Email Author Jean Oppenheimer

2002 Stories by Jean Oppenheimer

• Rabbit Punch

  published December 26, 2002

  Based on the true story of three young Aboriginal girls who walked 1,500 miles across the Australian Outback to be reunited with their mothers,... More >>

• One Weak Notice

  published December 19, 2002

  It had to happen eventually: the adorably scattered Sandra Bullock and the self-deprecatingly charming Hugh Grant paired in a romantic comedy. As... More >>

• Moore and Less

  published November 14, 2002

  Writer-director Todd Haynes' loving re-creation of a 1950s-style Hollywood melodrama (think Douglas Sirk) is a puzzling affair. Watching Far... More >>

• Movie Magic

  published November 14, 2002

  So enchanting it takes your breath away, Jean Cocteau's 1946 live-action version of the famous fairy tale remains one of the most magical films... More >>

• Curve Ball

  published October 24, 2002

  The current TV ad campaign for the sleeper hit My Big Fat Greek Wedding plays cleverly on the film's cross-cultural appeal by substituting... More >>

• Pact With the Devil

  published October 24, 2002

  This exceedingly graphic Holocaust drama concerns the Auschwitz Sonderkommando, a special squad of Jewish prisoners who, in exchange for better... More >>

• Foster Pussycat

  published October 10, 2002

  Good Lord, there hasn't been this much blond hair on screen since the Von Trapp children sang and danced their way across the Alps in The Sound... More >>

• That '70s Movie

  published October 3, 2002

  Brad Silberling's instincts are right about half the time, which means that, depending on your point of view, his films are either half empty or... More >>

• Type Caste

  published September 26, 2002

  Lee Holloway (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is released from a mental institution the day of her older sister's wedding. One afternoon with her dysfunctional... More >>

• Girl on Girl

  published August 8, 2002

  Friendship is almost as complicated and compelling as love. It's romance without the sex, whether between members of the same or opposite genders.... More >>

• Ringing True

  published July 18, 2002

  Think of it as Todd Solondz light--loads of dysfunction but, thankfully, none of the perversion. In fact, despite deep-seated neuroses,... More >>

• Big Cheese

  published July 18, 2002

  It took the creative giants behind MIIB (a.k.a. Men in Black II) five years to come up with a disappointingly flat and uninspired... More >>

• Porn to Lose

  published June 6, 2002

  Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the French film The Piano Teacher, aside from Isabelle Huppert's unnerving and masterful... More >>

• Dream On

  published May 16, 2002

  Merchant Ivory productions--Howard's End and A Room With a View being two of the most notable--are famous for their almost tactile... More >>

• Tales From the Cryptologist

  published May 2, 2002

  There is more than a little of A Beautiful Mind's John Nash in Tom Jericho, the hero of Michael Apted's World War II-era romantic thriller.... More >>

• Rites of Passage

  published April 25, 2002

  Once-renowned Iranian filmmaker Bahman Farmanara (Prince Ehtejab) had not made a picture since 1979, when his third film was banned by the... More >>

• Battle of the Sexes

  published April 18, 2002

  An 18th-century battle of the sexes that contains a radiant performance by Mira Sorvino as a princess whose complicated scheme to win the man she... More >>

• No Objections

  published March 7, 2002

  Cell phones and silk saris, dot-coms and arranged marriages--the latest film from Indian-born director Mira Nair (Salaam Bombay!,... More >>

• Odd Couple

  published February 14, 2002

  Set in Berlin in 1943, this fact-based German film with English subtitles concerns the love affair between two women: a Jew passing as a gentile... More >>

• Random Acts

  published February 14, 2002

  Amélie, minus most of the charm. With that film's star, Audrey Tautou, heading an ensemble cast, this romantic comedy is about how... More >>

• Hell Hole

  published February 7, 2002

  Part comedy, part tragedy and all bite, No Man's Land damns and mocks in equal measure, painting a picture of war's absurdity that... More >>

• Tasty Danish

  published January 31, 2002

  To call a movie the most accessible Dogme 95 film ever made is not merely damning with faint praise. It also threatens to alienate the two... More >>

• Spy, But Why?

  published January 10, 2002

  Cate Blanchett can do no wrong, but even she can't save Charlotte Gray, a World War II drama that never rises above the level of a... More >>