trial was thoroughly discredited, and Kundel was found guilty. But this did not stop Leuchter from becoming a darling of the Holocaust revisionist lecture circuit worldwide, a status in which he basked. However, he became labeled as an antisemitic at home, and, one thing leading to another, he lost work in his execution machine trade, and subsequently lost his home, money and wife, in a sad downward spiral of events which apparently is not over yet.

How could anyone have had Leuchter's audacity to suppose that such an endeavor as his Auschwitz misadventure was necessary or justified?

How could he brazenly and knowingly deface the ruins of the chambers at Auschwitz, a protected national monument? How could he decide, once and for all, while in Poland, that he was absolutely correct in assuming that people were never gassed there by the Nazis, a conviction that has never yielded to the facts the historical record, chemical scientific expertise presented at Kundel's trial and even in this film which Leuchter has watched and said he enjoyed.

Robert Jan van Pelt, a Holocaust historian, calls Leuchter " But Morris takes some pains not to so categorize him. Indeed, one of the strengths of this film is its nonjudgmental, balanced account that, if anything, gives Leuchter far more "air time" to exposit his perspective than his detractors are given.

Of course Morris must know full well that his audiences will see the monstrous side of Leuchter without the need for props: Morris simply gives Leuchter enough rope to hang himself. Apart from its content, it should be noted that this film shows much evidence of technical genius. It is one stock brokers in jamshedpur the most artistically crafted documentaries I have ever seen.

The opening and closing credit sequences are stunning: Early on we get to know Leuchter glimpsing part of his face surreally in a car's rear view mirror. Chamber music sets a sweetly haunting counterpoint to the macabre content of the film. The editing is superb, seamless, often surprising. When Leuchter goes to Poland inthe shots from the cockpit of the plane he takes are from Leni Riefenstahl's footage from a plane carrying Hitler to Nuremberg from her film Triumph of the Will.

This inventiveness, this mixing of artifice with fact, is a method of seeking what Werner Herzog calls "ecstatic truth" - a transcendental truth about human nature that goes beyond the biographical facts of one man's life.

Morris's purpose, by telling us the story of Fred Leuchter, is to show us an important and very worrisome thing about all of us: Like every problematic facet of human nature, there is enormous potential for both good and evil in this tendency. We speak of a person having the "courage of their convictions" as a positive virtue and, under certain circumstances, even as an act of heroism. Richard Gere plays Mr. Jones, a man with bipolar disorder, and does it very well indeed.

Especially good are his states of manic elation, when he is infectiously euphoric, gabby, hypersexual, intrusive, and unafraid of a fight. He lands in the hospital when manic, after causing a fracas at his workplace.

Later he is admitted again when he is suicidally depressed. He is less convincing when depressed. He moves too quickly between a dejected, emotionally impoverished, slowed down mental state and sudden bursts of energetic behavior.

But then mixed states in which manic and depressive symptoms are found side by side do occur in this disorder. Also noteworthy is Mr. Unfortunately, a rather tawdry romantic subtext - in which his psychiatrist, Dr. Libbie Bowen Lena Olinfalls for Mr.

Jones - is tacked on to this story. Bowen starts crossing the professional line almost at first meeting, when she shouts angrily at Jones, then drives him around town in a chummy manner. This unethical, cheesy relationship is out of tune with the intelligent take on bipolar disorder rendered by Mr.

Gere, who researched the role by spending some time with psychiatric patients. B-; clinical depiction of bipolar disorder: The men are all less woeful, the women all less strong, and one of the weakest women — Lady Bradshaw - here is as overbearing and menacing as her husband was made out to be in the novel, while Sir William is a sort of pussycat.

Michael Kitchen could have been quite good as the failed, hopelessly dependent Peter Walsh, but the lines he is given by screenwriter Atkins do not reveal the enormity of his spinelessness. Rupert Graves is adequate as the hapless, psychotically depressed Septimus. And Lena Headey is fine as the young Sally Seton. In The Hourswe can provisionally accuse Stephen Daldry and David Hare, or their producers, of creeping male chauvinism when they substitute suffering for stamina in their female characters.

Dalloway was made by women! PALFREY AT THE CLAREMONT Dan Ireland, UK,m. Dame Joan Plowright plays an elderly, recently widowed woman who attempts to cope with her grief and loneliness by moving into a residential hotel in west central London.

How unlike the bleak retrenchment in monotonously familiar surroundings that so many people in her circumstances settle for, and thus how admirable an idea. To her dismay, the hotel is quite rundown and inhabited by other older persons each living in a rut all their own.

Palfrey, agreeing to act the part of her grandson and thus satisfy the curiosity of the other residents, in return for which he asks to conduct interviews of her to savage mark ii aftermarket stocks him write a book.

Friend is a good sport about his role, but he is required to wear wretchedly nerdy attire and act too preciously sweet, which dooms his relationship with Mrs. Palfrey to a cloying caricature. Plowright herself is splendidly dignified, deadpan when called for, and believable throughout. Her presence as the lead also attracted several marvelous British character actors to work on the film.

Among the other hotel residents are actor Robert Lang, 70, a favorite of Ms. Dame Joan told Ireland that Bateson has always had this gift, not infrequently a cause of frustration for other actors who might have preferred an audience to watch them instead. Ireland told us that the screenplay was the very first ever written utvi.indian stock market an 85 year old woman, Ruth Sacks.

The ensemble of aging actors, with Dame Joan at their center, is the reason to do you pay tax on forex profits uk this film.

