'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.

Jake Blumgart

Feb 14, 2012 · 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.

Jake Blumgart

Feb 07, 2012 · 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.

Robert Zaller

Jan 31, 2012 · 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.

Robert Zaller

Jan 24, 2012 · 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.

John L. Erlich

Jan 17, 2012 · 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.

Jake Blumgart

Jan 10, 2012 · Articles · 4 minute read

Lars von Trier's "Melancholia' (2nd review)

GÓ¶tterdÓ¤mmerung, Danish style

In Lars Von Trier's quasi-operatic Melancholia, a wedding party by way of Bergman and Woody Allen gives way to a meditation on the end of the world, courtesy of an approaching rogue planet. As a disaster film, it's unclassifiable, but it does invite us to ponder our destructive social and psychological mores.

Robert Zaller

Jan 03, 2012 · Articles · 8 minute read

Alfredson's "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy' (1st review)

Lost in the Cold War

Am I unreasonable to expect a movie to make sense without significant advance preparation on my part?

Judy Weightman

Dec 31, 2011 · Articles · 3 minute read

J. C. Chandor's "Margin Call'

Panic on the Street: Hollywood tackles the Crash of '08

J. C. Chandor's Margin Call depicts the financial meltdown of 2008 from inside the executive suites of a company that resembles Lehman Brothers but, unlike its prototype, aims to survive. Chandor's film is that rare serious attempt to put a human face on an economic crisis. But its characters, however vivid, are far less appealing than the Corleones of The Godfather, and also far more dangerous.

Robert Zaller

Dec 13, 2011 · Articles · 7 minute read

Lars von Trier's "Melancholia' (1st review)

Imagining the unimaginable

Unlike most films about the end of the world, Lars von Trier's haunting and disturbing Melancholia provides a much more oppressively vivid sense of what the apocalypse might actually feel like.

Jake Blumgart

Dec 13, 2011 · Articles · 4 minute read