New York Times
“An unexpected crowd-pleaser...  Davies gives an especially deft performance... [Russell] has set himself up as a director able to tackle anything...”

The New Yorker
“A movie about mother-son incest may sound like a daring writing-directing début, but David O. Russell, the fledgling auteur, stacks the deck like an old sharpie.” Michael Sragow

Washington Post
“The film’s subject matter and title (slang for masturbation) may be attention-getting, but Russell never strains for momentousness; he’s not a shock artist.  Nor does he falter into crudeness.  Nearly everyone in his film’s absurd suburban universe is a joke, but Russell’s portrait of them is affectionate.  Their failings are hilarious, but at the same time grave and human.  This may be the 35-year-old writer-director’s first film, but already he’s proven that he’s the real thing.”  “A director with a more sensationalistic temperament might have milked this last section of the picture for melodramatic effect, but Russell’s direction becomes, if anything, more brisk and more clipped.”  Hal Hinson

Entertainment Weekly
“Affecting and provocative...  Davies’s performance is the key to what makes this audacious story work.”

Empire
“Russell’s success, however, is in creating a film that avoids being freaky or an exercise in titillation by employing a mixture of sympathetic writing and black, black comedy.”

Rolling Stone
“Davies gives a poignant, emotive performance that tears at the heart.  And Watson is magnificent; seductive and overwhelming without losing her character’s human scale.”  Peter Travers

TV Guide
“Winner of the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, SPANKING THE MONKEY is a unique, penetrating, and, ultimately, courageously honest film. Unlike so many other recent youth-oriented independent efforts, it takes on difficult, even impossible, issues with genuinely astonishing results.”  “Incest has been employed as a dramatic device since Sophocles’ Oedipus cycle, but few films have approached it with the frankness and humanity found here. Neophyte auteur David O. Russell creates a precisely defined context, delicately weaving the details of everyday life into the extraordinary circumstances of the story.”

Entertainment Weekly
“I’ve seen Spanking the Monkey, a movie about incest between a young man and his mom, referred to as a comedy.  That’s some dark definition of humor.  If Monkey were a French film - if the boy were essentially untroubled and if the seductive mere were essentially wise, and if it were evident that the boy would assuredly grow up to be essentially okay (perhaps to become an auteur?), then I would buy such a breezy characterization.  As it is, this well-composed, confidently shot, low-budget feature by 35-year-old first-time writer-director David O. Russell (it won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival) is all the more affecting and provocative for its much more American, much more emotionally untidy approach to a loaded subject.  What I mean is, calling Spanking the Monkey a comedy is too easy.”  Lisa Swartzbaum

FLIRTING WITH DISASTER

San Francisco Chronicle
“A buoyant, picaresque farce that hums with goofy energy and mines enough ideas, jokes and setups for three movies of this description.”  “In his 1993 debut feature, ‘Spanking the Monkey,'’ writer/director David O. Russell took a twisted look at a college student’s affair with his mom.  It was prickly, smart and disturbing, and it boded well for the career of the onetime union organizer/documentary film maker.”  “Russell has a large gift for satire, and his effervescent, wonderfully cheeky film brings to mind the work of Preston Sturges (‘The Lady Eve,’ ‘Sullivan’s Travels’) with its brisk pacing, whip- quick dialogue and assortment of quirky characters who exist in their own, elaborately fashioned worlds.”  “Now, with the deft and delicious ‘Flirting With Disaster,’ which opens today at Bay Area theaters, Russell not only matches but exceeds his promise.”  “At the heart of ‘Flirting With Disaster’ is a serious take on fidelity, freedom and the minefields of love.  Somehow, Russell doesn’t lose that thread, even as he lampoons aging hippies, New York neurotics, armpit fetishes, gay marriages, bed-and-breakfasts, police incompetence and the follies of sexual attraction.”  Edward Guthmann

Washington Post “‘Flirting With Disaster,’ like that Energizer Bunny, keeps on going.  But in this case, the perpetual motion is a deliciously hysterical rush.  This offbeat, documentary-like comedy becomes geometrically funnier as it goes along.  Filmmaker David O. Russell, who made the darkly unconventional comedy ‘Spanking the Monkey,’ has a keep-the-fire-burning approach to storytelling.  One amusing episode becomes kindling wood to another; and the conflagration gets ever higher.”  Dessen Howe

NY Times
“Having made an enormously confident feature debut with ‘Spanking the Monkey,’ Russell now takes a huge, successful leap into wild ensemble comedy, working with a stellar cast and a remarkable number of tricks up his sleeve.  Throughout it all, Stiller makes a superb straight man, while Ms. Arquette fumes beautifully, and Ms. Leoni shows off a sleek resemblance to Annette Bening and fine comic style.  Ms. Moore, cast against type with droll effectiveness, delivers the film’s whopper of a last line.  ‘Flirting With Disaster’ shows off fine, edgy cinematography by Eric Edwards, whose credits include all of Gus Van Sant’s films, and the slow, teasing rhythms of Russell’s distinctive comic style.  Russell isn’t afraid to let a long scene build gradually until it gets where it’s headed.  Audiences won’t mind, either.  Thanks to this filmmaker’s fine comic acumen, the payoff is always there.”  Janet Maslin

