CinemaFunk

Courtesy of Lions Gate FilmsThe Dinner Game is a 1998 French comedy about a douchy Parisian publisher named Brochant (Timothy Lhermitte), who attends a weekly "dinner for idiots," at which other douchy people get together asnd invite idiots for their amusement, and the person who brings in the biggest idiot gets the top prize of the evening.Brochant hooks up with Francois Pignon (Jacques Villeret), a tax man with an obsession for recreating famous landmarks with matchsticks. The Dinner Game posits that an easy way to spot an idiot is to find a person with a slightly strange area...

Courtesy of Lions Gate FilmsThe Dinner Game is a 1998 French comedy about a douchy Parisian publisher named Brochant (Timothy Lhermitte), who attends a weekly "dinner for idiots," at which other douchy people get together asnd invite idiots...

This film plays on IFC On Demand through August 2010. There's an audacious scene in "Vengeance," a Johnny Hallyday thriller set in Hong Kong and Macao, that may remind you of Burnham Wood advancing on Macbeth's castle. In the play men carried shrubbery to hide behind. In Johnnie To's movie they hide behind huge bales of scrap paper. A fierce wind fills the air with flying paper. The bales advance across a field as a wall -- thump, thump -- on Hallyday and the three local hit men he's hired to obtain revenge on the killers of his grandson and son-in-law, and a grave wound to his daughter

Olive of the very insightful Movie News First blog was kind enough to tag me in this new meme making its rounds to film bloggers everywhere. So thank you very much, Olive! It is called the “Happy 101” Award and the idea is to compose a list of things in life that bring us joy. [...]

Courtesy of 20th Century FoxThe Examiner Essentials are the movies everyone should watch, know and love. And if you watch and know but don't love, it's okay because you will still be an improved person for taking part in your own betterment. But the chances are, you'll love these movies. A list of all the Essentials can be found here.Title: Solaris (2002)Director: Steven Soderbergh (The Girlfriend Experience, Che)Starring: George Clooney (Fantastic Mr. Fox, Burn After Reading), Natascha McElhone (Ronin, The Truman Show), Viola Davis (Knight and Day), Jeremy Davies (Rescue Dawn)ex-Factor:...

Courtesy of 20th Century FoxThe Examiner Essentials are the movies everyone should watch, know and love. And if you watch and know but don't love, it's okay because you will still be an improved person for taking part in your own betterment. But the ...

I figure I’d go from posting your 5 favorite hotties last week (some great feedback on that one everyone — much thanks!), to something a little bit more sentimental this time around.   This “Gimme 5″ is in honor of my super-awesome and beautiful sister, Donna who is getting married in exactly one week. CONGRATULATIONS, DONNA [...]

By this point, most everyone has at least heard of The Human Centipede, the grisly, Dutch-made horror film released earlier this year. Now, I’m not usually one for horror films very much — mainly because there is such an incredible dearth of ones that are actually any good — but this one kind of reminds me [...]

Courtesy of ORION Productions The Examiner Essentials are the movies everyone should watch, know and love. And if you watch and know but don't love, it's okay because you will still be an improved person for taking part in your own betterment. But the chances are, you'll love these movies. A list of all the Essentials can be found here. Title: Caddyshack (1980) Director: Harold Ramis (Vacation, Groundhog Day, The Ice Harvest) Starring: Michael O'Keefe (Michael Clayton), Bill Murray (Stripes, Zombieland, Scrooged), Brian Doyle-Murray (Christmas Vacation), Chevy Chase (Fletch, ¡Three...

Courtesy of ORION Productions The Examiner Essentials are the movies everyone should watch, know and love. And if you watch and know but don't love, it's okay because you will still be an improved person for taking part in your own betterment....

Courtesy of ORION Productions The Examiner Essentials are the movies everyone should watch, know and love. And if you watch and know but don't love, it's okay because you will still be an improved person for taking part in your own betterment....

Bill Murray's acting in Sofia Coppola's "Lost in Translation" is surely one of the most exquisitely controlled performances in recent movies. Without it, the film could be unwatchable. With it, I can't take my eyes away.  Not for a second, not for a frame, does his focus relax, and yet it seems effortless. It's sometimes said of an actor that we can't see him acting. I can't even see him not acting. He seems to be existing, merely existing, in the situation created for him by Sofia Coppola.

"Spoken Word" (Unrated, 116 minutes). The authoritative Kuno Becker plays a young Mexican-American who teaches in San Francisco and is popular on the Poetry Slam circuit. He learns his father (Ruben Blades) is dying, and returns him to near Santa Fe to spend time. Their relationship is tentative but heartfelt, although issues from the past reappear. An intelligent, empathetic film, with a real sense of place and the people who love there. With Persia White, from "Girlfriends." Three stars

"Life During Wartime" (R, 98 minutes). Todd Solondz's characters are disturbed, pleading and perverse, and some of them are so badly off they're dead, and must appear as ghosts. This is a "quasi-sequel" to his great "Happiness" (1998), with the same characters played by different actors at later points in their lives. All is sour and disappointed, and no one has hope. The first film found closure, this one finds entropic collapse. But it's well acted by Shirley Henderson, Ciaran Hinds, Allison Janney, Michael Lerner, Paul Reubens, Ally Sheedy and Dylan Riley Snyder. Two and a half stars

"Get Low" (PG-13, 102 minutes). Robert Duvall plays a backwoods hermit who figures his time is coming, and enlists the local undertaker (Bill Murray) in planning a big funeral send-off that he will pay for himself, and enjoy while he's still alive. Melodrama, human comedy, and a sweet reunion with an old squeeze (Sissy Spacek). Nice work by Lucas Black as the undertaker's assistant. Three stars

"Not a mouse Shall disturb this hallowed house. I am sent, with broom, before, To sweep the dust behind the door."

Winter’s Bone is by far and wide the best reviewed live action American film of the year (beat out on Metacritic only by the Ozu re-release I was Born, But. . ., the brilliant Un Prophete, and Toy Story 3.) The modern day Ozark noir has some of the best performances of recent memory, a gripping narrative, beautiful Red camera cinematography, and nail-bite pacing. So what’s wrong with it? Glad you asked.

Sure, the movie features a slovenly phone-sex fetishist, an overly sexed Russian cab driver, an obese woman who dismembers her superintendent (and keeps him in her fridge), a cold writer who is a fan of S&M, a father who is a pedophile and various other sexually frustrated and socially inept New Jersey suburbanites — but [...]

As a general rule, I am usually very wary of seeing movie remakes, especially ones adapted from very enjoyable/strong foreign films that Americans tend to treat with less than respectable hands. So my expectations were not so very high going in to see Jay Roach’s comedy Dinner for Schmucks – a film inspired from Francis [...]

"Cropsey" (Unrated, 84 minutes). A drooling loner who lived on the grounds and in the tunnels of the notorious Willowbrook insane asylum on Staten Island, is convicted of the kidnapping and murder of two young girls. He's the perfect suspect. Was the real-life embodiment of the Boogie Man legends of campfires and nightmares. Does it even matter that there's no solid evidence against him? A creepy documentary. Three stars.

TFT 138 running time: 41 minutes 20 seconds – 19.9mb mp3

SALT starts at 1 minute 30 seconds

DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS / THE DINNER GAME starts at 22 minutes 54 seconds

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