The story, a geriatric sitcom at one level, is also a telling commentary on the isolation of many elders, even when sharing the same residence and meals. This film is a brilliantly realized documentary about Kahn and the people most touched by this forceful, mysterious man.

Kahn's son, Nathaniel, a man with a handful of modest screenwriting and acting credits until now, manages here in his filmmaking debut to create a monumental work of his own, weaving a rich tapestry of three threads: There are interviews with several major architects who knew Kahn well, some of his associates, and members of his three separate and concurrent families.

Nathaniel Kahn must be a delightful fellow to chat with, because the interview material he shares is incredibly full and candid, so revealing of Louis Kahn and of the individuals who speak about him. The overall outcome is a deeply edifying, inspirational tribute to Kahn, one in which subjectivity accents - harmonizes with - the objective record. It swells the heart. MY BEST FIEND Werner Herzog, Germany, Herzog's chronicle of his incredible love-hate relationship with Klaus Kinski.

Kinski's demonic paroxysms of violent rage are earn money selling poop documented here, as are his occasional capacity for tenderness and his remarkable acting talents. This is not the best crafted of documentaries, but I give it my highest grade because it will add a fundamental chapter to the permanent archive of late 20th century cinema history.

The films these men made together are international forex trading companies in their ambition and realization Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo. At heart they are utterly Germanic: It is far better that these demons are turned to film than to politics.

In German with English dubbing by Herzog, who narrates. Absorbing study of a neurotic family in which an intense childhood attachment between a brother Daniel Auteuil and sister Catherine Deneuve is animated with renewed force when their powerful mother Marthe Villalonga becomes ill. Peter Mullan won a best actor award at Cannes for this rough and entirely realistic portrayal of an unemployed recovering alcoholic man struggling to succeed in a down-and-out Glasgow neighborhood.

The temptations of a well intentioned caseworker who crosses the line into romance with Joe, leading to disastrous consequences, provides an equally real cautionary tale for folks in helping services. A fine film, aided by the thoughtful English subtitles, a necessity since everyone here talks in working class Glaswegian. For more about it, see my article titled " Good to the Last Drop.

MY NAME IS WALTER CROSS David Laing Dawson, Canada,51 m. Canadian psychiatrist Review about robots in binary options bullying wove together elements from the experiences of several of his schizophrenic patients to create this monologue about the experience of schizophrenia in the daily life of one man, played by the actor Marcel Aymar.

It is quite authentic and austere, emphasizing the aimless drudgery of life for so many patients, without productive activities, numbed by medications, socially isolated, sometimes agitated by voices in public, leading to encounters with police.

This, unfortunately, represents the fate of so many mentally ill individuals consigned to a marginal life in the larger community, a far cry from the once promised forex trader full time for true re-engagement in society, a dream only realized for a fortunate few in the occasional, exceptional social reintegration programs, effective programs that tend to cost money taxpayers are usually unwilling to support.

The actress Krystyna Feldman performs a stunning cross-gender turn portraying this eccentric fellow, who is said to have created over 40, primitive drawings and paintings in his lifetime, with an eclectic subject matter that included everything from religious icons to urban landscapes, crowds of people, and the occasional nude woman. The film portrays him as a proud, defiant, stubbornly intractable man who supported himself both as a beggar and by selling his little works of art, most small in scale.

Nikifor suffered from a very serious case of tuberculosis during the last eight years of his life the period covered by this film or more, but this did not prevent him from drawing and painting nearly non-stop, enjoying pop music on the radio, and maintaining an appreciative eye for attractive young women.

As interpreted by Ms. The film focuses on the relationship between Nikifor and a younger artist trained in the academy, Marian Wlosinski Roman Gancarczykwhose own career was lackluster. Marian — at first reluctantly, later quite selflessly — took care of the old man and was responsible, no doubt, for prolonging his life by several years and bringing his work to wide critical and public attention.

Continuity could have been managed more tidily. Things jump forward at times in a confusing fashion. The production could probably have been filmed and edited to run for an hour. MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO Gus Van Sant, US,min. A few intriguing supporting players, especially William Richert as Bob Pigeon, the older, seamy ringleader of a band of young street people, and one local celebrity TV-appliance pitchman Tom Peterson help round out the cast in this bleak film about the workings of selfishness and luck on human destiny.

Mike is said to suffer from narcolepsy. Indeed we often see him slump into apparent daytime sleep attacks. And many of the scenes of the Idaho hills are perhaps vivid hallucinations of the sort seen commonly in this disorder there are surreal touches like rapidly moving clouds filmed by time lapse, and an old barn that magically is elevated skyward before crashing to earth. But Mike also twitches around a fair amount when aramex dubai stock market, suggesting seizure activity that is not at all a part of true narcolepsy.

In some cases of complex partial seizures, also called temporal lobe epilepsy, brief lapses of consciousness resembling the transient sleep attacks of narcolepsy may be accompanied by motor seizure activity. This film is no match for either Drugstore Cowboy or Midnight Cowboythe classic about male sex hustlers in New York City, though Idaho has its moments.

Even though the screenplay is weak and aimless, the photography and scene making are on the whole splendid. An especially clever montage takes place in an adult bookshop, along a wall of male sex magazines. Reeves, Phoenix and other men first appear in stills as cover models on these magazines, then come to life in an eight-way conversation.

MY SON THE FANATIC Udayan Prasad, UK, This is a sad, tender story of Parvez the marvelous Om Purian East Indian taxi driver living in the north of England, and his travails with his disaffected wife and college student son, who rejects the father's assimilation into Anglo culture and becomes a radical Muslim.

