IN THE LAND OF SAINTS AND SINNERS is a melancholy study of the futility of violence. Set in the war-torn Northern Ireland of 1974, it features a performance by Liam Neeson that is considered, measured, and infinitely eloquent for its silences in a story that eschews politics as it finely observes the consequences of choices,… Read More »
JUSTICE LEAGUE
JUSTICE LEAGUE is a film with many problems. Some are inherent in an origin-style story that introduces several characters to what the filmmakers hope will be an audience eager to follow their further, individual, adventures. Some are just inexplicable. Take the plot device that is nothing short of asinine, and which I can’t discuss without… Read More »
SILENCE
Academics are taught to write with a dispassionate yet highly detailed style for their scholarly treatises. That is the approach that Martin Scorsese has taken with SILENCE, his philosophically dense and immaculately rendered film of Shusaku Endo’s book of the same name. The result is a maddening film more to be admired than enjoyed as… Read More »
HITMAN: AGENT 47 A Swing and A Miss
This is not the first time that someone has attempted to bring the video game upon which HITMAN: AGENT 47 is based to the big screen. The last one, HITMAN starring a pre-Justified Timothy Olyphant went down in flames, and this one joins its still-smoldering carcass. It’s not that making a film out of a video… Read More »
MUNICH
In MUNICH, Steven Spielberg has created an intensely profound, if somewhat flawed, work. Moral debates about right and wrong abound with as many variations as there are characters to expound them, and there are many of both. The message, though, is unequivocal. Killing is an awful business that kills more than the victim, it also… Read More »
MUNICH — DVD
There is no commentary track on the DVD release of MUNICH. There is, instead, an introduction by Steven Spielberg, which is more a making-of piece than a talking head, though there is that, too. He talks about Vengance by George Jonas, the book on which he based his film, the only credible account of what… Read More »
THERE WILL BE BLOOD
When the question “Was that supposed to be a comedy”? floats to mind after a film is concluded, there is no answer that bodes well for said flick. Such is the case with THERE WILL BE BLOOD, Paul Thomas Anderson’s robust, and fitfully manic piece of work that takes Upton Sinclair’s classic novel, “Oil,” and… Read More »