Our reviewers select and review the best independent and foreign films on amazon.com, cd universe, and netflix

Title: The Great McGinty
Year: 1940
Director: Preston Sturges
Writers: Preston Sturges
Stars: Brian Donlevy, Muriel Angelus, Akim Tamiroff, William Demarest

The Story: Donlevy is a two-fisted bum who gets offered two bucks to vote for a corrupt mayor, so he votes 37 times, under 37 different names. This so impresses the political machine that they make him a bagman, then an alderman, then mayor, then governor. Soon he has enough power to do whatever he wants, as long as he doesn’t want to do the right thing.

Why It’s Great: How does Sturges manage to be so big-hearted and black-hearted at the same time? He does it by keeping a bemused ear cocked for how people really talk when they get in over their head. Now matter how farcical each scene gets, Sturges shows an unswerving dedication to portraying the way the world really works. And he nails it: A patrician politician runs such a slimy political machine that the public finally turns on him. His bosses in the business community decide that they need to anoint their own “reform” candidate to run in the next election. They find a small cog in the Chicago machine whose primary value is that nobody has heard of him. This up-from-poverty plain-talker soon takes off on a meteoric rise to the top, but there’s just one catch: his backers require him to continue all the corruption of the crook he’s replacing. What a crazy story! I guess that’s what it was like way back when in the bad old days.

Read more about it at Cockeyed Caravan.

En la Cama (Chile 2005, 85 min. dir: Matias Bize, cast: Blanca Lewin, Gonzalo Valenzuela)

Two strangers meet at a party and spend the night in a cheap motel room, but what happens is anything but cheap. This amazing film never goes flaccid while exploring the deepening relationship between Daniela (Blanca Lewin) and Bruno (Gonzalo Valenzuela).

Movies like this are not new. Dustin Hoffman and Mia Farrow did it in John and Mary (1969). What is new is Julio Rojas always surprising screenplay that keeps changes topics in an every deepening quest. Two people go from causal sex to true need and understanding. They carry secrets in their wallets that each, in turn, sneaks a look at, but never admits to the other. It is what must be confessed between hotter and hotter sex and frantic pillow fights.

Blanca Lewin comes from a long history of soap operas and television series. Gonzalo Valenzuela comes from telenovelas; the TV serials that are a staple of Latin countries. In a country like Chile, without much movie production, TV is the way to work as an actor. It carries none of the stigma attached to TV roles in the United Sates.

If either of these actors were part of a bigger culture, they would be international stars. Blanca would vie for the Paz Vega roles, and Gonzalo might be a rival of Gael Bernal Garcia. (Gonzalo’s sister Luz Francisca Valenzuela was Miss Chile in the Miss Universe contest in 1996 but she lost to Miss Venezuela).

If you want to see what a director, writer, and two good actors can do with one set, hot sex, nudity, and penetrating character portraits: this is for you. It also makes you wonder why the porn industry never thought of hiring good directors, writers, and actors to elevate their product. If they had, they would have survived the onslaught of online amateurs that killed their biz. It’s all about haste versus taste: or porn versus art.

The Sea Inside (Spain 2004, 125 min, dir: Alajandro Amenabar, cast: Javier Bardem, Belen Reuda, Lola Duenas, Mabel Rivera)

It takes balls for the top leading man of Spain to do a movie in a bald cap. It also takes guts to make a movie that’s never going to be seen on date night. The Sea Inside takes place in a bedroom where Ramon Semperdo (Javier Bardem) has been confined for 30 years since a dive into the ocean left him a quadriplegic (nothing works except his head).

His battle is to die; rather than being served day and night by people who must change his soiled bedclothes every four hours, he wants to end it all. But Spanish law is no more helpful than American law (see the Terri Schiavo case). So he gets himself a smart lawyer who is also living with a degenerative disease, and she starts the court challenge in motion.

You wouldn’t think it would be fascinating to watch someone try to die for two hours and five minutes. In action movies people die in five seconds. The remarkable idea here is to make the movie not about understanding dying, but understanding living. Ramon loves life. But he sees that life is more than dreams, and he dreams a lot. He knows his dreams must satisfy him: he knows they cannot. Hence his life is torture with no end except death.

