Sometimes it takes a village, though, even one that seems at first glance composed of idiots, or at least eccentrics. The debut film from Randy Walker and Jennifer Shainin, APART FROM THAT (2006; July 1 at 8:45 pm and July 3 at 7 pm, with Walker and Shainin present), elevates the goofy enigmas and the multi-narrative style of Napoleon Dynamite and The Guatemalan Handshake to a new level. The binding theme is, inevitably, the failure to connect: Ulla (Kathleen McNearney), the pretty, blonde hair-styling student, can’t connect with Peggy (Alice Ellingson), her elderly landlady, even though she makes mocking recordings of Peggy’s daily noises. Peggy can’t connect with anyone, even though she calls in false alarms to the fire department and waits naked for them to arrive. Leo (Tony Cladoosby) refuses to visit his dying son, but he copes by collecting odds and ends to make into a “sculpture.” And so on. Halloween is approaching, and the way things work in this kind of film, there will be more tricks than treats. As Independence Day approaches for us, I can’t think of any better way of celebrating than by enjoying these movies.
Related:
Epic Movie, Brief fling, The Holiday, More 
- Epic Movie
Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, the brain warp behind the Scary Movie franchise and Date Movie , again take their tired and not-so-true formula and spoof a list of semi-recent theater fillers).
- Brief fling
Carole Lombard rose to stardom in 1934 and was dead by 1942, killed in a plane crash on her way back from selling war bonds; her last picture, Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not To Be , was released posthumously.
- The Holiday
A reminder to all producers: alluding to iconic romantic comedies in a bid for legitimacy can be a dangerous game, even when you have appealing stars. Watch the trailer for The Holiday (QuickTime)
- Major and minor Billy
Billy Wilder’s expansive career began in Germany at the end of the ’20s, continued briefly in Paris when he fled Hitler in 1933, and picked up in Hollywood the following year.
- Review: The Ugly Truth
The biting revelation promised by the title of Robert Luketic's fluff never bares its teeth.
- Made of Honor
Paul Weiland’s Made of Honor is not your usual formulaic romantic comedy: it’s stupid, its leading man is unlikable, and its jokes are unfunny and sometimes cruel.
- Review: Moscow, Belgium
Matty (Barbara Sarafian) is a weather-beaten wreck, a postal-worker mom of three whose vacillating husband has (pretty much) left her for a younger woman.
- Date Movie - side
- A Date With John Waters
Valentine’s Day, with its heart-shaped boxes of chocolates and colorful candy kisses, is right up filmmaker John Waters’s kitschy alley, not to mention a perfect candidate for the auteur’s obsession with incredibly strange music.
- Hell is other sequels
At first, At World’s End doesn’t seem to differ much from the world outside.
- Believe it or not
Even the titles of his films are a little weird.
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