Broken EnglishA safe ticket seller July 3,
2007 3:00:10 PM
BROKEN ENGLISH: A Woman Under the Influence it’s not.
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John Cassavetes’s kids Nick and Zoe might not shape independent cinema the way their father did, but they’ll probably sell more tickets. In her debut feature, Zoe turns to the safety of the chick flick, with the ever watchable Parker Posey as Nora, a 30ish career woman in New York who can’t figure out why she’s not married like her friends or why she always has bad luck with men. Possible explanations include drinking, pills, low self-esteem, and her inability to resist jumping into bed on the first date — so when she holds off on sleeping with Julien (Melvil Poupaud), a French guy in a fedora, for almost two days, it seems he’s the one. With mom (Zoe’s real-life mom, Gena Rowlands) offering banal advice and noting “how hard it is for a woman today,” you feel more confident that things are going to end okay than you would while watching, say, A Woman Under the Influence. Drea de Matteo excels as the unhappily married best friend.
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- What’s on the videotape Dan Conley won’t make public? Plus, winners in the Times’ McCain mess.
- A do-gooder who recorded abusive Boston police officers was himself arrested under a controversial ‘wiretapping’ law
- The threat is real. It could happen here. Is the city ready?
- Does anybody really know what time it is?
- Pomo Asian with some of the best sashimi around
- Never mind its tough-girl alt-porn feminism: SuicideGirls has already moved on to a new generation
- Will his handpicked trustees let him?
- You have to pay to pee in Urinetown
- Seat-fillers "bused in" for net neutrality hearings
- Pomo Asian with some of the best sashimi around
- A do-gooder who recorded abusive Boston police officers was himself arrested under a controversial ‘wiretapping’ law
- Inside the prize-filled trophy home of a seemingly obsessive-compulsive contest enterer
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A motion-capture cartoon with an anachronistic soundtrack
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Alain Robbe-Grillet: 1922–2008
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Interview: Brett Morgen defends his Chicago 10
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Unintentional laughs
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Too many weird gimmicks
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And Blood will out at the Oscars
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Tears without embellishment
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Diary of the Dead records it for the Web
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George Romero’s exquisite corpses
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Love, loniliness, aging, and bad hair
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- A motion-capture cartoon with an anachronistic soundtrack
- A chilling gangland epic
- A neutered affair
- Christina Ricci is still coming of age
- A grand idea
- Larry the Cable Guy vee-hickle
- Jia Zhangke runs deep
- Alain Robbe-Grillet: 1922–2008
- Unintentional laughs
- A step ahead of the rest
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