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GERALD PEARY

Latest Articles

At Home in Utopia

A colorful, learned documentary
A vivid, breathing history lesson of a time when many American Jews defined themselves by their radical politics.

By: GERALD PEARY | June 04, 2008

The Fall

Kooky, clunky, and empty
Tarsem Singh's kooky epic is the first American film ever to star a Romanian child actress, Catinca Untaru.

By: GERALD PEARY | May 28, 2008

The Children of Huang Shi

A draggy, laborious effort
Based very loosely on true events, Roger Spottiswoode’s epic tells the story of a cocky and callow young British journalist.

By: GERALD PEARY | May 28, 2008

Surfwise

Arresting, but clichéd
Only at the end does this work significantly misstep, with a clichéd “heartwarming” family reunion surely orchestrated by the filmmaker.

By: GERALD PEARY | May 21, 2008

Bold and challenging tale of a 15-year-old hermaphrodite
Fifteen-year-old Alex has grown up as a girl, but she’s actually a hermaphrodite, with breasts and a penis, and with a budding but guilty erotic interest in both sexes.

By: GERALD PEARY | May 14, 2008

Before the Rains

Competent, intelligent, unadventurous
The narrative tumbles at the self-conscious, obviously constructed rainy ending.

By: GERALD PEARY | May 14, 2008

Fearsome Otto

Remembering Preminger
My one brush with the late Otto Preminger seems like a typical encounter.

By: GERALD PEARY | May 13, 2008

Jellyfish

Israeli magic realism
The addition of this baby Botticelli will either charm or annoy you.

By: GERALD PEARY | May 07, 2008

Then She Found Me

Overplotted pregnancy flick
Helen Hunt bites off more than she can chomp on, choosing also to star in this her first try as a film director, a clumsy, overplotted rendition of Elinor Lipman’s 1990 novel.

By: GERALD PEARY | April 30, 2008

Irina Palm

Marianne Faithful dispenses handjobs in this unrealistic romance
In Sam Garbarski’s improbable British melodrama, chanteuse Marianne Faithfull plays a working-class granny who takes work in a Soho sex parlor in order to pay for a grandson’s expensive operation.

By: GERALD PEARY | April 30, 2008

Bab’aziz: The Prince who Contemplated his Soul

A clumsy fairy tale
But as the stories clumsily pile up in a Sheherazade-like overload, audiences will wish to escape the sand.

By: GERALD PEARY | April 23, 2008

Local culler

Paul Sherman’s Big Screen Boston
For peddling some not-for-sale DVDs to a dubious Internet customer, local critic Paul Sherman found himself in the middle of an FBI sting, removed from his reviewing posts at the Boston Herald and the Improper Bostonian , and under voluntary house arrest.

By: GERALD PEARY | April 22, 2008