The Nursery
A UW-Madison student takes a babysitting job in the remote outskirts of the capital and strange things begin to occur—and accelerate once her one sensible and two doofus friends arrive to party. It sounds like ’80s horror but writer-directors Christopher Micklos and Jay Sapiro set the tale against a contemporary backdrop of anti-depressant meds, spooky chat rooms and unsettling images arriving on everyone’s screen. The Nursery earned two awards at Milwaukee’s Twisted Dreams Film Festival.
The Three-Way Wedding
What better way to begin a French romantic-sex comedy than in bed? But in director Jacques Doillon’s The Three-Way Wedding, it’s not entirely clear if playwright August (Pascal Greggory) is imagining sex with ex-wife Harriet (Julie Depardieu) as an exercise for finishing his play. And then she arrives at his villa with boyfriend Théo (Louis Garrel), cast as that play’s leading man. Art follows life and life follows art in this witty production.
Love After Love
Quiet and conversational, Love After Love catches life in a sequence of mid-moments. Its characters ponder the vagaries of happiness until anger, sickness and death dare to intrude into their comfortably upholstered upper-middle class existence. Andie MacDowell (Sex, Lies & Videotape) dominates with her subtly expressive features, drawn into a picture of composure under stress—until the picture cracks. Love After Love also stars James Adomian and Chris O’Dowd as members of the increasingly squabbling family.
“Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In: The Complete Fifth Season”
The groundbreaking television series reached its 100th episode during season five (1971-1972). The cast took potshots at most everything through comedic non sequiturs delivered by (and fired at) four-star guest stars such as Johnny Carson, Johnny Cash, Hugh Hefner, Bob Hope and John Wayne. The irreverent variety show is a time capsule that points the way to television’s future. With its fake newscasts and send-ups of current events, “Laugh-In” was a predecessor to “SNL.”