Parvez finds solace in jazz, whiskey and a prostitute Rachel Griffiths who loves him. The arresting nature of this film begins with the opening credits, behind which we see odd little particles falling against a white background. What the devil are these things? The main thrust of this intense story is about how the teenage destinies of two boys are shaped by traumatic events that befall them during the summer when they were 8, members of the same Little League baseball team.

Neil moves from that experience to male prostitution as a teen in his Kansas hometown, then on to more of the same in New York City. The other boy, Brian otc currency options explained by George Webster as a child, and by Brady Corbet as a teenis a fearful, unskilled, nerdy kid forced to join the team by his harsh father. One night, after a game, he somehow has a five hour lapse, a period for which he has no memory.

Afterwards he is prone to bloody noses and fainting spells. His standard bank trading forex shy, cloistered life during his teen years is dominated by his wish to know what occurred during this lapse, a desperate curiosity fueled by recurrent, distressing nightmares of being touched and probed by a mysterious being.

Brian gets the notion that he was abducted by aliens arriving in a UFO. The film ends at one of its most tender moments, as these two young men talk and console one another. This equally thoughtful film focuses on the children the coach leaves town and the film after that one summer when the boys were 8. Trauma in childhood certainly shapes subsequent personality development. But conversely, the way in which trauma affects development depends on the preexisting temperament of the individual. Neil was inclined toward homosexuality and also was a resilient kid by age 8, a proud kid unwilling to be a victim.

And so he remained. We also see in this film that the parents are either missing or preoccupied with work or their love lives, thus adding an additional risk factor for problems, as was also demonstrated in another good recent film about pedophilia, L. Moments of shattering brutality and, more often, unexpected tenderness punctuate this film.

For the record, in an NPR interview on July 9, Mr. Araki made it clear that steps were taken to assure that the child actors were not aware of the story line; their scenes were shot separately from the rest of the film. They pause to etch their names in a fresh slab of sidewalk concrete.

This introduction sets the stage for a long and unhappy film, a dark story about the indelible nature of violence, its casualties, and revenge. Sean Kevin Bacon grew up to be a state police crime detective.

Jimmy Sean Penn served prison time for robbery as a young man but apparently then went straight when his first wife died and their daughter, Katie, needed a stable parent. He remarried, to Annabeth Laura Linneyand runs a neighborhood grocery. The three men are no longer close, though Jimmy and Dave live just a few doors from each other. Things turn very bad one night when Katie, now 19, is murdered. That same night Dave comes home late with bloody knuckles and a story of having been assailed by a mugger.

Sean is assigned to the murder case, with his partner, Sgt. Whitey Powers Laurence Fishburne. The remainder of the film works at one level as a straightforward crime investigation whodunit. But why should all of this be roiling up now? Well, it's true that his son has reached about the same age as Dave when he was abducted.

What did happen that involved Dave range bound trading strategies forex the night Katie was killed? Celeste wonders if Dave killed Katie. He does admit drinking at the same bar Katie visited that night.

But what sense does that make? Marcia Gay Harden is also convincing as a woman whose doubts about her husband are understandable precisely because they reflect his sense of culpability and self doubt. For Jimmy and Dave, perhaps for most of the men, there is a turgid air of fatalism afoot in this film, of men playing out accustomed, deeply ingrained roles with the force of inevitability. Critic Stanley Kauffmann, noting how many others have described this story as a tragedy, says that these characters lack hubris, some other character flaw, or some burst of enlightenmentthe classic building blocks of tragic drama.

And so, he says, the inevitable path of Mystic River is toward pathos, not tragedy. Sounds like some folks we know who hang out in Washington, D.

And the indelible psychic scars carried by Dave since his childhood catastrophe most surely constitute a character flaw big enough to drive a truck through. THE NANNY La Balia Marco Bellocchio, Italy, In Rome, in the early s, Dr. Mori is a kindly psychiatrist who tries to aid his disturbed patients on an all female ward, using observation, gentle respect, and engagement with them in everyday pastimes.

His wife Vittoria is a neurotic woman whose fear of closeness is brought into bold relief when their first child, a son, is born, and she is unable to properly hold, love or breastfeed the baby. A wet nurse is needed, and Dr. Mori travels into the countryside to find a peasant woman for the task. He meets Annetta, whom he and we had briefly seen at the start of the film from the train that was carrying Dr.

Mori home after a house call in another town. Annetta agrees to leave her own young son to take the job. She is obviously comfortable with the Moris' infant, so much so that Vittoria feels sufficiently threatened and stricken with her own ineptitude that she leaves, setting up housekeeping separately at the Moris' country house.

Mori, who is loving toward his infant son, also touchingly and perhaps inevitably draws closer to Annetta. He reads to the illiterate woman a letter from her husband, who is an imprisoned teacher and revolutionary, and Dr. Mori himself is moved by the eloquence of the other man's words to Annetta.

Mori to teach her to read and write, and he does so, awkwardly but tenderly. There is never a hint of sexual or romantic movement. It would be out of character for the times for an aristocratic gentleman to fall for a peasant woman, however bright, capable and loving as she might be, and it is not in him to attempt to take advantage of her sexually.

Likewise, Bellocchio does not try to take advantage of the viewer by exploiting sex. In fact this film, while it affords opportunities for both sex and violence, never indulges in either, an extraordinarily refreshing and noncommercial achievement. Nor are any such panderings necessary - this film sustains an astonishing level of dramatic interest without beddings or battles. At the end Dr.

