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 | Thought-Provoking, Wrenching Drama An insightful drama set in the waning days of the communist Ceausescu regime of Romania and centered on the efforts of a university student to obtain an illegal abortion, [b]4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days[/b] (“4 luni, 3 saptamani si 2 zile”), won the Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to imagine a film as unflinchingly raw and honest as [b]4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days[/b] being made in the United States where abortion remains an incredibly divisive, seemingly irresolvable issue.More |  | Torture Porn for the Rest of Us Directed by Gregory Hoblit ([b]Fracture[/b], [b]Hart’s War[/b], [b]Frequency[/b]), [b]Untraceable[/b], a moralizing thriller centered on the hunt for a serial killer who broadcasts his kills over the internet, exploits (“exploits” is the operative word here) our fears and anxieties about living in a technology-driven society where privacy rights have given way to a surveillance state.More |  | Horror to Make David Cronenberg Smile [b]Teeth[/b], actor-turned-filmmaker Mitchell Lichtenstein’s ([b]Resurrection[/b]) feature-film debut, starts off as a biting satire on religiously motivated sexual abstinence programs and ends as straight up gory, bloody “body horror”. [b]Teeth[/b] is an intelligent, thought provoking, but no less disturbing art-horror film that would make writer/director David Cronenberg ([b]Crash[/b], [b]Dead Ringers[/b], [b]The Fly[/b]), the grandfather of the body horror sub-genre, proud.More |  | A Chick Flick that Fits Nothing says "chick flick" like a film centered on a woman's life-defining obsession with attending or organizing weddings (and she's not a professional wedding planner). Nothing says "romantic comedy" like a film that revolves around a woman secretly in love with her boss, but finds herself on the outside looking in as her boss falls in love with someone close to her. Throw the two ideas into the mix and you’d probably get choreographer-turned-director Anne Fletcher's ([b]Step Up[/b]) second feature film, [b]27 Dresses[/b], an engagingly effervescent romantic comedy starring Emmy award-winning actress Katherine Heigl.More |  | Iranian Life During (and After) Wartime [b]Persepolis[/b], co-written and co-directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud from Satrapi’s graphic novel, is one of the last of its kind: a traditional, hand-drawn, black-and-white animated film. [b]Persepolis[/b] was made over three, labor-intensive years on a modest budget of $8.1 million. Deftly and movingly told, it chronicles Satrapi’s experiences growing up in Iran during the fall of the Shah and the Islamic Revolution that transformed Iran into a closed, repressive society and eventually forced Satrapi into permanent exile.More |  | Masterpiece-level filmmaking After a five-year hiatus, controversial writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson ([b]Punch-Drunk Love[/b], [b]Magnolia[/b], [b]Boogie Nights[/b]) returns with [b]There Will Be Blood[/b], a loose adaptation of Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel, [b]Oil![/b]. A character study set against the Southern California oil boom of the early twentieth-century, [b]There Will Be Blood[/b] is, despite an overlong epilogue, a near-great film by a writer/director who, like the filmmakers he's openly admired (e.g., Robert Altman, Stanley Kubrick, Orson Welles), has finally emerged as an auteur with a vision and the technical knowledge to put that vision onscreen.More |  | Old School Horror Done Right Produced by filmmaker Guillermo del Toro ([b]Pan's Labyrinth[/b], [b]Hellboy[/b]), directed by first-time helmer Juan Antonio Bayona and written by Sergio G. Sánchez, [b]The Orphanage[/b] ("El Orfanato") is a classic, old school haunted house tale that, while short on shocks and gore, is every bit as effective, if not more so, as the new school horror films that emphasize blood and gore over character or storytelling.More |  | Carpe Denzel Denzel Washington's ([b]Antwone Fisher[/b]) second film as director, [b]The Great Debaters[/b] purports to tell the little-known story of how a debate team from Wiley College, a small African-American school in Texas, defeated Harvard University for the national championship in 1935. Except they didn't.More |  | Compelling Drama Featuring Oscar-Worthy Performances Painfully insightful and familiar, [b]The Savages[/b], Tamara Jenkins’ ([b]Slums of Beverly Hills[/b]) first film in nearly ten years, explores a subject rarely put on film: the role reversal that occurs when children are forced, by duty, obligation, guilt, or love, to take care of sick or elderly parents who can no longer take of themselves. [b]The Savages[/b] is a refreshingly honest, cliché-free, unsentimental comedy-drama that’s elevated into one of the best films of the year by Jenkins’ unobtrusive direction, subtle social commentary and note-perfect, award-worthy performances by Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman.More |  | Sporadically Compelling Comedy-Drama [b]Charlie Wilson's War[/b], Aaron Sorkin's ([b]The West Wing[/b], [b]The American President[/b]) seriocomic adaptation of George Crile’s 2003 non-fiction bestseller and directed by Mike Nichols ([b]Closer[/b], [b]Wit[/b], [b]The Graduate[/b]), explores a little known episode in recent American history: the covert funding by the United States of the “mujahideen", the Afghan “holy warriors” who eventually defeated the Soviet Union after nearly a decade of guerilla warfare.More |
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