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GERALD PEARY

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Review: The Housemaid

Korean remake fuses art and soft-core thrills in steamy class drama
In Kim Ki-young's 1960 original, one of the all-time South Korean classics, the title housemaid was a psychopathic femme fatale wrecking the lives of her employers, a composer and his hard-working wife

By: GERALD PEARY | February 16, 2011

Among the Oscar shorts, documentaries take the prize

Truth is better than fiction.
The winter blahs are over. The first great cinema treat of 2011: the five surprisingly superb documentary shorts vying for an Academy Award, opening this Friday as "2011 Documentary Oscar Shorts" at the Coolidge Corner Theatre.

By: GERALD PEARY | February 24, 2011

Review: Williams S. Burroughs: A Man Within

Prime footage
Fairly disorganized in the telling and rather impersonally told by filmmaker Yony Leyser, this documentary biography of the stone-faced Beat author of The Naked Lunch is still worth seeing.

By: GERALD PEARY | February 02, 2011

Review: Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today

A 35mm restoration of a historic artifact
For those whose knowledge comes filtered through Judgment at Nuremberg , the packed-with-stars 1961 Hollywood extravaganza, here is the somber actuality.

By: GERALD PEARY | January 27, 2011

Review: Blue Valentine

Valentine daze: Tough love gets explored in the time-hopping Blue Valentine
Look to the sky above Scranton, Pennsylvania. There's a rainbow nestling among the downtown buildings as, below, a city bus crosses in traffic. Can we assume it's conferring a benediction on the young man and woman who, moments later, meet adorably on that very bus and, despite her suspicions, embark on a torrid romance?

By: GERALD PEARY | February 24, 2011

Review: The Legend of Pale Male

Strictly for the birdwatchers
Strictly for the birdwatchers

By: GERALD PEARY | December 22, 2010

Review: Bhutto

The story of an extraordinarily compelling leader — who just might have been behind the assassination of her brother.
The story of an extraordinarily compelling leader — who just might have been behind the assassination of her brother.

By: GERALD PEARY | December 15, 2010

Review: Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench

The little Boston movie that could
The little Boston movie that could

By: GERALD PEARY | December 15, 2010

Review: Queen of the Lot

Tanna Frederick not so irritating this time
Josef von Sternberg had Marlene Dietrich. George Cukor had Katharine Hepburn. Henry Jaglom has, uh, Tanna Frederick.

By: GERALD PEARY | December 08, 2010

Review: Budrus

A direct doc on the Palestine/Israel conflict
Simply shot and straightforward in its argument, this film from Brazilian documentarian Julia Bacha is an agitprop rallying cry for Palestinians living in the West Bank's Occupied Territories.

By: GERALD PEARY | December 01, 2010

Review: Waste Land

A socially-conscious humanizing of trash collectors
Vik Muniz, a well-regarded Brazilian artist living in New York, is a socially conscious individual, and his photography-based œuvre celebrates the forgotten poor of Central and South America, with much of the profits being returned to the impoverished subjects of his artistry.

By: GERALD PEARY | February 24, 2011

Review: Tibet in Song

A musical travelogue with some teeth
A musical travelogue with some teeth

By: GERALD PEARY | November 11, 2010

Review: Ne Change Rien

Jeanne Balibar is a formidable talent
The shadowy, low-key lighting is Wellesian, the fetishist close-ups are Sternbergian.

By: GERALD PEARY | November 03, 2010

Review: Monsters

Gareth Edwards' low-budget allegory feels familiar
Aliens have crashed in Mexico, and the US government builds a wall to stop them, and the Mexican police are out to destroy them.

By: GERALD PEARY | November 03, 2010

Review: Kuroneko

Poe meets Oedipus Rex, in glorious Nippon
In Kaneto Shindô's 1968 baroque Japanese period piece, samurai run wild as ignoble marauders.

By: GERALD PEARY | October 26, 2010

Review: White Wedding

Will black and white be allowed to kiss?
Jann Turner, an NYU film grad and a well-regarded novelist, co-wrote and directed this pleasant, intentionally lightweight, South African road-movie romance with a sly integrationist political agenda.

By: GERALD PEARY | October 06, 2010

Review: Freakonomics

Freakishly mediocre is more like it
Aided by journalist Stephen J. Dubner, economist Steven Levitt put his pop theories of surprise causality into book form in 2005's Freakonomics , an unexpected bestseller.

By: GERALD PEARY | September 29, 2010

Review: The Sicilian Girl

Interesting true story, conventional fiction
Marco Amenta turns the true-life saga of a 17-year-old Italian girl who testified against the Mafia in a famous 1992 trial in Palermo into a fictionalized, conventional, fairly diverting melodrama.

By: GERALD PEARY | September 21, 2010

Review: 45365

Festival favorite documents the "real America"
Festival favorite documents the "real America"

By: GERALD PEARY | September 16, 2010

Review: How I Killed Mumblecore

The answer: from within
The probably after-the-fact title holds some truth — this Chicago indie film destroys the "mumblecore" film movement by repeating what has been done to death in a dozen similar films.

By: GERALD PEARY | September 01, 2010

Review: Kimjongilia

North Korea doc exceedingly frustrating
There is very little new in N.C. Heikin's documentary attack on North Korea's endless dictatorship that hasn't been seen or heard before.

By: GERALD PEARY | August 26, 2010

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