Film/TV
683 results
Page 55
Claude Lanzmann at the Free Library
How to describe the indescribable?
In Philadelphia to promote his autobiography, the formidable Claude Lanzmann touched on his personal Jewish heritage, his experience as a wartime resistance fighter, his relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre, and the making of his classic Holocaust documentary, Shoah.
Articles
5 minute read
Education and "The Wild Bunch'
Everything I needed to know about learning, I learned from The Wild Bunch
What motivates kids to learn? Sam Peckinpah's violent 1969 Western is as good a place as any to seek the answer.
Articles
2 minute read
'Chronicle' vs. Plato's 'Republic'
What Plato could learn from teenagers
Plato suggested that even just men will be corrupted by unchecked power. Chronicle, a new teen fantasy flick, takes a different tack: Even the most just among us, it implies, have scores we're itching to settle, if only we had a magic wand or potion.
Articles
4 minute read
"Take Shelter' (2nd review)
Stormy weather
Take Shelter is a movie well worth experiencing for yourself before reading any commentary— including this one.
Articles
4 minute read
'The Grey': Man against nature
Kingsley Amis would have loved this
Stop searching for deeper meanings and just give yourself over to this surprisingly affecting film about seven oil grunts fist-fighting wolves for survival in the frozen north.
Articles
2 minute read
"Inventing Our Lives' and the kibbutz movement
Old wine in new bottles: The kibbutz faces the future
Israel's struggling kibbutz movement, once a utopian communal ideal of the left, is struggling for survival today. But with a little imagination and flexibility, it could provide a potent counterweight to Israel's increasingly violent right-wing settler movement.
Articles
4 minute read
Phyllida Lloyd's "The Iron Lady'
The lioness in winter
Like Clint Eastwood's recent J. Edgar, Phyllida Lloyd's biopic of Margaret Thatcher tries to humanize a polarizing figure seen by many as a villain. This reviewer, who remembers admiring Thatcher's panache while hating her politics, remained unpersuaded despite Meryl Streep's finely crafted performance.
Articles
8 minute read
Roman Polanski's "Carnage' (2nd review)
Fear and loathing in a Brooklyn livng room
Roman Polanski's Carnage is, for him, a minor chamber piece, but focused with his usual unerring eye for human weakness and absurdity. It's also a reminder of the judicial farce that has barred the celebrated director from America for more than 30 years.
Articles
4 minute read
"War Horse': Animals as friends
A four-legged friend goes to war
In northern California, where I live, War Horse touched a special chord. Many of our families depended on horses not so long ago, and we learned to respect them.
Articles
2 minute read
"Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy' (3rd review)
Seduced (by James Bond) and abandoned
The misunderstood Tinker, Tailor is certainly a tale of a stagnant elite obsessed by its declining international prestige. But it's also about the toll of a profession that we spy fans— and spies themselves— try to imbue with a glamour that quickly turns to dross in the sunlight.
Articles
4 minute read