Yet another criminal underworld is brought to the cinema: the world of Belgian cattle dopers. Nor are we familiar with Walloons as a different subspecies. But all this is windowdressing for the central portrayal of a man gone mad, a man obsessed with his body in compensation for what he lacks, a man who finally […]
A riveting psychological portrayal of a troubled 11-year-old boy, coming to grips with the loss of his father and, on occasion, his bike. He moves from sullen outcast to a slightly willing sharer in relatively short order, although it seems an age because of the Dardenne brothers’ slow pacing. Shots linger, which allows us to […]
There are no bad people in this story, but (almost) all the people do bad things – the chief among them not telling the truth. There is always a good reason, one that seems, at the moment, more important than the truth. Seeing how each of the characters handles this personal dilemma is only one […]
A comic but true-to-the-core depiction of Arab society in a small village where everyone knows, and gossips about, everyone else, usually at high volume. Meanwhile, below (or above) the frivolous surface, this smart movie presents the dichotomies of man and woman, love and hate, Christian and Muslim, life and death. All the actors are convincingly […]
Some thought that I rated last year’s Just Go With It inordinately high because of a puerile infatuation with Jennifer Aniston. As rebuttal, look at this rating: Jennifer was as adorable as ever, but this movie was just plain stupid. For some reason (their own lust?), the critics at The New Yorker, New York Times, […]
The best use of 3-D I’ve seen yet: it was unobtrusive – no dancers kicking legs into our space – and simply made the dances come alive. Like the documentaries at the Film Festival, there was no plot and no dramatic arc, just a series of dances and interviews with the dancers. It didn’t […]
Bobby Fischer Against the World. A mesmerizing subject, told with appropriate drama and objectivity. The talking heads were uniformly insightful and the historic clips were fascinating,
A very French film about the working-class student who is madly in love with the rich beauty until he wakes up to/with the slightly less beautiful girl who has been vainly chasing him. What either girl sees in Primo is a total mystery unless they, like the director, see him as a reincarnation of Jean […]
Kevin Kline is the best comedic actor of his generation, Diane Keaton is an unfailingly charming but a little ditsy comedienne, and together they anchor this hilarious but touching Big Chill-at-60 reprise by director Lawrence Kasdan. The plot is ostensibly about a lost dog, Freeway, but I needn’t have worried: Freeway is lost for much […]
A rather mystifying, unneeded retelling of the classic John le Carre/Alec Guinness spy story. The main characters are represented by chess pieces, and that’s about how much they come to life. Gary Oldman is widely praised for his Smiley, but his expression changed only on the few occasions his ex-wife was mentioned. I found it […]
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