Mori prepares a letter for Annetta to send to her husband. It is based on his sense of her as a person more than on her explicit words. It is a poetic statement of her desire to be free to go her own way.

He could as easily have been writing these words from his own heart to his wife, Vittoria. There is one somewhat inarticulate subplot: Focusing on the attachment of mother and infant as the central mystery of intimacy, this film surely offers one of the finest explorations of this bond ever rendered for the screen. The Nanny is a remarkably complete film that plays in a manner as steady, unsentimental and unmanipulative as a good novel.

Visually it is a rich, lush feast for the eye. The acting of the three principals is subtle, nuanced and true to the characters. The story is a beautiful meditation on intimacy and its vicissitudes, based on a novella by Luigi Pirandello, the early 20th century Sicilian psychological story writer who later turned playwright. Pirandello's work is familiar territory for Bellocchio, who wrote the screenplay and directed here, for in the mids he made a film of Pirandello's play about personal identity and sanity, Henry IVstarring Marcello Mastroianni.

Although that film was all right, this one is better by far. One wonders what the market might be for a film of this sort. And how often do period films garner top awards, without central themes like conventional romantic comedy Shakespeare in Love or lacerating conflict Characterto name two recent Oscar winners.

It's not that worthy films are not or should not be made around any of these themes. I'm only saying that the "homely" positive virtues of human nature are not highly esteemed subjects for film today.

This unfashionable film may be doomed to very narrow distribution indeed. And that is terribly unfortunate, for without ever being dry or dull The Nanny is an uncommon triumph of enduring human and aesthetic values over pop zeitgeists and commercialism. FREUD AND HITLER IN VIENNA Manfred Becker, Canada,60 min. For about 6 years, from toSigmund Freud and Adolf Hitler lived about two blocks apart in Vienna, though there is no record to suggest they ever met.

Nor would it have been likely, since Freud was a middle aged physician living in not uncomfortable circumstances, while Hitler was an impoverished youth living in a rooming house, struggling to make a living as an artist and a life for himself, having escaped the abusive household where he grew up. In this made-for-cable-TV production, Canadian documentarist Becker nevertheless uses their physical proximity in those years as a premise to suggest another kind of connection between the two men: Freud, of course, refined and popularized the concept of unconscious emotional forces as the engine of human motivation.

Freud advocated emancipation from such irrational, hidden passions through rational understanding by way of psychoanalysis making the unconscious conscious. Hitler, on the other hand, was masterful in speaking to the unconscious strivings and frustrations of the German people, mobilizing their primitive emotions to forge a mass movement based on narcissistic and vengeful sentiments.

Becker, who was present at this screening, at the 2nd "Frames of Mind" mental health film festival in Vancouver, BC, was born in post-war Germany and looks to be about And he is surely correct when he asserts during the discussion that we seem to have a continuing need for reminders of the evil of the Nazis, because such evil keeps reoccurring in places like Rwanda and Darfur.

We hear that while in Vienna, Hitler admired Jewish artists and sold his paintings to a Jewish art dealer, and that his application to enter the Vienna academy for art training was rejected. Makes you wonder all over again how the world might have turned if Hitler had just become a middling painter.

She also offers the most trenchant line in the film when she says that, "In my eyes, both Adolf Hitler and my grandfather were false prophets of the 20th century. THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER Charles Laughton, US, Unusual, strong film that works with equal effectiveness as a psychodrama and allegorical morality tale, a classic encounter between good and evil. Evil is personified by "the Reverend" Harry Powell Robert Mitchuma psychopathic, predatory, impotent, knife wielding serial killer of women and fake preacher.

Good comes in the form of Rachel Cooper Lillian Gishan older woman whose aging sweet little girl looks belie grit, courage and a keen determination to protect her charges: Pretending to be the former prison chaplain, Powell seeks out the widow, Willa Shelley Winters, one of filmdom's most reliable female victimsmarries her, kills her, and terrorizes her children, who, he is convinced, know where the money is stashed.

The children run away but are pursued by Powell in a long, magical chase that seems, as Roger Ebert suggests, more dreamlike than realistic, leading eventually to a showdown with Mrs.

Cooper, who has taken the children in. There surely is some corn in this film, surrounding Mrs. Cooper and the forces of nature that seem to protect the fleeing children. But on the whole this is powerful stuff. Pauline Kael called it "one of the most frightening movies ever made" and Ebert agrees. This was Laughton's only film directing venture but, according to a recent review by Ebert, a highly inventive one.

Laughton made huge changes in James Agee's original screenplay, most for the better, according to his widow, Elsa Lanchester. Mitchum himself worked effectively with the child actors, whom Laughton lost patience with. NIGHT OF THE IGUANA John Huston, US, The film that, for better or worse, put Puerto Vallarta on the world tourism map. Film provides a good illustration of an alcoholic man Burton who is looked after by a codependent caretaker Kerr.

Bet you didn't know your insurance agent was filing reports with the home office about your emotional reaction after trying to sell you a bells and whistles whole life policy when all you wanted was term. My mother was like that: But her strong will and fierce temper were the shadow side of a forceful nature that had very positive attributes as well: She lived a vigorous life until shortly before her death, just 2 months shy of her 99th birthday. She is interviewed at length here, as is her daughter - Halpern's mother - and a few other close relatives.

She tells us she's not afraid of death, only of suffering. When we die, she says, "We go nowheres. I think I could have an orgasm.

