DENIAL is a lean, literate, and emotionally devastating film. It’s based on the true story of Emory history professor Deborah E. Lipstadt’s (Rachel Weisz) legal battle in the British courts to prove that the Holocaust had actually taken place and was not, as asserted by Holocaust deniers, a construct invented by world Jewry as part… Read More »
THE CHOICE
After a press screening, the film’s local publicist will ask for a reaction. After seeing THE CHOICE, and not wanting to dwell on the film’s myriad faults, I chose to respond by saying that I liked the pelicans. Majestic, improbable creatures that look like something from the Upper Triassic, in one of the film’s many… Read More »
Unsteady UNFINISHED BUSINESS
And so in UNFINISHED BUSINESS, THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUIT discovers that business as usual in the 21st century is less about facing the difficulties of conformity than it is about taking a cue from the local anarchists. In the spirit of that anarchy, the film refuses to conform to the principle of… Read More »
DUPLICITY
DUPLICITY is a smartly crafted, expertly acted, exquisitely directed exercise in smoke, mirrors, and greed. Written and directed by Tony Gilroy, whose MICHAEL CLAYTON was a tale of corporate expediency and redemption, his new film returns to the world of corporate skullduggery with the same sharp character studies, the same resignation about people sinking to… Read More »
THE LONE RANGER
There may be a way to mix the monumental tragedy of the Native American genocide with a screwball comedy about a well-meaning chucklehead and his mystically addled Comanche sidekick, but Gore Verbinski has not found it in his pretentious and smug version of THE LONE RANGER. True to the Verbinski style, this re-telling of the… Read More »
THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE
THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE is overwhelmed with such an overweening sense of earnestness that one feels almost sinful for not being swept along with what its makers obviously consider a tale of great importance. The greater sin, though, is in taking a tale of exorcism, faith, and the law and not making it more… Read More »
IN THE BEDROOM
Don’t jump to any conclusions in the first 15 minutes or so of IN THE BEDROOM about where it’s heading. Though the acting is all very fine and the direction skillful, you might thing that you have pretty much figured out everything that’s going to happen after the first 10 minutes or so. And then… Read More »
CASSANDRA’S DREAM
The funny thing, in the sense of odd rather than comedic, about CASSANDRA’S DREAM is that even though it is filmed in color, it is remembered in black and white. In Woody Allen’s lastest film, he returns to his consideration of morality, this time through the lens of classical Greek tragedy. Two brothers, Ian (Ewan… Read More »
MICHAEL CLAYTON
MICHAEL CLAYTON begins with a monologue by Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson), a brilliant but unhinged litigator who has spent too much of his life defending the indefensible. In it, beautifully encapsulated, is the heart of the film, which is to say, that it’s only a madman who has the clarity of vision to do the… Read More »