Film/TV
686 results
Page 57
George Clooney's "Ides of March' (2nd review)
Is there a Republican in the house?
The Ides of March is a thriller without guns or foreign spies; its drama concerns the intimate actions and reactions of individuals making choices in the high-stakes milieu of presidential politics.
Articles
3 minute read
George Clooney's "Ides of March' (1st review)
Better you should watch re-runs of ‘The West Wing'
Power corrupts? Politicians must compromise? Interns put out? What else is new? George Clooney's purportedly very serious film about an American presidential election is in fact clueless about how politics really work.
Articles
5 minute read
Steven Soderbergh's "Contagion'
Revenge of the bats
Steven Soderbergh's Contagion, a film about a super-deadly virus on the loose, is a transparent parable of the War on Terror in which only dedicated scientists and stern-jawed military types can save the nation and the world. Really, with heroes like these, can't we just bring back the Terminator?
Articles
6 minute read
"Moneyball' and male values
Brad Pitt's new American male hero
Moneyball is a new twist on a classic American movie plot: Here, a rugged, aggressive and somewhat misogynistic man learns the value of two things money can't buy: patience and thought. If such a transformation can happen to a Brad Pitt character, is there hope for our macho country?
Articles
2 minute read
"Drive': Beyond casual violence
A protagonist who's seen too many movies
The hero of Nicholas Winding Refn's Drive is a psychopath, but we don't discover that until we've grown to empathize with him. That's what sets it above the usual run of gangster/action films.
Articles
4 minute read
John Madden's "The Debt' (2nd review)
Truth, lies, cinema: An Israeli paradox
In John Madden's The Debt, an Israeli commando team decides to fudge the botched kidnapping of a notorious Nazi war criminal as a killing. “What price truth?” is the question posed. But, beneath the surface of an action thriller lurk even darker and more existential issues.
Articles
7 minute read
"What Alice Knew': The hunt for Jack the Ripper
Sex and the 19th-Century city
The James siblings— Henry, William, Alice— pursue Jack the Ripper through late Victorian London in a witty intellectual thriller that offers some uncomfortable truths about sex, violence and the city along the way.
What Alice Knew: A Most Curious Tale of Henry James and Jack the Ripper. By Paula Marantz Cohen. Sourcebooks, 2010. 341 pages; paperback, $14.95. www.amazon.com.
Articles
5 minute read
Dorothy Parker beneath the surface
All that wit, all that pain
The more I blabbed about Dorothy Parker's wit, the more I realized that I knew very little about her life before and after the Algonquin Round Table. Was I ever in for some biographical surprises.
Articles
4 minute read
"The Help' and "The Debt': Jessica Chastain's moment
Great teeth, great hair, and, well, you know the rest
Jessica Chastain has miles to go to match the force of Helen Mirren's mature persona. Until then, here's an actress beginning to stretch herself in two good movies aimed at very different audiences.
The Help. A film written and directed by Tate Taylor, from the novel by Kathryn Stockett. For Philadelphia area showtimes, click here.
Articles
5 minute read
Rowan Joffé's remake of "Brighton Rock'
Catholics without Catholicism
Graham Greene's chilling 1938 novel, Brighton Rock, hinges on the passionate Catholicism of a cruelly violent teen gangster and his easily manipulated girlfriend. Without that powerful religious underpinning, the new film adaptation doesn't make much sense.
Articles
4 minute read