One of the hottest scenes in the movie is the kiss between him and his lawyer, Julia (Belen Reuda). Yet it never happened. Along the way to death there is a constant parade of people who come to him trying to persuade him that life is worth living because everyone goes through terrible times. What is good for one is not for another, he argues, and all he wants is to make his own decision.

The magic of The Sea Inside is not, for me, about everyone having a different idea of the value of life. It is about the director, Alajandro Amenabar, who made this amazing film. I think he is one of those geniuses of movie making that come along so rarely. His ability to work magic on so many different films is beyond explanation. This guy started with a student film, Tesis, and has never stopped. Take a look at his credits and wonder how he could go from Open Your Eyes (remade badly with Tom Cruise) to The Sea Inside.

Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior (Thailand, 2003, 101 min. dir: Prachya Pinkaew, cast: Panom Yeerum).

The “Science of Eight Limbs” is the essence of South East Asian kickboxing. To appreciate the beauty of Ong-Bak you must first understand what you are watching. The story of a stolen statue is only an excuse to display Muay Thai, the Thailand version of boxing.

Western boxing uses two points of contact: fists. Karate style boxing uses four: hands, feet. Nak Muays, the name for the boxers who fight with Muay Thai, use eight: hands, feet, elbows, and knees.

Head of a statue, the most precious possession of a small village is stolen by an unscrupulous businessman. Booting, or Ting (Panom Yeerum), a village boy and their champion fighter, is sent to Bangkok to retrieve it. Once he gets there he is forced to fight and fight the bad guys until he gets the statue back.

The innocent from the country against the city mob is not remarkable. But the stunts are stupendous.. There are many sequences, both fighting and chasing, that are daring, original, and breathtaking. The clip is of an extended chase through the city with the bad guys nipping at Ting’s heels.

Many chase elements are filmed in slow motion and choreographed like dances. What makes this even more complex to shoot is the flips, kicks, and amazing aerobatics. This can not be done in slo mo, so the camera needed to be over cranked for some parts of the sequence, and set at normal speed, 24 frames, for others. Watch how intricately everything is planned.

While you watch think that what you see is not just a Thai movie, it is the cinematic representation of a physical art form so ancient that the name for it comes from Sanskrit: the Indo-Aryan language of Hinduism and Buddhism that goes back 3500 years.

Title: Love and Death on Long Island
Year: 1996
Director: Richard Kwietniowski
Writers: Kwietniowski, based on the novel by Gilbert Adair
Stars: John Hurt, Jason Priestley, Fiona Loewi, Maury Chaykin

The Story: A tweedy English novelist and widower goes to see an E.M. Forster movie but accidentally walks into a theater showing a movie called Hotpants College 2. To his great surprise, the heretofore heterosexual author finds himself instantly smitten with the hunky young teen idol star. His new obsession takes over his whole life until he decides to move to the Hamptons town where the young star lives and lie his way into his life.

Why It’s Great: Hurt has had a long, great career as a character actor, but this was a rare, wonderful chance for him to finally take the lead and he proves more than up to the task. He’ll probably always be remembered most for his fatal stomachache in Alien, but this is his best screen role. The central joke here is that De’Ath is merely the last name of Hurt’s character. Let’s say that you’re a British writer. You know that there are people living on your island with the actual last name De’Ath (pronounced Day-Oth). But do you dare name a character that? It’s a bold move. Here it’s used cleverly to falsely foreshadow an unhappy ending that never comes. The title becomes a pun on how these things usually go. Even in independent film, hell– especially in independent film, repressed gay desire unleashed usually results in a bloody end. In real life, it tends to make people much, much happier.

Read more about it at Cockeyed Caravan.

Long before we got the woman-in-peril slasher films that popped up like dandelions in the late fifties into the sixties, then developed into those Halloween-type movies of the seventies and eighties, woman-in-peril movies could be much more adult, intelligent and, frankly, interesting. Like 1944′s Gaslight (directed by George Cukor).

The major difference between those films and this one is the later ones were based on shock whereas Gaslight is all about suspense — it’s a psychological thriller rather than a gore festival.

