A piece of whimsy, set in Providence, involving two terrible singers (Sam Rockwell and Steve Zahn) who are mistaken for safecrackers and become entangled with rival Jewish gangsters (Michael Lerner and Harvey Fierstein). Writer-director John Hamburg’s American indie comedy is no great shakes as a movie, but it carries a distinct goofball charm. The crosscutting’s awkward (most obtrusively at the beginning and end) and motivations are barely sketched out, but the actors seem to be having a pretty good time. How amused you’ll be, though, will have a lot to do with how long you can remain tickled by such conceits as a bar mitzvah in which father and son are dressed in sweat suits. With Paul Giamatti, Christina Kirk, and Michael Schmidt. (JR) Read more
Like Jane Campion’s The Piano, this 1998 first feature by writer-director Sandra Goldbacher is less a story about the 19th century than a fantasy about it, and as such even more erotic. The singular Minnie Driver plays a stagestruck Sephardic Jew in London in the 1840s. After her father is murdered she has to support her surviving family and, concealing her Jewish identity, secures a job as a governess on a remote Scottish island. The man of the house (Tom Wilkinson) is an inventor experimenting with photography, and after serving as his lab assistant she becomes romantically involved with him, though she’s also pursued by his troubled adolescent son (Jonathan Rhys Meyers). Goldbacher’s story is not always convincing as history, but it’s absorbing as a sort of gothic romance and sensually quite potent, and Driver carries it all with grace and authority. With Florence Hoath, Harriet Walter, and Bruce Myers. 112 min. (JR) Read more