He found jobs and housing for others from the old country and had a fine reputation back home for his efforts. Also, Maria and Kerouac were "an item" for awhile back then. The Livorneses are mentioned in Kerouac's book, "The Town and The City. We see into family secrets, old affairs and jealousies. Mary's father once shot another man who was trying to seduce her mother, and that man's relatives cut the father's face with a knife in retaliation, marking him with an ugly scar for life.

Mary is convinced that daughters always feel closer to their fathers, sons to their mothers.

So it was for her. So she expected it to be for her children, and so on. And her daughter, Halpern's mother, also has good screen presence. Near the end Mary sings "You Are My Sunshine.

I can hear her now. This new film affords an opportunity to reconsider the early Dylan, and to reflect upon the contributions of his particular developmental stage or phase-of-life to his appeal and success. These issues are taken up in depth in my article, " How Many Roads Must a Kid Walk Down NO PLACE TO GO Oskar Roehler, Germany, An East German writer, Hanna was famous for her idealistic pro-Communist novels.

In fact she lived as a hypocrite, doted on as a celebrity, buying her clothes at Dior, while trashing materialism. But when the Berlin Wall comes down, Hanna is discredited and lost. She desperately turns everywhere, but finds she literally has no place to go. Unusually fine film portrayal of clinical depression.

NOBODY KNOWS Dare mo shiranai Kore-Eda, Hirokazu, Japan,min. Fortunately for us, Mr. A remarkable though very long, slowly paced film. NOBODY'S CHILD Lee Grant, US,94 min. This made-for-TV film stars Marlo Thomas in a superb dramatization of the real life story of Marie Balter, who rose from the status of chronically institutionalized mental patient to become a noteworthy champion of the mentally ill and founder of the Balter Institute in Ipswich, Massachusetts, a well regarded psychiatric rehabilitation center north of Boston, near Danvers, site of the Danvers State Hospital where Ms.

Balter was incarcerated for many years during the first few decades of her life, until a fresh infusion of compassionate care resulted in her return to the community for good in her mids. Miss Thomas gives a stupendous performance as the woman who was written off for years as an incurable schizophrenic, a serious misdiagnosis as it turned out, an all too typical fate for many persons warehoused in state institutions of the era without the benefit of proper diagnostic or therapeutic interventions.

We even see her slow recovery of gait and other motor functions after years of sitting neglected on ward sofas, developing contractures simply from not using her body.

Noi Tomas Lemarquis is a high school student in a tiny, severely isolated coastal village in the fjord region of northern Iceland. He loves and appreciates his grandmother, with whom he lives, and tries in vain to connect with his alcoholic father his mother is absent and not spoken of.

He regularly whips the local book dealer at some board game they play and is quite taken with the dealer's daughter, Iris, who has come home from the city to cool her jets for awhile. This nest proves in time to be his salvation. Or is it his curse? Lemarquis projects an intriguing screen presence: He's supposed to be 17 here, and pulls it off well enough, though he could be He is self-contained and austere, but we can see that he is capable of affection and outrage, that his sullenness is more the product of ennui than a character flaw.

The difficulty of an eccentric person fitting in and finding acceptance and understanding in a small village is also probed in another recent film from Iceland, Stormy Weather. NOT ONE LESS Zhang Yimou, China, Zhang uses ordinary people to play roles like they have in real life to tell a story of a teenage girl who becomes a substitute teacher in a threadbare rural school, charged by the regular teacher to forbid further attrition dropouts are commonplace because of poverty.

When two students immediately leave - one a runner swept away by an urban sports school, the other who goes to the city to make money for the family, the teacher goes after him.

This is a thoroughly absorbing, sweet story of a young woman of indomitable will who wants to do things right.

THE NOTEBOOK Nick Cassavetes, US,min. The time is the present. Each day another resident at the center, Duke James Garnerreads to this woman from the text of a love story. As he begins to read each section, this part of the story-within-the-story is enacted. The couple in love are two high spirited young people, Noah Ryan Gosling and Allie Rachel McAdamswho enjoy a summer romance in rural South Carolina just before the outbreak of WW II.

The war separates them, but, in the late 40s, when on the brink of marrying a man who has everything, Allie rediscovers Noah and impulsively throws herself into his arms.

Will she end by choosing to renounce her engagement to handsome bizwhiz Lon James Marsden in favor of Noah, her passionate first love who still carries a brightly burning torch for her? The suspenseful, imaginatively structured screenplay, based on a novel by Nicholas Sparks and an adaptation by Jan Sardi, was written by the child psychologist turned screenwriter, Jeremy Leven, who also wrote and directed the delightfully witty Don Juan DeMarco.

The cast is somewhat uneven. Gosling is terrific as the young swain: Now 24, this is the third major film role for the Canadian from London, Ontario, following his Danny Balint in The Believerand Leland in The United States of Leland.

We will certainly be seeing more of him in the future. She often substitutes an annoying sort of giddy giggle for a more measured or nuanced evocation of pleasure or abandon. She almost never disappoints think of her turns in The Ice Storm, Nixon and The Contender.

Not an easy task for an actress whose performances have always been marked by an extremely vivid emotionality, a force that always declares that somebody is indeed residing within her. This was also a problem for Dame Judi Dench in portraying the dementing author, Iris Murdoch, in the film Iris. It is only toward the end of Notebook that Miss Rowlands gives a more variegated and convincing enactment of the behavior of Alzheimer patients, changing abruptly from a calm state to one of hostile agitation.

