Author Archives: Ted Shen

For this Dutch-financed documentary (1997), director Heddy Honigmann and her crew interviewed itinerant musicians on the streets and subways of Paris, occasionally winning invitations to visit the performers’ homes. Almost all of her subjects are political refugees or illegal immigrants from Venezuela, Argentina, Armenia, Bosnia, Algeria, Romania, and Vietnam; they speak of hardship and disillusionment […]

Cheng Pei-pei, a fixture of Chinese swordplay films, returns to the role that made her famous in 1966’s Come Drink With Me: a feisty cross-dressing noblewoman known as Golden Swallow for her graceful, airborne fighting style. In this hyperventilating 1968 revenge ballad from Cheh Chang, she’s allied with a warrior in black who has the […]

Isn’t it cats that are supposed to be from another planet? In this tween-targeted fantasy by first-time director John Robert Hoffman, the dogs are the aliens—they come from Sirius intent on world conquest. When a canine emissary named Hubble (voiced by Matthew Broderick) arrives to check on the progress of the invasion, he finds the […]

Ali Shah-Hatami (Shrapnels in Peace) wrote and directed this gorgeous parable (2002) about a teen boy who learns a holy tune capable of ending the drought plaguing his village in the mountains of northern Iran. The elemental plot traces an arc of sin (the boy kills larks for money), pilgrimage (he seeks the lute player […]

Despondent over his bad grades, an eight-year-old boy from a privileged Tehran family plans to kill himself by jumping off a high-rise. On the rooftop he encounters an armed man recently released from prison who’s intent on killing the business associate who sent him there and then himself. When the man suspends his mission of […]

A New York-based filmmaker with family ties in Taiwan, Lana Lin is interested in the way that island’s culture balances traditional and modern beliefs, and in using split-screen technique to impart layers of information. Mysterial Power (2002, 53 min.) associates her grandmother’s mysterious recovery from a serious illness with her teenage cousin’s habit of communicating […]

Veteran Bengali filmmaker Buddhadev Dasgupta aims for picturesque humanism in this kaleidoscopic drama (2002) set in and around a rural brothel. A prostitute plans to sell her daughter to a wealthy older man to save the girl from a whore’s life, but the studious daughter dreams of going to Calcutta to further her education. But […]

Tazuko Makitsubo’s 2000 feature is a case study of a middle-aged housewife overburdened with obligations to the older and younger generations. Striving to cope with a dying father, a morose mother, a stubbornly traditional father-in-law, and teenage children, the liberal-minded protagonist receives little support from her husband, who’s preoccupied with his career. Her midlife crisis […]

Sachi Hamano, a veteran of Japanese erotic films, bravely takes on the topic of senior sexuality with this 2001 farce set in a retirement complex. Half a dozen female residents of various temperaments get their hopes up when a 75-year-old man moves in, jostling to fawn over him. Although she has a keen ear for […]

A double bill of documentaries about Chilean mavericks. The subject of Bettina Perut and Ivan Osnovikoff’s A Man Aside (2001, 60 min.) is Ricardo Liano, a flabby old crank who lives in a cramped Santiago apartment and boasts of knowing prominent politicians in Spain, where he lived years before. The verite-style camera follows the proud […]