With ABOUT SCHMIDT, Alexander Payne fixes the same acute eye he used in both CITIZEN RUTH and ELECTION to once again rip the façade of wholesome gentility from the upper middle class of the heartland of America and to show us the savagery beneath. Again Payne has chosen the milieu Nebraska, the home of the… Read More »
MAX
As an exercise in ethics, people have been known to ponder the morality of going back in time to kill Hitler before he rose to power and committed any crimes against humanity. Some though, to adhere to the polar opposite sort of principles that Hitler espoused, thought a much more effective way to stop him… Read More »
THE HOURS
THE HOURS begins with a suicide, a famous one at that. Virginia Woolf with a fierce deliberateness puts a heavy stone in her pocket and walks into a river. We see her head duck silently into the water and then her body floating delicately away, pulled by the current with a gentle urgency. By the… Read More »
THE APPOINTED (HAMEYU)
Daniel Wachsmann’s 1990 film, THE APPOINTED, melds the mystical and the profane creating an enigmatic tale of love and destiny, Set in the biblical world of the Kabbalah as lived in contemporary Israel, it is the story of Shemya, the prodigal son and grandson of rabbis who tries and fails to remove himself from his… Read More »
QUIET AMERICAN, THE
THE QUIET AMERICAN is a subtle, deeply disturbing film with a performance by Michael Caine that is a marvel of understated elegance, delivering an emotional punch of prodigious proportions. Based on the novel by Graham Greene, it tells the story of a romantic triangle that is emblematic of the intrigues surrounding Vietnam at the time… Read More »
GODS AND GENERALS
The problem with having read the book on which a film is based is that no matter how hard you try, its hard to divorce that book from its adaptation playing out before you on the big screen. So it is with GODS AND GENERALS, the prequel to GETTYSBURG, and based on the novel by… Read More »
THE JUDGE
THE JUDGE is everything thats wrong with studio bids for Oscar consideration. A carefully calculated effort designed to hit all the perceived necessary tropes to qualify as both important and as quality. Alas, it is neither. True, there are excellent performances by Robert Downey, Jr., Robert Duvall, Vera Farmiga, and Billy Bob Thornton, but they… Read More »
THE LIFE OF DAVID GALE
THE LIFE OF DAVID GALE is a great idea for a movie. Unfortunately, its fine direction by Alan Parker and excellent acting from a cast headed by Kevin Spacey is undercut by a script that would, charitably, receive a C+ in Screenwriting 101 for Charles Randolph. How it made it to the big screen in… Read More »
SANDSTORM (BAWANDAR)
Jag Mundhra’s SANDSTORM succeeds on several levels. First, it’s a fine piece of filmmaking that tells this story of cultural discrimination with a directness that never panders to either its audience or its characters. Second, it succeeds in outlining in stark and uncompromisingly personal terms exactly what this sort of injustice means for one woman… Read More »
ASSASSINATION TANGO
You will either get caught up the quirkiness of Robert Duvalls latest film or you will leave the theater wondering what the heck it was that you just saw. Either way, theres no doubt that you will come away with why Duvall has become obsessed with the tango. Truth be told, I suspect that said… Read More »
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