Now we can also see the ebb and flow of her memory, and even moments when the gleam in her eye seems devoid of feeling or meaning. NOTES ON A SCANDAL Richard Eyre, UK,89 m. Brilliant psychodrama about an intense relationship that develops between two London high school teachers.

Both women are complex characters, vulnerable, needy, and these shared attributes draw them toward one another. Barbara reaches out to befriend Sheba after this, and we gradually come to understand that Barbara, a spinster, is in fact a well closeted lesbian who remains bereft after another teacher spurned her and actually fled her job and the city to get away from Barbara the previous summer.

Trouble is, Sheba is preoccupied not only with the challenge of her new career, but also with her unfulfilling marriage to an older writer, Richard Bill Nighyand the demands of her post pubescent, boy struck daughter, Polly Juno Temple and Downs son Ben Max Lewis. Barbara fortuitously discovers their affair, lets Sheba know she knows, then hastens to pledge to keep their secret, if only Sheba will end her little romance before real damage is done.

It is through this manipulation that Barbara intends to intensify her grip on Sheba. From here a series of misadventures unfolds, and no one is spared a stiff dose of humiliation and dislocation: A scandal of broad proportions is indeed in the making.

The director, Richard Eyre, has done very good work with Judi Dench before, in Iris. Notes on a Scandal. There are two developments in particular that test us. The answer in both cases has to do with the vulnerability, the longing, that these women have been enduring, expressed by each in a manner consistent with her psychological makeup.

Both are close to desperation. Presumably she was already molded as a severe neurotic long before she ever married Richard. But she persevered admirably, it seems, raising two kids, one an especially tough challenge, but now, stressed by her new teaching job and out of love at home, her reserves have run dry and she is at high risk for impulsive behavior. Barbara, we can surmise, has struggled through painful decades of despair over her largely unfulfilled homophilia.

Her mode of relating to people - her students, Sheba, everyone else - is to control them completely. Sheba is correct to call her a "vampire" near the end: Barbara really lacks the capacity for genuine regard for others; she merely manipulates people to indulge her own narcissistic vanities. This, for example, makes her at the same time an uncaring teacher but a brilliant disciplinarian. She can be utterly "objective. We can also palpably feel her neediness, which is manifested so poignantly when she loses control, i.

And so, despite her offensiveness, we can see in her a sympathetic, if deeply twisted, character. This is a splendidly constructed and enacted drama of the heart, full of scathing humor all from Barbara as well as cliff hanger suspense and taut emotional tension.

All the players named are good, and they are aided by others: NOW, VOYAGER Irving Rapper, US, This thoughtful, if melodramatic, film, adapted from a novel by Olive Higgins Prouty, cast Bette Davis as Charlotte Vale, a woman nearing 30, who lives under the severely oppressive, controlling dominion of her mother, a rich widow in an upper crust Boston Brahmin family.

Mother, played as a humorless, shrewd, nastily unsentimental dowager by Gladys Cooper, decides everything for Charlotte: As a result of a lifetime of such psychological abuse, Charlotte has been reduced to a sullen, overweight, chronically depressed recluse, shut away in her third floor bedroom, sneaking smokes and making carved ivory trinket boxes for no one in particular.

A perceptive cousin arranges for a leading psychiatrist to come calling, Dr. In this setting, Charlotte thrives. Or has she needed specific psychotherapeutic assistance to improve? Jaquith had told the family that Charlotte has a severe emotional illness.

No suggestion is given that she receives any physical form of treatment. Yet we never see even a smidge, a single brief scene, of a therapy session between them.

We do see them chatting together often in more informal circumstances. Several times we see Dr. Jaquith encouraging Charlotte to rely on herself, on her own opinions, judgments and wishes. All tolled, she spends six months away from mother, first at the hospital, then traveling abroad, alone.

By agreement all around, she then returns to live with her mother again. By this time she has had a makeover in terms of grooming and wardrobe, learned to fend for herself, and had a near affair with a married man, Jerry Paul Henreidin Rio of all places. She returns to the family home determined to follow Dr. Charlotte perseveres and steadies herself without compromising her hard won sense of self.

The final part of the film is complex. Charlotte sets aside a marriage proposal from a well to do widower who does not share her passions. She continues to carry a torch for Jerry, estranged from his wife but still married. They see one another when Jerry comes to Boston on business and restate their love of one another and, at the same time, the impossibility of their situation.

Charlotte meets Tina and they become fast friends. In time she takes Tina home to Boston as a sort of informal foster parent, and Jerry comes to visit. Jaquith seems more a coach than a psychodynamic therapist. His methods are those of kindly support, teaching, and repeatedly giving advice for effective living.

His advice is absolutely sound and reasonable, and would be considered as valid within the framework of supportive psychotherapy as practiced today as it was in this screenplay. One also cannot underestimate the importance of a caring social milieu, as shown at the sanitarium in this film, in the rehabilitation of patients with severe neurotic and adjustment problems.

After visiting awhile with Charlotte, he tells Mother point blank that she has nearly destroyed her daughter. Somehow, mother tolerates this without making dog food of Dr.

Jaquith, although that would have been more in character for her. This view was so fervently held by some mental health professionals that, for them, the very existence of the disorder was proof of faulty parenting.

