Film/TV
669 results
Page 61
Atom Egoyan's "Chloe'
Who's doing what to whom?
Veteran filmmaker Atom Egoyan's latest, Chloe, features a lethal sex triangle in which the victims are hard to tell from the victimizers— or is there a difference at all?
Articles
3 minute read
Dickstein's "Dancing In the Dark'
Great Depression, greater paradox
Morris Dickstein's cultural history of the Great Depression has elevated our intellectual level several notches, revealing clearly and eloquently how the many pieces of a complex industrial culture fit together.
Articles
3 minute read
"The Ghost Writer': Polanski's revenge
Polanski gets even
Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer takes a swipe at imperial America and its far-reaching tentacles. Polanski, who still faces extradition to the U.S. on a decades-old rape charge, has an axe to grind, but he also holds up a mirror that reflects the way much of the world sees us.
Articles
5 minute read
'Crazy Heart' vs. 'The Wrestler'
Jeff Bridges vs. Mickey Rourke: Kinder, gentler, and less effective
Crazy Heart is yet another “performer on the skids” story, but one with a killer soundtrack and masterful acting by Jeff Bridges. But the film lacks the gut-level truthfulness the less accomplished Mickey Rourke brought to every frame of The Wrestler.
Crazy Heart. A film directed by Scott Cooper, based on a novel by Thomas Cobb. At Ritz at the Bourse, Fourth and Ludlow Sts. (215) 925-7900 or www.landmarktheatres.com,
Also Bryn Mawr Film Institute, Ambler Theater, and local chains.
Articles
3 minute read
"The Hurt Locker' and the endless war
The limits of unflinching realism: One nagging question
 about The Hurt Locker
For its realistic portrait of a bomb squad in Iraq, The Hurt Locker won six Academy Awards, including “Best Picture.” Yet the small truths within this film implicitly condone the larger lies that took us into that war in the first place.
Articles
7 minute read
Jason Reitman's "Up in the Air' (2nd review)
The American Dream meets the Angel of Death
Jason Reitman's Up in the Air is this year's Hollywood morality tale. It's a throwback to Preston Sturges and Howard Hawks— in short, a Depression-era film for our depressed times.
Up In the Air. A film directed by Jason Reitman, from the novel by Walter Kirn. At the Ritz Five, 214 Walnut St. (215) 925-7900 or www.landmarktheatres.com.
Articles
7 minute read
Fritz Lang's "Metropolis,' restored
Metropolis, as Lang intended it
Fritz Lang's futuristic 1927 silent masterpiece, Metropolis, isn't for everyone. But the recent discovery of a missing hour's worth of footage will help untangle some of the film's conundrums.
Articles
3 minute read
In defense of Jane Austen's prose
Jane Austen is still good in bed
Some folks rejoice at the current spate of Jane Austen film adaptations because they find her novels impenetrable. But if Austen's books are such a slog, why have they remained in print continuously for almost 200 years?
Articles
4 minute read
James Ellroy's "Blood's A Rover'
Through an American dream, darkly
James Ellroy's American dream is a high-definition nightmare of total political depravity that infects every character in his fiction, from presidents to bellhops. It is totally fascinating, perhaps because there is the sting of truth at its basis.
Blood's A Rover. By James Ellroy. Knopf, 2009. 656 pages; $28.95. www.amazon.com.
Articles
5 minute read
Jane Austen novels on DVD
Jane Austen is ready for her close-up (and always has been)
Jane Austen's impenetrable prose is difficult to slog through— but her novels translate marvelously to the screen, as two DVD adaptations remind us. This is no accident. Long before the invention of cinema, Austen understood— as, say, Dostoyevsky or Proust or Mailer did not— the power of visual imagery.
Articles
5 minute read