Washington Post
“‘Flirting With Disaster,’ writer-director David O. Russell’s exhilarating follow-up to ‘Spanking the Monkey,’ is even wilder, giddier and more unpredictable than that irreverent debut.”  “Though Russell revealed a fresh, provocative sensibility in ‘Spanking the Monkey,’ there was nothing to indicate that he might have the talent for social farce that he shows here.  The movie takes off fast and crazy, and just keeps gathering speed.”  Hal Hinson

Los Angeles Times
“A beautifully balanced, frenetic comedy about searching for love in too many places, FLIRTING thrusts you into a sexy, giddy maelstrom of confusion, mischance and misadventure that gets funnier and funnier as it goes along.”

NY Times
“For a couple of minutes in the midst of David O. Russell’s sneaky, sidesplitting ‘Flirting With Disaster,’ Mel Coplin (Ben Stiller) finds himself the brother of tawny blond volleyball-playing twins.  This happy if impermanent accident is nothing unusual for Mr. Russell’s wonderfully mad odyssey of a movie, in which a man sets out to find his biological parents and winds up meeting more weirdos than Alice found down the rabbit hole.”  Janet Maslin

Washington Post
“A deliciously hysterical rush.”  “Wild, giddy and unpredictable.”

USA Today
“A lumpy-bumpy road comedy in which expectations are constantly, and hilariously, deflated...  Hang on and prepare to laugh continually...”  3 1/2 out of 4 stars Susan Wloszczyna

Entertainment Weekly
“...Top-drawer cast...  One of the ha-ha funniest movies currently available...”

Variety
“A diabolically clever satire...  Bracing and original...  The laughs fly thick and fast...”

Chicago Sun-Times
“A very funny film...”

TV Guide
“Highly unlikely plot complications never once threaten to throw this remarkably amusing film off-track, thanks to the narrative intelligence of writer-director David O. Russell, the only member of the filmmaking bratpack who seems to understand how movies work and why they entertain.”

San Francisco Chronicle
“In his 1993 debut feature, ‘Spanking the Monkey,’ writer/director David O. Russell took a twisted look at a college student’s affair with his mom.  It was prickly, smart and disturbing, and it boded well for the career of the onetime union organizer/documentary filmmaker.  Now, with the deft and delicious ‘Flirting With Disaster,’ which opens today at Bay Area theaters, Russell not only matches but exceeds his promise.  Arriving on the heels of ‘Fargo’ and ‘The Young Poisoner’s Handbook,’ two fiendishly good comedies, ‘Flirting With Disaster’ reinforces the impression -- go ahead, call me optimistic -- that this year is shaping up as a fine year for film comedy.  A screwball farce about family, parenthood and the risks of intimacy, ‘Flirting’ stars Ben Stiller as Mel Coplin, a neurotic etymologist with a wife (Patricia Arquette), a 4-month-old son without a name, and a fierce desire to find his birth parents.  Russell has a large gift for satire, and his effervescent, wonderfully cheeky film brings to mind the work of Preston Sturges (‘The Lady Eve,’ ‘Sullivan’s Travels’) with its brisk pacing, whip- quick dialogue and assortment of quirky characters who exist in their own, elaborately fashioned worlds.  It’s a big cast, and the actors all seem charged up -- as if they’d never had this kind of material to work from before, and vowed to make the best of it.  Stiller and Arquette never have been more appealing, and the older actors, Moore and Alda especially, have a merry blast subverting their good-guy images.  No one has a weak part -- not Josh Brolin and Richard Jenkins, both terrific as Michigan cops who turn out to be a bickering gay couple, and not Charlet Oberly as the fussy grandma who runs the bed-and-breakfast where Mel gropes Tina, throwing his marriage into jeopardy.  At the heart of ‘Flirting With Disaster’ is a serious take on fidelity, freedom and the minefields of love.  Somehow, Russell doesn’t lose that thread, even as he lampoons aging hippies, New York neurotics, armpit fetishes, gay marriages, bed-and-breakfasts, police incompetence and the follies of sexual attraction.”  Edward Guthman

MANNY & LO

NY Times “At the start of Lisa Krueger’s stirring debut feature, the story’s two young heroines are introduced as Manny (Scarlett Johansson) and Lo (Aleksa Palladino) and seen waking up on a lawn in a soulless suburban development, which they mistook for a park the night before.  By the film’s end, these two have turned into Amanda and Laurel, and they are in a real park, in a tranquil wilderness.  What changed? Everything. How?  Therein lies a lovely tale.  With the utmost warmth and clarity, ‘Manny and Lo’ watches these two lost girls take charge of their fate.  Motherless sisters who have fled their foster homes, the precocious 11-year-old Manny and her wanton 16-year-old sibling have learned to live on the run.”  “But help is the very essence of Ms. Krueger’s generous film: help within families and between generations, life-altering help from strangers.  Understated, told without a trace of saccharine, shot and scored with quiet elegance, ‘Manny and Lo’ builds gently toward a fable’s happy ending.  It’s the kind of story that leaves viewers with a warm glow.”  Janet Maslin

