The first image in SON OF SAUL is a green landscape that is out of focus. There is the sound of someone in distress, and the image of a man walking towards the camera until his impassive face fills the screen and comes into focus. Much else comes into focus in the course of this… Read More »
Géza Röhrig and László Nemes on SON OF SAUL
When I spoke with actor Géza Röhrig and director/co-writer László Nemes on December 12, 2015, I knew it was going to be a serious conversation. I also knew that it was going to be as insightful as their film, SON OF SAUL. We started the interview with my asking why these two would want to immerse themselves… Read More »
BLIND SPOT: HITLER’S SECRETARY
BLIND SPOT is an oral history released as a feature documentary. Ordinarily, this would be a bad idea, oral histories being low-tech and single camera, but the subject is Traudl Junge and her history is of her years as Hitlers secretary. Filmmakers Andre Heller and Othmar Schmiderer must have known they were on to something… Read More »
THE OTHERS
Are there things that are more scary than ghosts? Are close encounters with the other side, as it were, the ultimate in terror? Writer/director Alejandro Amenabar does a neat job of answering that question with THE OTHERS, a ghost story where neither good nor evil should be taken for granted. The story takes place entirely… Read More »
LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA
The key moment in Clint Eastwood’s LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA is when General Kuribayashi, the commander of the doomed Japanese forces defending the eponymous island from Amercan invasion, stops the summary execution of two soldiers by their immediate commanding officer for having committed the crime of not dying at their post. Kuribayashi, played by Ken Watanabe, tells… Read More »
Richard Berge & Bonni Cohen Recount THE RAPE OF EUROPA
Richard Berge and Bonni Cohen spent years translating Lynn H. Nicholas’ book of the same name into a documentary. Hence, when I spoke with them on May 14, 2007, they had a wealth of stories to tell about both the subject matter, the Nazi plan to loot Europe of its art treasures and to destroy those… Read More »
Adrien Brody is THE PIANIST, Thomas Kretschmann, his Tormentor
Meeting Adrien Brody and Thomas Kretschmann is like spending time with two old pals who still enjoy joking around with each other even after a difficult shoot in Europe and a grinding publicity tour schedule to promote their extraordinary film, THE PIANIST. Once we began talking about that film, though, they were deadly serious about the subject matter, the… Read More »