New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Wednesday 02/25/09

2:00 AM HBO Signature
Maldeamores (2007 PUR): Written and directed by Puerto Rican filmmaker Carlitos Ruiz Ruiz, Maldeamores (Lovesickness) is an anthology examining the various stages, shades, and styles of love. The film consists of three stories, beginning with a segment featuring Luis Guzman as a faithless husband, continuing with the tale of a man so besotted with a bus driver that he hijacks her vehicle, and concluding with the story of 70-something lovers entangled in a love triangle. Guzman is great as usual, and was clearly the box office draw, but the unfamiliar faces in the cast are uniformly fine, with septuagenarian Silvia Brito's performance being of particular note. Maldeamores opened wide in New York City, where there's a huge Puerto Rican diaspora, and drew some attention on the festival circuit, but gets its first widespread exposure this morning on HBO's commendable Signature channel.

Thursday 02/26/09

7:00 PM Sundance
Nothing But a Man (1964 USA): Ivan Dixon is best remembered today thanks to his recurring role as Kinch in Hogan's Heroes, but his resume includes work of much greater substance than that shallow if amusing sitcom. Dixon was one of the first African-American actors to get regular employment on television, and also starred in this superb independent drama about life in the Jim Crow south. He takes the lead as Duff Anderson, a railroad laborer who takes a liking to preacher's daughter Josie (lovely Abbey Lincoln) after the two meet at a church social. Josie's parents don't approve of the relationship, but the two are determined to overcome their opposition — until Duff gets cold feet thanks to the intervention of hard drinking, hard loving co-worker Jocko (Yaphet Kotto), who encourages him to set his sights a little lower on the social scale. Co-starring Julius Harris, Gloria Foster, and Esther Rolle, Nothing But a Man was forgotten for many years (I managed to catch it at the Pacific Film Archive in the early '80s), but thanks to DVD and Sundance, is finally beginning to get the attention it deserves. Interesting footnote: though cinematographer, producer, and screenwriter Robert Young would go on to direct such fine films as Short Eyes and Alambrista!, German-born director Michael Roemer has yet to make anything else of note.

9:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Chinatown (1974 USA): The TiVoPlex archives indicate I've never written about Chinatown before. Color me sceptical, but we'll take the archives at their word and give this Roman Polanski historical drama a brief shout out this week. To me, it's worth watching for the Jack Nicholson nose-gouging scene alone (gouging courtesy Polanski himself) — others may find the presence of Faye Dunaway or Robert Towne's script of greater interest. Either way, Jack looks great in his white suit.

Friday 02/27/09

8:30 AM IFC
The Edukators (2004 OST): There must be something in that Austrian water. For those who enjoy the films of Michael Haneke, The Edukators provides similar edgy discomfort via its tale of three radical anti-globalization activists who engage in furniture rearranging in order to get their message across. Really. When their latest act of revolutionary interior design is interrupted by powerful industrialist Hardenburg (Burghart Klaussner), the trio panic and end up kidnapping him, causing unanticipated consequences and a considerable amount of intellectual navel-gazing. Starring Goodbye Lenin's Daniel Bruhl, this is an exceptional intellectual thriller that puts a post-modern twist on the radicalism of the late 1960s and 1970s.

Continued:       1       2       3