THE 9TH LIFE OF LOUIS DRAX uses the perspective of a child to tell a very mature, very troubling story. It’s a device that could be precious if handled with less sensitivity, less intelligence than is found in Max Minghella’s wondrous adaptation, directed by Alexandre Aja, of Liz Johnson’s novel of the same name. It… Read More »
BEN-HUR
Any version of BEN-HUR has a great deal to live up to with the chariot race that is the climax of the story’s action. Well, until now, but more about that later. Timur Bekmambetov’s retelling does, indeed, get the chariot race right. It’s one of the few things that are right with this curiously inert… Read More »
ANTHROPOID
ANTHROPOID is divided into two episodes, one more gut-wrenching than the last as it tells the fact-based story of Czech partisans on what is essentially a suicide mission to assassinate SS General Reinhardt Heydrich, Butcher of Prague, co-planner of the Final Solution, and third in line in the Nazi hierarchy. While the first part is… Read More »
NERVE
NERVE is a triumph of style. It is a slight story that fails on every level but two, and those are the ones that are the most important. Do we care about what happens to our unlikely heroine? Do the increasingly dangerous dares that make up that slight story keep us on the edge of… Read More »
STAR TREK: BEYOND
The Star Trek franchise has never been about wondering how the intrepid crew of the Starship Enterprise would save the day against impossible odds. Rather, the suspense has always come from the struggle between hope and despair as they have battled aliens, space viruses, and their own inner conflicts to snatch victory from certain doom.… Read More »
LITTLE MEN
There is no phase of a parent-child relationship more fraught with peril, and for which either party is less prepared, than when the latter learns that the former is not infallible. LITTLE MEN portrays that milestone with intelligence and sensitivity for all concerned as two 13-year-olds become fast friends only to have their relationship threatened… Read More »
JASON BOURNE
I’m put in mind of tea leaves. Good quality tea leaves that have rendered such a wonderful cup of tea that you wonder if maybe, just maybe, there’s enough of their essential, unique quality left to take one more infusion to make a cup as good as that first one. And so it is with… Read More »
THE LEGEND OF TARZAN
Credit where it’s due. THE LEGEND OF TARZAN doesn’t get everything wrong. For one, It has the virtue of addressing why a perfectly capable, perfectly intelligent black man with a Ph.D., George Washington Harris (Samuel L. Jackson as an actual historical character) needs a white man, that would be Lord Greystoke aka Tarzan (Alexander Skarsgård)… Read More »
OUR KIND OF TRAITOR
John le Carré writes espionage stories in which the action is cerebral and the suspense comes from a keen observation of each protagonist’s character. Thus, the stakes in OUR KIND OF TRAITOR involve much more than the list of names that will topple those in power. They involve the people caught up in the intrigue… Read More »
PRINCESS
PRINCESS is an intimately observed film that forces us to face some uncomfortable truths. Told with unflinching honesty, completely eschewing the sensational in favor of the perceptive, we are plunged into a 12-year-old’s waking nightmare lived in a highly sexualized atmosphere created by her mother and her mother’s live-in boyfriend. The girl is Adar… Read More »
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