There is in Luc Besson’s ANNA fully one-third of a very good movie. That third is a finely drawn satire, cartoonishly violent in its sublimation of female rage as it addresses female exploitation in the modern world using the milieus of espionage and modeling as the metaphor. The other two-thirds is a plodding retread of… Read More »
RED JOAN
Science is pure. A hypothesis is either true or it isn’t and the scientific method can be used, unfailingly, to prove it. Politics and human emotions are another story, as we learn in RED JOAN, a drama of that most potent mixture, love and politics. Based on a true story, it considers questions of loyalty… Read More »
THE LOVERS AND THE DESPOT — Ross Adam Interview
Rob Cannan was stuck in London traffic as my phone interview time with him and his filmmaker partner, Ross Adam began, but Adam did a terrific job doing double-duty, as it were, talking about their stranger-than-fiction documentary, THE LOVERS AND THE DESPOT. The two spent years pursuing the movie rights to one of the most… Read More »
OPERATION AVALANCHE
There is something irresistible about a well-constructed conspiracy theory. The juxtaposition between the secret hands behind the scenes pulling the strings that control our destiny, and the peculiar sense of security that the world is not just a series of random events, that there is an order to it even if he have no collective… Read More »
JASON BOURNE
I’m put in mind of tea leaves. Good quality tea leaves that have rendered such a wonderful cup of tea that you wonder if maybe, just maybe, there’s enough of their essential, unique quality left to take one more infusion to make a cup as good as that first one. And so it is with… Read More »
OUR KIND OF TRAITOR
John le Carré writes espionage stories in which the action is cerebral and the suspense comes from a keen observation of each protagonist’s character. Thus, the stakes in OUR KIND OF TRAITOR involve much more than the list of names that will topple those in power. They involve the people caught up in the intrigue… Read More »
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE is everything that the perfect bromance flick should be, starting with the improbable but undeniable chemistry between stars Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson. Add a script that shows them off to best effect, with its wicked sense of the absurdity and suspense of the situations in which these two find themselves, and what… Read More »
Gary Oldman on Inspiration, Stillness, and Bedroom Acting.
Click here to listen to the interview. Gary Oldman is an actor known for disappearing into his roles, and playing George Smiley, a spymaster known for being able to disappear into the background is a tour de force for him. When I spoke to him on November 16, 2011, I was most interested in asking… Read More »
SPECTRE
There are very specific things we want in a James Bond film. Great action, dastardly villains who are larger than life and twice as buggy, and Bond girls who have evolved over the years to be a bit more than merely a pulchritudinous interlude. In Bond, as incarnated by Daniel Craig, we want a steely… Read More »
BRIDGE OF SPIES
Clad, metaphorically, in a shining armor of truth, and wielding an equally luminous sword of righteousness, Tom Hanks as attorney James Donovan is the embodiment of American virtue, right down to the meat loaf he has for dinner, the which is not touched until he has said grace with his wife and three kids. There was, no… Read More »