As if we needed to be reminded of what a loss Alan Rickman’s death represents to cinema, we have his final speech in Gavin Hood’s incisive consideration of collateral damage and the ethics of warfare, EYE IN THE SKY.
ENDER’S GAME
ENDERS GAME presents the viewer with just the sort of philosophical conundrum posed in the film itself. What to do with a film that is a refreshingly intelligent, morally challenging tale , but based on a novel by Orson Scott Card, a man whose views on gay rights are repugnant? It is perhaps jejune to… Read More »
TSOTSI
With TSOTSI, Gavin Hood has taken the liberty of updating the timeframe of South African writer Athol Fugard’s only novel. In doing so, the politics of apartheid that spurred the story in the book has given way to the tragedy of AIDS. Changing the circumstances of its title character’s orphaning, though, doesn’t affect the nature of… Read More »
RENDITION
RENDITION takes a subject worth a stark examination and turns it into a long, rambling, and unexpectedly dull tale unredeemed by its good intentions, its twist at the end or Meryl Streep as the prissy and persnickety CIA rendition-meister. It takes a great deal of effort to make that combination fail and this earnest effort… Read More »