It’s a wonderfully atmospheric movie set in a foggy, dark London of the Victorian period. It begins following a murder, the death of young Paula’s famous mother. (Ingrid Bergman plays Paula.) Paula is taken away from her home and goes to live with relatives.

The movie then jumps ahead about ten years. Paula takes singing lessons (her mother was a singer) but her heart isn’t in it. She’s in love with her instructor’s assistant (Charles Boyer).

They eventually marry and, despite Paula’s anxieties about returning to the home her mother died in, her new husband wants to go to London and so she insists they move into her old home.

But once married, her husband appears to behave erratically and treats Paula almost as a child. One moment he’s kind; the next he is cruel. He justifies his harsher behavior as concern because Paula is growing increasingly unstable mentally.

She sees things others don’t see. Things disappear that she has apparently taken though she can’t recall doing so.

She begins doubting herself; she doesn’t know what is wrong with her but she becomes convinced she’s at fault.

All the while, however, there is a police inspector (Joseph Cotton) watching from a distance. The case of the death of Paula’s mother has never been solved and he believes he can crack it. He’s suspicious of Paula’s husband.

The movie revolves around the “gaslighting” of Paula, the psychological games being played on her to make her doubt her sanity and make others distrust her. (The term “to gaslight” someone gives the movie its title. It also refers to the frequent dimming of the gas lights Paula sees.)

Bergman’s performance as a woman slowly losing her mind is great — she received an Oscar for it.

Equally good are Charles Boyer as a smarmy devil destroying his wife’s mind, and Joseph Cotton as the dashing, intelligent inspector.

The movie’s look is also brilliant — it also received an Oscar for Best Interior Decoration.

It’s very detailed in its sets and, as mentioned earlier, atmospheric. It creates a wonderful mood that enhances the suspense and makes this a great film to watch.

Title: Metroland
Year: 1997
Director: Philip Saville
Writers: Adrian Hodges, based on the novel by Julian Barnes
Stars: Christian Bale, Emily Watson, Lee Ross, Elsa Zylberstein

The Story: In 1977 suburban England a married couple is visited a wild old friend who makes them wonder about their bourgeois choices in life. Soon the husband is flooded with memories of his first girlfriend, in Paris ten years earlier.

Why It’s Great: Nothing flashy or edgy here, just a simple bittersweet story about growing up and moving on, haunted by regrets. Bale is great in a role that’s less wild-eyed than his recent work. He was so much older then, he’s younger than that now. The long Paris flashback that makes up the middle of the movie is its own beautiful coming-of-age mini-movie. Bale’s Paris lover is, played by Elsa Zylberstein, is so impossibly adorable that we instantly understand why he fell in love and why it could never last. (And the sex will make you blush.) Last but not least, whatever happened to Emily Watson? She was in everything for a few years and then disappeared. She always had a lot going on behind her little smiles. She’s great as the passive aggressive wife here. Her husband assures her, “He really likes you, you know.” She responds with withering deadpan sarcasm: “Gosh. I feel somehow validated.”

Read more about it at Cockeyed Caravan.

We Americans love a good David vs Goliath battle, but in our hearts we love a good Goliath vs Goliath battle better. So let’s look a few years into the future when old media and new media meet their Waterloo.

Okay, Netflix isn’t really new media. It’s a DVD rental company that hit on a formula to take down Blockbuster. But Netflix’s fearless leader, Reed Hastings, sees the future in streaming movies onto your flat screen TV. His company is pretty persistent in building the streaming service. Netflix, along with Amazon.com forms the backbone of MovieWithMe.com filtering service since we only review films that are available on these two sites.

We like that Netflix is persistent about the customer experience. If you are a subscriber, you’ll occasionally receive an email after yo’ve viewed a film on your big screen asking “how was the picture quality?” I can’t think of any cable company that has every cared about my picture quality.

Netflix qualifies as a new media player not only because of its emphasis on streaming, but because it is snapping up old media content. The recent billion dollar deal with Epix (MGM, Paramount, Lion’s Gate Films) shows how serious they are. Their next salvo will be to acquire more, and more recent, TV shows.

