(Click on a film's title to read SK's original review.)
Lady Chatterly. This French version justifies itself by holding to the center of Lawrence's story--the implication that passion is greater than the sex through which it is manifested. The two lovers are warmly embodied, and the directing by Pascale Ferran makes the most of them. (Reviewed 07.02.07)
Pierrepoint--The Last Hangman. An English portrait of the last--or last publicized--person of his trade. Based on facts, the picture gives Timothy Spall the chance to depict a man who one chance for pride comes from a profession that is more than problematic. (07.02.07)
Private Property. Isabelle Huppert, French, illuminates this Belgian film with her portrait of a divorcée at odds with her two grown sons. The farmhouse in which the three of them live becomes a kind of compression chamber. (06.18.07)
12:08 East of Bucharest. In a small Romanian town a talk-show host can get little response of a discussion of the overthrow of Ceausescu sixteen years before. This satire of revolutionary apathy dares to move the characters' torpor with its own pace. (06.18.07)
--SK
By Stanley Kauffmann