Today, of course, we believe that severe mental problems result from a far more complex interaction of factors, including genetic influences as well as a variety of childhood and adolescent experiences and life events. NOWHERE IN AFRICA Caroline Link, Germany, TWO COMING OF AGE STORIES: ONE ABOUT A CHILD, THE OTHER ABOUT HER MOTHER. The amazing discoveries one makes through film! This is the story of one such family, adapted by Link from a autobiographical novel of the same name by Stefanie Zweig, who, like her film counterpart, Regina Redlich, arrived with her mother in Nairobi inwhen she was 5 years old, there to be reunited with her father, a lawyer by training back in Germany but now eking out a subsistence living as an isolated farm manager.

Nowhere is a gorgeously photographed, long minutesslowly paced film that interweaves several themes: Link's excellent work, Beyond Silence which was nominated for a Best Foreign Film Oscar inexplored the difficult choices confronting a girl who struggles for independence while at the same time she serves as the only bridge between her deaf parents and the world at large.

Now, in NowhereLink has reached further to create a more nuanced, multilayered work. Her treatment of Jettel's maturation is as well managed as the story of Regina's growing up, perhaps even better. This film is a worthy effort, and certainly it is edifying, although I must add that the enterprise grinds along with a lot less snap than her two earlier films.

In English, German and Swahihi Grade: NURSE BETTY Neil LaBute, US, Meanwhile, her crude husband in fact has gotten mixed up in drug dealing and pays the supreme price at the hands of an old pro hitman Morgan Freeman and his time bomb, trigger happy son Chris Rock.

Betty witnesses the hit, then zones out into a dissociative state in which she repressed her husband's death and drives off in a car in which the drugs are stashed looking for her surgeon hero, whom she is now convinced is real and, of course, living in Hollywood.

She does meet him there, her "act" is a big hit with the star and other folks on the TV show, but the killers catch up with her, leading to the most amusing scenes in the film - among Betty, the killers, Betty's Hispanic girlfriend, and two characters from her home town who have also trailed her: It's an imaginative screenplay, Zellweger is perfect, even if all she does is mug sweetly, Morgan Freeman is droll and highly enjoyable, and the others provide just enough useful fillers. Chang-dong made the quite good psychodrama, Peppermint Candya film that concerned a man suffering from Post-traumatic stress disorder, who ultimately committed suicide after his life slid ever further into failure and despair.

Sounds burdensome, but the film was the opposite: Chang-dong, who writes his own screenplays, used a structure like that in Memento Candy begins with the suicide, then moves back in time, in flashback segments placed in reverse chronology. Oasis reunites Chang-dong with his two principal actors from CandyKyung-gu Sol as Jong-du Hong, a man just released from prison when we meet him in the opening scenes, and So-ri Moon as Gong-ju, a woman who suffers from severe cerebral palsy.

His penchant for making faulty judgments and conducting himself in ways that offend and irritate others is hard to overstate. He appears to me to be suffering from a severe case of ADHD and may also be mildly deficient in IQ points. He also has an eternally runny nose: The family are outraged and throw him out, but not before he meets Gong-ju, who suffers from severe spasticity and choreo-athetosis: Her favorite pastime is reflecting a hand mirror on the wall, then fantasizing that the white reflections morph into birds or butterflies.

What then develops is a love story in which these two handicapped souls, each living on the margins of society, borne along grudgingly by families who are ashamed of them and wish they would just go away. There are marvelous dream and fantasy scenes in which Gong-ju can move and walk normally, or when the characters on an exotic wall hanging in her bedroom come to life and join the principals in a dance.

Of course the circumstances make their love star-crossed: What surprises is that the consequences work out as well as they do. Both lead players offer fabulous turns. We expect this of Mr. Kyung-gu, based on his earlier performance in Peppermint Candy. But the real blockbuster turn is by Ms.

Her mastery of the physical manifestations of cerebral palsy is so complete and it would be difficult to imagine she is a normal person without providing, as Chang-dong does, a scene in which we can see her change from impaired to normal before our eyes. This scene, by the way, is woven seamlessly into the narrative; there is nothing showy or self-conscious about it.

Oasis challenges the very core of our assumptions about what it is to be loveable and to love. THE ODD COUPLE Gene Saks, US, The prototype adaptation of Neil Simon's Broadway comedy about two divorced buddies who decide to live together - one, Oscar Walter Matthau - a classic slob; the other, Felix Jack Lemmona fanatically obsessive homemaker and hypochondriac.

It's all great fun, though I think the later TV series with Tony Randall and Jack Klugman was in fact superior. Randall did Felix better than Lemmon. But Matthau here is incomparable.

If you like this sort of story, try the two British films starring Tom Courtenay and Albert Finney: The Dresser and A Rather English Marriage. OF MICE AND MEN Gary Sinise, US, Sinise, from an adaptation by Horton Foote, of the Steinbeck classic, about two drifters in the 30s, the crafty George Milton Sinise and his mentally slow buddy Lennie Small John Malkovich.

Their dream is to scrimp and save from odd job work so they can buy their own spread. The fact that both Lennie and George need each other to feel complete, to feel whole, is made clear here, and Malkovich does a fine job in portraying the naive, dreamy giant Lennie. On a high plain in New Mexico, some of society's outsiders, mostly military combat veterans and their families, have been drawn to a loosely organized community to live off the grid and away from mainstream America, which they had found insufferable.

The film consists largely of segments from interviews with a dozen or so citizens of this encampment most people live in RVs, some in more permanent structures. Most of the vets — from Vietnam, the first Gulf War, and even a few from the Iraq War — profess intense loyalty to their country but feel that the U. American flags are very much in evidence. People home school their kids.