Inevitably this will lead them to HBO, a Time Warner division that has produced some of the best TV content (and represents about 25% of T-W operating profit). HBO is only available on cable/satellite. You pay about $26 to subscribe to a premium tier that includes HBO and T-W collects about seven dollars for every subscriber.

That’s great but it has its limits. About 41 million of the 90 million viewers in America pay for HBO/Cinemx. It took HBO forty years to reach that figure. Netflix has about 19 million subscribers and it took twelve years. At that rate, they’ll catch up to HBO within the decade, if not sooner. When they do, things will get interesting.

Currently restricting HBO/Cinemax’s audience to premium cable and satellite subscribers is leaving a lot of money on the table. More disturbing, the business model of cable/satellite depends on tier pricing in an era that has already evolved to a la carte pricing (iTunes, Amazon.com). Could HBO make a lot more money offering premiere programming to Netflix, iTunes and Amazon at the same time as cable satellite subscribers? Estimates are they could make three-quarters of a billion dollars more.

What’s holding them back is their exclusive contract with cable/satellite. Looking for some wiggle room in those contracts, Jeff Bewkes, head of Time-Warner, has announced HBO GO, a screwy idea that allows you to see HBO on your computer but only if you already subscribe to HBO via cable/satellite. I think he’s smart enough to push this idea because he knows it will fail. Then he can call his cable buddies and say, “see, I told you.”

The obvious answer is for HBO to free itself from cable’s walled garden. Estimates are that HBO/Cinemax will lose 1.5 million cable/satellite subscribers this year. The hot topic at cable conventions is “cord cutting.” That’s the industry phrase for subscribers who cancel their subscriptions after deciding they’ve paid long enough for channels they don’t want, service they hate, and providers that shut off favorite channels in negotiation disputes with content companies (like Cablevision vs Fox).

What if Netflix made Time-Warner an offer for HBO they couldn’t refuse? Netflix has the cash, the clout, and the growth. Could T-W stockholders refuse? Seem outlandish? It was just ten years ago that AOL purchased T-W for 164 billion dollars and the stockholders (at first) loved that deal. That one didn’t work out so well, but this deal would be different. Netflix’s objective is only access to HBO programming, not buying the entire company. Netflix wants content for cash. That has a nice ring to it.

Don’t Move (Italy 2004, 125 min, dir: Sergio Castellitto, cast: Penelope Cruz, Sergio Castellitto, Claudia Gerini).

When a leading man directs, writes, and stars in his own movie the title should be “watch out.” But seducing Penelope Cruz to be your co-star counts for a lot, because you know she’ll upstage you.

Sergio is always wonderful and sympathetic. See him as Mario, the Italian sous chef and lover in Mostly Martha on MovieWithMe.com. Here he is as compassionate surgeon whose daughter is hovering between life and death in the adjacent operating room. While he paces, he reviews his life.

Well, not really his life, but his romantic life. There’s the daughter, and then there is the child he almost had with the untamed feral woman he really loved. Who could play that part? This gets to the real value of this movie: watching Penelope Cruz in yet another role where she manages to fill the screen with lips so wide they could swallow all of Italy.

Sergio is a movie star, and this is supposed to be HIS movie. But Penelope steals the show from the moment she appears. Someday someone will write an art book called “The Many Faces of Penelope,” showing how she moves from film to film making her hair, face and body into fine sculptured art. From Jamon Jamon to Open Your Eyes, to All About My Mother to Volver to Vicky Cristina Barcelona she is always a different Penelope. In Volver she even hoisted a fake ass to give herself the curves of a peasant woman. In Vicky Cristina Barcelona she perfected the slut look to bring life and energy of a movie even Javier Bardem couldn’t save.

Don’t Move is yet another look at those lips and those eyes. Even without makeup (or not much, at least) when she is dying, she looks damn good. (To be fair, it is a different face without the usual eye shadow. Eye shadow is to her eyes what flame racing stripes are to hot rods).

Don’t Move is her film, even though Sergio stars, directs, and wrote. Tough to go to the premiere of your own movie and see all the eyes turn and all the lips move to cheer someone else. But then, what lips, what eyes.