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GERALD PEARY

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Review: I Am

The "new" Shadyac is still a Hollywood hack
Tom Shadyac found a perfect nest for his low-watt-lightbulb sensibility in today's Hollywood, where he helmed a series of blockbuster comedies that ranged in quality from the passably silly ( Ace Ventura: Pet Detective ) to the unforgivably execrable ( Patch Adams ).

By: GERALD PEARY | March 31, 2011

Review: Orgasm Inc.: The Strange Science of Female Pleasure

Is "female sexual dysfuction" real?
For nine years, Vermont-based filmmaker Liz Canner raced around the country with her camera doing research and interviews for this exemplary, absorbing, muckraking documentary.

By: GERALD PEARY | March 25, 2011

Review: Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune

Powerful rock doc about America's seminal protest rocker
Ken Bowser's film biography of a seminal American protest singer of the '60s and '70s is conventionally told but also informative and moving.

By: GERALD PEARY | March 10, 2011

Review: Even the Rain

Movie-within-a-movie is almost a first-rate political drama
The first hour of Icíar Bollaín's film, which was written by Ken Loach's perennial screenwriter, Paul Laverty, is a first-rate political drama.

By: GERALD PEARY | March 02, 2011

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