DARA OF JASENOVAC is a brutal film about a lesser-known part of the Holocaust. Based on the testimony of survivors, it expounds on Jasenovac, the only Fascist concentration camps in World War II that were not run by the Nazis themselves. Instead, inspired and advised by the Nazis, they were established by the Roman Catholic… 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 »
1945
The Oscars™ are not always the most reliable barometer of cinematic greatness. Let us remember the year that KRAMER VS. KRAMER beat out APOCALYPSE NOW. This year’s oversights were less egregious, and I am delighted that A FANTASTIC WOMAN won the Best Foreign Language prize. I am still miffed, though, that 1945 wasn’t even nominated… Read More »
DUNKIRK
Spinoza once opined that you couldn’t use words to describe God, because by choosing any one or several, you would be eliminating the infinite nature of the deity. That essential inadequacy of words drives much of Christopher Nolan’s stunning film, DUNKIRK. Stunning in many sense of that word. Hence, we don’t learn that Tommy (Fionn… Read More »
ALLIED
There is an artistic license that we allow films that sweep us along when their emotional resonance is overpowering. Minor plot points that aren’t resolved, or factual errors. For an example of the latter, one need look no further than the Letters of Transit, desired by so many in CASABLANCA. No such thing. Yet it… Read More »
HACKSAW RIDGE
Mel Gibson’s HACKSAW RIDGE begins with a quiet shot looking down (from heaven?) on corpses. They are horrific, with bits missing and gore everywhere. It’s a moment that will quickly give way to the battle of Okinawa that made them. Bodies ripped by bullets falling to the ground, others engulfed in flames running in panic.… Read More »
ANTHROPOID
ANTHROPOID is divided into two episodes, one more gut-wrenching than the last as it tells the fact-based story of Czech partisans on what is essentially a suicide mission to assassinate SS General Reinhardt Heydrich, Butcher of Prague, co-planner of the Final Solution, and third in line in the Nazi hierarchy. While the first part is… Read More »
SON OF SAUL
The first image in SON OF SAUL is a green landscape that is out of focus. There is the sound of someone in distress, and the image of a man walking towards the camera until his impassive face fills the screen and comes into focus. Much else comes into focus in the course of this… Read More »
Géza Röhrig and László Nemes on SON OF SAUL
When I spoke with actor Géza Röhrig and director/co-writer László Nemes on December 12, 2015, I knew it was going to be a serious conversation. I also knew that it was going to be as insightful as their film, SON OF SAUL. We started the interview with my asking why these two would want to immerse themselves… Read More »
BLIND SPOT: HITLER’S SECRETARY
BLIND SPOT is an oral history released as a feature documentary. Ordinarily, this would be a bad idea, oral histories being low-tech and single camera, but the subject is Traudl Junge and her history is of her years as Hitlers secretary. Filmmakers Andre Heller and Othmar Schmiderer must have known they were on to something… Read More »