Daphna Kastner Movies
- 2008
Two people recently spurned in their love life come together amidst their urban lifestyles in New York City in this drama from writer/director Daphna Kastner (Spanish Fly). The CP Productions picture is especially notable for reuniting Harvey Keitel and Martin Scorsese, who are handling various producing duties on the film. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, All Movie Guide
- 2007
A teenager out of his element makes a shaky transition to adulthood in this bittersweet comedy drama set in the mid-Seventies. Jake (Frankie Muniz) is a seventeen year old growing up in Brooklyn who dreams of some day making his living as a writer. Jake is being raised by his mother Faye (Frances Fisher) in the wake of his parents' divorce, but she decides to send him to Florida to spend some time with his father, a racetrack tout who calls himself Zowie (Harvey Keitel), when she learns she's seriously ill. While traveling to Florida, Jake strikes up a friendship with cheerful stoner Rickie (Ryan Cabrera), who is a student at the same Miami high school Jake will be attending. Rickie invents a wildly colorful history for his new pal, and soon everyone at school is in awe of the party animal with the wealthy father from New York, even though none of what Rickie has told them is true and Jake has trouble keeping track of his new life history. While a few of the girls at school seem to like Jake, his head is turned by Marina (Amber Valletta), a beautiful model he meets when she's doing a photo shoot at the beach. While Mariana is in her early thirties and clearly out of Jake's league, she's charmed by his sweetness and sincerity, and the two strike up a friendship that grows into something much more intimate. Meanwhile, Zowie is in dutch with a handful of loan sharks and trying to end a serious losing streak at the track while wondering what to make of his son, whose career choice doesn't much impress him. My Sexiest Year also stars Haylie Duff, Karolina Kurkova and Daphna Kastner. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Frankie Muniz, Harvey Keitel, (more)
- 2001
Following up on his masterful, heart-wrenching war-drama Kippur, veteran Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitaï directs his first English language work based on a novel by Arthur Miller. Set in 1939, the film centers on Kalman, a young ambitious Jewish businessman who leaves his aged father in Europe to be with his sister, Sam (Samantha Morton), in Palestine. There he finds that Sam is living with Dov, an idealistic architect obsessed with the work of the Bauhaus school. Sam, in turn, is helping professor Oscar Kalkofsky, whose visionary ideas about the future Israeli state is one of collaboration with the Arabs already living in Palestine. Another member in this intellectual group is Silvia, who passionately argues for a separate state apart from the Arabs. When the war breaks out, illegal Jewish immigrants flood into Britain from Europe resulting in the formation of the Jewish Brigade by the British Army. This film was screened at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Samantha Morton, Thomas Jane, (more)
Daphna Kastner directed this romantic comedy-drama, set in Spain. Interviewing Madrid men, journalist Zoe (Kastner) intends to expand her magazine article into a book. Her own experiences with men, however, haven't exactly made her an expert, but possibilities arise when she meets straight-talking Antonio (Toni Canto) and former professor Carl Livingston (Martin Donovan), owner of a Madrid bookstore. Shown at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Daphna Kastner, Toni Canto, (more)
- 1995
In this old-fashioned screwball comedy, two Hollywood screenwriters have numerous disastrous, heated encounters before they realize the obvious and find romance. It all begins in catastrophe-ridden LA after yet another earthquake. Zina is driving her car on the freeway when she runs into Davis while trying get out from under a cracked overpass. They start out civil enough but soon find themselves fighting tooth and nail over who is at fault. Later the two instant enemies find that they run into each other wherever they go, be it a trendy restaurant or a major party. When they both begin vying for the opportunity to write the same script, the fireworks begin in earnest. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1993
Louie B. (Tim Brazzil) is an out-of-towner trying to get Los Angelenos to kiss for his tourist's video camera. He inadvertently runs afoul of a bank-robbing gang led by Stacey (Mary Crosby) and gets conked on the head, temporarily losing his sight. He is taken in hand by the madame of a whorehouse, and he takes it into his head to get the sex workers there (male and female) to talk about their lives. Since many of these stories are the genuine article, told by real-live L.A. sex workers, this part of the film qualifies as a kind of documentary. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Daphna Kastner, Mary Crosby, (more)