Variety
“A singularly quirky, utterly original sensibility is displayed by writer-director Lisa Krueger in her feature debut, ‘Manny & Lo,’ a modern fairy tale in which three misfits establish a unique bond that defies traditional definitions.  This offbeat satire lacks a name cast, but, with shrewd marketing, Sony Classics should be able to reach way beyond the arthouse crowd that embraced last year’s equally idiosyncratic indie  ‘Spanking the Monkey.’ which resembles Krueger’s new film and was also produced by Dean Silvers.  A road movie that stops moving after the first reel, juvenile kidnappers who have no idea what they’re doing, a squeaky-clean suburban matron who holds her own ‘dark’ secret -- these are some of the narrative elements in this pointedly written, darkly toned comedy that turns every conventional idea, including what constitutes a family, on its head.”  Emanuel Levy

Los Angeles Times
“A wholly original movie, warm-hearted but not precious, and possessed of a gently wacky sensibility.” Kenneth Turan

Chicago Sun-Times
“The movie is serious about its characters...  It’s also interesting the way Krueger develops a hidden theme.”

NY Times
“One of the freshest films...  Lisa Krueger’s MANNY AND LO, a warm, fabulously unsentimental comedy about two young sisters on their own...  MANNY AND LO has a tone so perfectly balanced and idiosyncratic that it is deservedly one of the finds of the year.”  Caryn James

San Francisco Chronicle
“With her first feature, ‘Manny & Lo,’ writer-director Lisa Krueger reveals a distinctive style.  Though employing no surreal devices and remaining within a realistic convention, Krueger takes the story of two young sisters on their own and somehow makes it seem unreal, strange, outside time.”  Mick LaSalle

Austin Chronicle
“An understated movie that, in turns, is funny and heart-breaking and uplifting.” Marjorie Baumgarten

WIGSTOCK THE MOVIE

San Francisco Chronicle “Stock up on hair spray. Dust off your fishnets.  And slap on the longest bat-wing false eyelashes you can find. ‘Wigstock: The Movie,’ an outrageously entertaining, purely-for-pleasure dragathon, is here!” ‘Wigstock’ is a blast of a movie and never lags in energy or spirit.”  “People are comparing ‘Wigstock’ to ‘The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert’ -- the Australian drag frolic that scored at the box office and made it easier for Shils to get ‘Wigstock’ on the screen.  The comparison is valid, but I like ‘Wigstock’ better: It has a great spirit, more music and bigger hair.” Edward Guthman

Variety
“A big, colorful extravaganza...  A fun show to behold, a tribute to the human imagination at its most diverse and eccentric.” Emmanuel Levy

Los Angeles Times
“Totally fun…  WIGSTOCK: THE MOVIE captures the good cheer, outrageous humor and high energy of downtown Manhattan’s annual Labor Day drag extravaganza.”

NY Times
“A distant cousin to the Halloween parade in Greenwich Village, Wigstock, the event and the movie, is good-natured, campy fun.”

Washington Post
“It’s fun for everyone.”

THE LAST GOOD TIME

Variety 
“Armin Mueller-Stahl delivers a towering performance in Bob Balaban’s ‘The Last Good Time,’ an unusually poignant, finely observed comedy-drama about an old man whose life changes dramatically as a result of a fateful encounter with a young woman.  A stellar supporting cast includes the irascible Stander and the magnificent Maureen Stapleton, as a chatty neighbor whose friendly gestures are at first rejected by Joseph.  Lenser Claudia Raschke and editor Hughes Winborne imbue the film with an arresting visual style, using uninterrupted long takes and radiant panning to convey the changing physical and emotional space between Joseph and Charlotte.”  Emanuel Levy

San Francisco Examiner “Mueller-Stahl’s performance stands out in film dealing with real emotions…”  “Balaban and John McLaughlin’s script is unforced and quiet, and the cast is entirely believable.  Balaban, an actor who has played character roles in ‘Prince of the City,’ ‘Absence of Malice’ and ‘Catch-22,’ knows how to get the most out of his actors.  This is an actor’s movie with precious performances and heartfelt sentiment.”  Barbara Shulgasser

Washington Post
“Bob Balaban’s gentle drama ‘The Last Good Time’ is tasteful, muted and suffused with a spirit of Old World weariness.  As Charlotte, d’Abo is even more impressive, perhaps because her grungy performance is so unexpected.”  “There’s nothing fusty about the movie, though.  It’s a smart, provocative piece of work.”  Hal Hinson

Washington Post
“‘The Last Good Time’ concerns a couple of eventful weeks in the life of a sad, dignified, old gentleman.  There’s nothing fusty about the movie, though.  It’s a smart, provocative piece of work.”  Kevin McManus

Spiritually and Practice
“Beautifully conveys the nostalgia, isolation, and surprising magic moments of old age.”