One or more nurses tend to medical issues. Everybody is armed to the teeth. Shooting practice, rather than golf, is the most popular sport around.

Other families remain intact and seemingly the better for having moved to the high desert. There is a council of elders — we meet one of them, a white bearded, mandolin playing Vietnam vet — that deliberates on community problems that cannot be worked out among individuals.

The kids listen up and fly right in return for being allowed to stay on. The arrangement has now held up for a number of years. The community and its citizens are presented in a sympathetic light. The carbon footprints these people make are enviably tiny. Viewed from another perspective, however, the picture is less idyllic and more disturbing. For one thing, in most cases we taxpayers are subsidizing these folks, enabling them to live lives that center around idleness, music making, lots of pot smoking and booze guzzling, and gunslinging.

Perhaps public support is a wise thing, though, when one ponders about how many of these men might have offed somebody by now, or themselves, had they remained in the mainstream. One elder had been educated at Exeter and Princeton. Is it any of our damn business? OFF THE MAP Campbell Scott, US,min. A windmill pumps their well water. They read by kerosene lamps. Cash comes in the form of a small VA pension to the head of the household, Charley Groden the basso voiced Sam Elliottplus some modest crop sales.

Which makes it curious indeed when they receive notice that the IRS is dispatching an agent to visit. A good friend, lonely bachelor George J. Simmonshangs around so much he seems like family too. The time in question here, when Bo was 12, actually was maybe a decade ago, for we are learning this story as a narrative reminiscence told to us by a now adult Bo. It went on for months. He sits mute most of the time. Cries softly a lot.

Refuses to seek professional aid from the VA. Arlene manages to keep things going, but her generally serene style is eroding as the weeks go by. Not one to hide her light, Bo complains eloquently about her boring life, even as she maintains a loving, respectful attitude toward her parents. Turns out Gibbs is depressed too: He just became an IRS agent lately, grasping at some possible change for the better.

Arlene and Bo are both grateful for attention from a new face. And, perhaps in a house too small for two depressed males, Charley begins to come out of his shell, with some help from a borrowed bottle of antidepressant pills that fire up a manicky conclusion to his near catatonic state. Even George comes to life and goes hunting for a woman to marry.

Adapted from a stage script by the playwright, Joan Ackermann, this work reminds me of the novels about quirky, offbeat people that have become so popular in the past few years. I don't know why, but it took two years to bring this decent film to the screen made init is only receiving commercial distribution now.

In fact it is very good, with one major exception. People reduced by depression to near muteness and total inactivity do not, as Charley does, move and speak at a normal pace when they do initiate behavior. For a few hundred dollars the filmmakers could have hired a psychiatric consultant to coach Elliott to get these few details right. It would have taken less than an hour. Later, on the other hand, when Charley has been taking an antidepressant drug and becomes highly activated by it, Elliott gets all the moves perfectly: Just what one might see clinically in a so-called excessive serotonergic response.

The movie is not without its hitches. Why is a coyote - to which Arlene had developed an intense spiritual connection - killed? How did Bo actually acquire that credit card and get approval to use it for such a grand and costly gift? The film starts somewhat bumpily. For a while it seems like Ms. But with time, she, like the film itself, wins you over. Off the Map ends by charming you, making this film a pleasant surprise. That film more or less trashes the whole ideal of living a life according to values that run against the stereotypical middle class norms of acquiring material possessions and working to pay off the resultant debts.

The fact that Jack and his merry band failed to sustain their alternative way of life is implicitly presented as evidence that their aims were unsound, invalid. Off the Mapon the other hand, conveys a better sense of what motivated people to drop out back then and shows that at least some achieved a measure of success. B; clinical depression and response to antidepressants: OLD JOY Kelly Reichardt, US,76 m.

A deceptively simple, in fact richly nuanced, subtle film about two old college chums, now in their 30s, who go on a weekend camping trip and discover that their lives have diverged to the point where the bonds that remain between them have become too thin, too attenuated, to sustain their friendship further. Kurt Will Oldham is still the same unsettled, shambling fellow that he always was, forever searching for a formula to bring him peace of mind, unemployed, living in his van, passing through town before going on to the next place.

Kurt bums money from Mark to score some pot on their way out of town. He smoke it all himself. Mark has put down roots. So after driving here and there, they end up pitching their tent at a bleak, litter strewn spot just off the highway. Kurt speaks of a wonderful gathering he recently attended, full of music, dancing and fun.

He talks vaguely about his personal theory of the universe as a falling teardrop. Kurt tries to be more direct, saying that he feels an uncomfortable gulf between them, but Mark brushes this aside. Rather than becoming a beer fueled, cozy, guy reunion, lasting into the wee hours, the evening ends early, abruptly and in silence.

In fact he is preoccupied throughout the trip, guilty for leaving his pregnant wife at home alone, talking with her frequently on his cell. On the drive back into the city, the old friends speak hardly a word, and, at the end, they exchange only the most cursory of goodbyes.

We all know that friendships from our youth sometimes stay alive and sometimes die. There are, however, so many characters in each of those large ensemble films that only superficial snapshots of most are possible. After college, the majority in both films had gone on to exceptional careers. In contrast, Mark and Kurt are - in their differing ways - plain, ordinary, Everymen. One can readily see that Mark has matured while Kurt remains stuck in late adolescence. Viewed through another prism, we could as easily surmise that Kurt has endeavored to stick to his youthful ideals, a would be free spirit still seeking out the good times and refusing to be yoked to greater responsibilities in a world grown harsher than it used to be.