Compiled by Maya Gaddie
Sept. 6
Alias Betty (NY)
The Players: Sandrine Kiberlain, Nicole Garcia, Yves Jacques; directed by Claude Miller
The Skinny: Grieving after the death of her young son, a novelist enters a dark depression. Hoping to bring her out of it, her mother arranges to kidnap another child to replace the lost son. Knowing it’s wrong, the grieving mother still accepts the kidnapped child as her own; meanwhile, the boy’s real mother has hired some criminals to help find him.
Sept. 13
Children of the Century
The Players: Juliette Binoche, Benoit Magimel; directed by Diane Kurys
The Skinny: The story of the relationship between successful writers Alfred de Musset and George Sand, who was still married at the time of their affair.
Quitting (LA/NY)
The Players: Jia Hongsheng, Jia Fengsen; directed by Zhang Yang
The Skinny: Biographical film about Jia Hongsheng, a successful star of Chinese B-movies in the 1980s, who sank into depression and drug addiction. Every character is played by a real person who was part of his life, his period of conflict with himself and his parents, his time in a mental institution and his journey of self-discovery.
Sept. 20
8 Women (LA/NY)
The Players: Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle
Beart, Fanny Ardant, Virginie Ledoyen; directed by Francois Ozon
The Skinny: An isolated mansion in the French countryside. A family patriarch’s murder. Eight women–each with a motive, each with a secret. One of them is guilty. Sounds like Clue.
Comedian (NY)
The Players: Jerry Seinfeld, Colin Quinn, Chris Rock, Garry Shandling; directed by Christian Charles
The Skinny: A documentary about Jerry Seinfeld‘s yearlong, post-sitcom stand-up comedy tour.
Das Experiment (LA/NY)
The Players: Moritz Bleibtreu, Edgar Selge, Maren Eggert, Andrea
Sawatzki, Christian Berkel; directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel
The Skinny: Bleibtreu (Run Lola Run) is an ex-journalist intrigued by the idea of going undercover in an experiment involving 20 “prisoners” and “guards” thrown into a controlled penitentiary-like environment–until the situation spins out of control.
His Secret Life (NY)
The Players: Margherita Buy, Stefano Accorsi; directed by Ferzan Ozpetek
The Skinny: After her husband’s untimely death, an uptight, middle-class woman is gradually drawn out of her grief and into a new world of gay men, prostitutes, and transsexuals–which, she learns, was her husband’s true family. In Italian with English subtitles.
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Invincible (LA/NY)
The Players: Jouko Ahola, Tim Roth, Anna Gourari; directed by Werner Herzog
The Skinny: The true story of Zishe Breibart, a Jewish blacksmith from eastern Poland billed as the world’s strongest man who traveled to Berlin in the 1930s to join a nightclub cabaret.
Secretary (LA/NY)
The Players: Maggie Gyllenhaal, James Spader, Lesley Ann Warren,
Jeremy Davies; directed by Steven Shainberg
The Skinny: A secretary with a penchant for self-mutilation lands a job in a law office where the boss is far from normal himself. They embark on a relationship, crossing lines of conduct that would horrify Human Resources.
Spirited Away
The Players: Daveigh Chase, Michael Chiklis, Susan Egan, Lauren
Holly; directed by Hayao Miyazaki
The Skinny: A Japanese anime film from the creator of Princess Mononoke that tells the story of a girl who travels into the world of gods to find a way to turn her parents into human form after they were turned into pigs. Mmm-hmm.
Sept. 25
The Trials of Henry Kissinger (NY)
The Players: Brian Cox, Salvador Allende, Gerald Ford, Christopher Hitchens, Henry Kissinger; directed by Eugene Jarecki
The Skinny: Part contemporary investigation and part historical
inquiry, this documentary focuses on journalist Christopher Hitchens‘ charges against Kissinger as a war criminal based on his role in affairs in Cambodia, Chile and Indonesia.
Sept. 27
Crazy as Hell (LA/NY)
The Players: Michael Beach, Ronny Cox, Eriq La Salle, John C. McGinley, Sinbad; directed by Eriq La Salle
The Skinny: a maverick psychiatrist whose non-medicinal approach for treating patients has crowned him a hero in some circles, an egoist in others, becomes the subject of a study on mental illness. He gets more than he bargained for when a mysterious stranger claiming to
be Satan admits himself to the hospital and unravels his life.
Just a Kiss
The Players: Marisa Tomei, Kyra Sedgwick, Taye Diggs, Ron Eldard, Marley Shelton; directed by Fisher Stevens
The Skinny: In this black comedy about love and infidelity, a group of friends learn the hard way that a kiss is never just a kiss.
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Skins (NY)
The Players: Graham Greene, Eric Schweig; directed by Chris Eyre
The Skinny: Though police investigator Rudy Yellowshirt has largely escaped the rampant unemployment, alcoholism and domestic violence affecting his reservation, his brother has not. Faced with the discovery of a bloody body, a burnt-down liquor store that supplies the native population with plenty of beer and his brother’s ongoing self-destruction, Rudy seeks to avenge himself, his family and his culture.
More September 2002
Havana, Mi Amor (NY)
The Players: Documentary; directed by Uli Gaulke
The Skinny: Every evening Havana’s residents gather in front of their television sets to lose themselves in the world of Telenovelas. This movie tells of their struggle in contrast to those soap opera images against the backdrop of Cuba’s beautiful city.
Big Shot’s Funeral (LA/NY)
The Players: Donald Sutherland, Paul Mazursky, Rosamund
Kwan; directed by Feng Xiao Gang
The Skinny: A famous director who is soon to die travels to China to film a historical epic about the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty. As he’s about to pass on, his crew discover that he doesn’t the money to pay for his funeral, so they concoct a scheme to pay for it using “product endorsements” by major companies.
Black Picket Fence (LA/NY/SF/CHI)
The Players: Tislam Milliner, Kool G Rap, Mel; directed by Sergio Goes
The Skinny: A portrait of the bleak life led by residents of public housing projects in Brooklyn’s East New York, one of the inner city’s most dangerous and violent neighborhoods. This documentary, filmed over two years, follows the life of Tislam Milliner, a struggling rapper who’s ambitious to make it out of the “‘hood.”