For sheer abject self-indulgence this side of an Eric Schaeffer movie, one need look no further than the films of Henry Jaglom. Jaglom's vanity productions require an intense Stalin-like loyalty to the filmmaker and his films going in, otherwise a viewer is lost. So when, in Venice/Venice, Henry Jaglom appears as a filmmaker named Dean at the Venice Film Festival, there promoting a film resembling a Henry Jaglom film, a viewer must give himself up to the force or walk out of the theater. Dean is the kind of pretentious Hollywood type who likes to wear his heart and his distribution contract on his sleeve, so when adoring European journalist Jeanne (Nelly Alard) inexplicably smiles at him the right way, filmgoers will come to understand why the film business is so attractive to wimpy film geeks. Jeanne and Dean fall in love and take a walking tour of Venice, but Jeanne pays no attention to the city, since she religiously hangs on every word Dean has to say regarding love, films, and destiny. Since there are more pearls of wisdom to be gloaned from this Bel-Air Gandhi, Jeanne willingly follows Dean back to Venice, California. Realizing that she has already spent too much time basking in the brilliance of Dean's sun, Penny (Melissa Leo), Dean's California girlfriend, obligingly offers to pack up and leave when she sees Dean returning to Southern California with Jeanne in tow. When Henry Jaglom talks, they all listen. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nelly Alard, Henry Jaglom, (more)
- 1991
- R
Most people hang up on wrong numbers, but a woman finds herself falling in love with one caller in this offbeat independent comedy. Julia (Daphna Kastner) is a writer specializing in books for children who shares an apartment with her boyfriend Jack (David Charles). Jack wants to get married, but Julia isn't so sure that she wants to commit to a permanent relationship. One day, Julia gets a phone call that turns out to be a wrong number; however, she finds herself striking up a conversation with the man on the other end, Daniel (David Duchovny). Julia finds herself attracted to the voice on the other end of the phone as she starts discussing the ups and downs of her relationship with Jack. After spending several hours on the line, Julia invites Daniel over to visit, and she ends up sleeping with him. The next day, Julia discovers that this wasn't as much of a chance encounter as she thought -- Daniel, who has been in therapy for some time, enjoys calling women he doesn't know and seducing them over the phone. He almost never sees them again, owing to his tremendous fear of commitment, but there's something about Julia that encourages Daniel to finally confront his problems. Julia Has Two Lovers was co-written by leading lady Daphna Kastner, and it afforded David Duchovny one of his first major screen roles, three years before his breakthrough on the TV series The X-Files. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Daphna Kastner, David Duchovny, (more)
The title of Henry Jaglom's stream-of-consciousness Eating says it all. Three women (Lisa Blake Richards, Mary Crosby and Marlena Giovi), each celebrating a "milestone" birthday, decide to throw a joint party. Attending the revelries is French documentary filmmaker Martine Nely Alard, who becomes fascinated when none of the guests will touch the meticulously prepared birthday cake. As Martine begins interviewing the partygoers, she discovers the importance that food holds in each of their lives. One of the most revelatory improvisational monologues is delivered by a matriarch portrayed by Frances Bergen, the real-life widow of Edgar Bergen and the mother of Candice. Though Eating is not for everyone's taste, for those in tune with the fiercely independent Jaglom, the film is a cinematic smorgasbord. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lisa Richards, Mary Crosby, (more)
- 1989
- R
With its catchy title and over-the-top premise, this fairly amusing horror comedy plays like a kinder, gentler variation on the type of fare offered by the bad-taste moguls at Troma Studios. The story begins in the thick of a metaphysical battle between a decidedly female Satan (Lezlie Deane) and one of Heaven's less-than-angelic "Chasers" (Twin Peaks, pretty-boy Dana Ashbrook), ending with the former hiding out in the body of timid wallflower Maggie (Liane Curtis), whose blind date turns even more disastrous. Only after the seriously over-vamped Maggie has seduced and destroyed (literally) every man in sight does the Chaser finally catch up to her. The battle ensues with renewed gusto, the bodies and souls of countless mortal bystanders hanging in the balance. It seems this ever-escalating conflict (employing everything from rocket launchers to possessed restaurant entrees) is a mere extension of an ongoing lovers' spat between the devil and her heavenly pursuer, whose obnoxious philandering first incurred her satanic wrath. Fans of camp horror should find ample laughs here -- others need not apply. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Liane Alexandra Curtis, Dana Ashbrook, (more)
- 1986
Without a plot to carry the action through its 78-minute running time and without characters that have the depth to do the same, this experimental film about the residents of a dilapidated Montreal tenement offers little to create and sustain interest. Among the inhabitants of the low-income apartment block are a drug dealer, a transvestite, a revolutionary, and other odd eccentrics, including excercise buffs and an erstwhile photographer. The mix might have possibilities, but not here. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Claire Nadon, Kennon Raines, (more)
- 1983
- R
This undistinguished drama goes no further than clichéd views about women who gain success by bedding down those who have it. Pia Zadora stars as Jerilee, just out of high school and married to a prominent Hollywood screenwriter, with her own heart-felt aspirations to get her screenplays noticed by the right producers. Her marriage fails for many reasons and once on her own, she comes to the difficult decision that she really will go nowhere fast unless she uses her sexual charms to pave the way to recognition -- and so she does, with a bit of revenge thrown in at the end for good measure. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Pia Zadora, Lloyd Bochner, (more)
