OF GODS AND MEN, based on a real incident, is an engrossing consideration of the struggle for religion to exist in the modern world untainted by politics. Set in a rural Cistercian monastery with a long history in the Muslim country it serves, the film proceeds at a deliberate pace that serves to enhance the growing… Read More »
FRIDA
At one point during Julie Taymor’s exquisite film, FRIDA, Diego Rivera tells Frida Kahlo that while he can only paint what he sees, she paints from the heart. And so it is as it should be that Taymor’s biopic of Frida’s life is the landscape of Frida’s heart than a straightforward telling of the events… Read More »
JANE EYRE
There is something unsettling about a womans direct gaze, one that is engaged, attentive, but unsmiling. One that neither dissembles, nor attempts to disguise the intelligence of the viewer. Disconcerting now, in the early Victorian age in which JANE EYRE is set, its positively revolutionary. In the person of Mia Wasikowska, it’s a thoroughly modern… Read More »
WATER FOR ELEPHANTS
WATER FOR ELEPHANTS, based on the novel of the same name by Sara Gruen, is a grand romantic daydream of a movie. Suffused as it is with a bitter edge of melancholy of lost souls scrabbling for a happiness that they believe to be right around the corner, it is saved from the excesses of… Read More »
THE ART OF GETTING BY
At one point in THE ART OF GETTING BY, its disaffected protagonist declares that he is allergic to hormones. Ironically, so is the film that tells his story, and thats a shame because the seething turmoil of emotions at work need more than the anemic frame given them here. George (Freddie Highmore) is a self-described… Read More »
THE DEVIL’S DOUBLE
As evidenced by the continuing popularity from the histories of Suetonius on down to the modern tabloid, bad behavior among the rich, famous, and/or powerful is a source of endless fascination for the rest of us. That being the case, there is a built-in magnet for THE DEVILS DOUBLE, based on the life of Iraqi… Read More »
BELLFLOWER
In the French language there is a particularly evocative suffix, -atre. There is no equivalent in English, but applied to a color, yellow, for instance, it bespeaks the sickly quality of that color. And it is that sickly yellow that permeates BELLFLOWER, a crushingly dull look at the lives of crushingly dull people, two of… Read More »
CIRCUMSTANCE
CIRCUMSTANCE begins in a perfect world before being brought back to the reality with a thud. The perfect world involves the freedom of living an authentic life. The real world, modern day Iran, is a place where lies are the common currency of life, and to behave otherwise is to risk everything, even ones life.… Read More »
FEMME FATALE
There was a time when Brian De Palma was hailed as the worthy successor to Alfred Hitchcock. With DRESSED TO KILL, he seemed to have slipped a bit, from successor to Hitchcock into the role of paying tribute to him with a dead-on homage style of filmmaking. And then with BLOW OUT, well, he just sort of… Read More »
MIGHTY MACS, THE
It took two years for THE MIGHTY MACS to finally make it to theater screens. It also took a title change from OUR LADY OF VICTORY. Granted, a G-rated film is a tough sell in the current marketplace, but this wholesome fare, based on a true story, is not as dull as its familiar idioms… Read More »
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