Fourth Row Center

Inju: the Beast in Shadow follows French mystery novelist Alex Fayard as he arrives in Japan for a publicity tour and receives a cryptic warning from his Japanese rival, Shundei Oe, a wildly popular but reclusive author who has never been seen or photographed, known only by a gruesome self portrait on his book jackets. Alex meets a dancer in a tea house who thinks she knows who Oe really is, a brutal and insane former lover who may be capable of harming Alex. Director Barbet Schroeder ( Reversal of Fortune, Single White Female ) seems at ease with both the material and the odd French/Japanese hybrid style of the film, which blends mystical Asian themes with elements of a taut European thriller. The plot unfolds like a flower, petal by petal; and as the plot unravels myriad twists and misdirection are revealed, the end result is a watchable and satisfying cinematic experience.

First time screenwriter Stephen Lindsay, who hails from Greer, SC, not far from my old stomping grounds, says he was thrilled to be involved with Hachiko: A Dog’s Story , to which actor Richard Gere attached himself early on and provided a great deal of creative input toward the final script. Gere stars as Parker, a New England man whose life is changed when an Akita pup finds him late one night at the train station. The station master, played by Jason Alexander, can only turn him over to the pound, so Parker elects to take the pup home until the owner is located. It’s not an easy transition for Parker’s wife, but Hachi and Parker bond, becoming an inseparable pair. And, as any dog movie worth its salt would have it, the pup’s owner never comes forward. Hachi becomes not only Parker’s best friend but a staple in the community where they live. Parker commutes to work by train, and like clockwork Hachi is waiting on his master every day outside the train station at five o’clock, rain or ...

Matthew Broderick stars as Ben Singer, a an embittered civil servant whose marriage has failed, who is estranged from his only daughter, whose career is at a dead end and who blames corporate greed on the part of The Man (an amusing performance by Philip Baker Hall) as the origin of both his and all society's ills. Then his roommate (and only friend) enters a diabetic coma and Ben is forced to take stock of his life. He's helped along by his roommate's sister, Khadi, who travels from Dakar to wait by her brother's bedside, and by a coworker who discovers that Ben was previously a very successful recording artist of children's songs until being put down by The Man. Thankfully, Wonderful World is not as heavy-handed as it might have been, and Broderick brings a soft, sympathetic touch to Ben’s pessimistic nature. Writer-directer Joshua Goldin (who wrote Out on a Limb with Broderick and 1990’s Darkman ) crafts a movie that blends comedy into a hopeful story about a m...

The Fortress is a Swiss documentary about a weigh station for foreign refugees seeking asylum in Switzerland, and it manages not only to paint a clear picture of what a refugee has to go through to obtain Swiss residency, but it paints portraits of a few hopeful souls and the dramatic and often painful journeys their lives have taken to arrive at the Swiss border petitioning for refuge. This is the only documentary I have seen at this year's festival, and I arrived thinking I was about to see a movie called Cold Souls with Paul Giamatti . I did see Giamatti standing outside of the Harvard Exit theater, signing a few autographs, but he did not appear in the Swiss documentary I screened. There was no narration nor were there any interviews. The Fortress was shot entirely in the refugee center, and the filmmakers did a terrific job editing the film in such a way that the lives of the workers and refugees there were vivid and fully realized. The movie is fascinating and flows nicel...

Many of the films shown at Seattle's film festival were made here, the majority of them independents. Such is the case with World’s Greatest Dad . Robin Williams plays Lance Clayton, a high school poetry teacher and failed writer. And he is hardly the world’s greatest dad. His teenage son, Kyle, who is crude and cruel and virtually friendless, seems to have no moral or ethical compass and runs roughshod over his weak-willed single parent. Williams is terribly sympathetic in his failure to discipline his son, and his rebuffed efforts to bond with the teen – dinner, movies, anything – are heartbreaking. But this is a black comedy, one of the darkest American comedies I've seen, and when Kyle dies in an accidental and undignified manner, his grieving father pens a suicide note leading all to believe that Kyle was a friendless genius who has taken the easy way out. Having redefined his worthless son, Lance finds that his life takes a remarkable turn for the better, as others (who p...

So Long at the Fair is one of those rare treats offered at film festivals, an old British film not available in the states but well worth the look on the big screen. Fair is a 1950 suspense thriller said to be a favorite of Hitchcock's. It incorporates an old legend about a disappearing room. Directed by Terence Fisher, who went on to direct most of the classic Hammer horror films of the 1960's and 70's, Fair stars Jean Simmons as Vicky Barton, a woman attending the 1889 Paris exhibition with her brother when inexplicably he disappears. Upon making inquiries as to his whereabouts she is told by the hotel staff that not only did she arrive in Paris alone, but that her brother's room, number 19, does not exist. Indeed, there is no room 19 and Vicky is unable to find anyone in Paris who has any memory of him. So Long at the Fair is a solid thriller, and holds up fairly well. While it lacks the flair of a Hitchcock film, it benefits from numerous unexpected turns of plot ...

Jack and Molly Campbell are the well-to-do parents of six-year-old Joey who are informed, out of the blue, that their infant adoption was not legal. To make matters worse, Joey's biological father, until recently wholly unaware of the boy's existence, wants his child returned now that he's completed his seven year prison sentence for domestic abuse. A judge orders the child removed from his adoptive parents in Florida and flown to Ohio to live with his biological mother and father. That is Like Dandelion Dust , a movie chronicling the lives of two sets of parents intent on raising young Joey and of the confused child caught in between. It goes without saying that to a point both sets of parents are sympathetic. Rip (a terrific Barry Pepper) has reformed and his desire for fatherhood fuels his efforts to rebuild his life. His wife, played to near perfection by Mira Sorvino, desires a simpler life, a life with a family, and her desire to be a mother to the child she gave up s...