It is as though Denzel Washington wanted his performance as the title character in Joel Coen’s THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH were conceived and executed as a tribute to the famous sleepwalking scene played by Lady Macbeth. He speaks the lines not trippingly from the tongue, but rather mumbled with little emotional affect, albeit with admirable… Read More »
SUBURBICON
Chekov’s three sisters had their dream of a perfect life in Moscow. The increasingly desperate and frazzled denizens of SUBURBICON have Aruba, a place where the food is exotic, the golf is for couples, and the long arm of the law cannot reach them. Alas, this deliciously stylized evocation of the dark side of the… Read More »
HAIL, CAESAR!
If Douglas Sirk had directed a film noir written by Billy Wilder, it might have looked something like HAIL, CAESAR!, the latest thoughtful tangle of philosophy and whimsy from the Coen Brothers. Taking place in a 1951 Hollywood not entirely unlike the one that actually existed, it mixes Cold War paranoia, carefully managed studio PR… Read More »
BURN AFTER READING
It is a suitably perverse twist that the only person who has the clearest idea of what’s she is doing in the Coen Brothers latest offering, BURN AFTER READING, is Linda Litzke, the inadvertent femme fatale of the piece played by the miraculous Frances McDormand. Not the CIA operatives, not the Treasury Department guy, not… Read More »
INTOLERABLE CRUELTY
When the Coen Brothers get it right, there are no better filmmakers going, and with INTOLERABLE CRUELTY, they are at the top of their game. With an irreverent touch, they spin a tale of true love that includes all the melodrama, farce, and heartbreak that such a condition is oft wont to engender while still… Read More »
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy, is a nail-biting masterpiece of suspense, operating on a philosophical level that is as sophisticated as it is compelling. It takes its tropes and its idioms from classic noirs, but with nary a cliché, and with a soul more hard-boiled than the film… Read More »