Film
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June 3-10, 2013
Having rendered some of the more majestic prose in American fiction, F. Scott Fitzgerald is often cited for a line that has always seemed to me to make very little sense: “There are no second acts in American lives.” What? Of course there are. Second chances are the stuff American dreams are made of. Let’s not forget Richard Nixon. Redemption may not be American. But America, by definition, is all about redemption.
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May 20, 2013
The logo of the New York Mets—a bright orange N and Y interlocking on a vibrant blue background—is instantly recognizable for many baseball fans. But the story behind it may be less well known. The Mets rose from the ashes of the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants, both of whom left the Big Apple for California in 1957. Five years later, when the Mets took the field for the first time, they did so wearing caps that acknowledged their...
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April 8-15, 2013
If during a visit to a movie theater, you have been exposed to eight or 10 trailers depicting crashing automobiles, huge explosions and an almost deafening soundtrack—a phenomenon perhaps suggesting that films are getting dumber and dumber, despite better and better technology—then you may welcome Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder as a kind of cinematic parousia. Malick’s film, almost as visually beautiful as his “The Tree of Life,” from which he...
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April 22, 2013
If it only had a brain, one is tempted to suggest, Oz the Great and Powerful might have been as welcome as spring. Still, it is not an entirely brainless movie or completely lacking a heart. And it certainly has nerve: Positioned as the very presumptive heir to “The Wizard of Oz,” perhaps the single most beloved movie in the American canon, the new film might as well have a target on its back in the shape of a bullseye, next to a sign saying, “Kick me...
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April 1, 2013
Close-knit” and “desperate” are terms used to describe Collbran, Colo., the very white, very western town featured in A Place at the Table, the revelatory new documentary about hunger in the United States. Collbran serves its movie well: Girdled by the Rockies, rustic and charming, the town has God in its heart and a gnawing in its stomach. Despite its veneer of normality, Collbran is full of people who cannot get enough to eat and, blessedly, a...
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February 4, 2013
A fella ain’t got a soul of his own, just a little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody.”
—Henry Fonda as Tom Joad
The Grapes of Wrath” (1940)His movies are filled with compelling images and characters: a prostitute and an outlaw who ride off into the sunset; a self-absorbed commander who gets all of his men killed; an obsessive, tortured loner who sets out on an epic quest; a hero who isn’t...
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February 11, 2013
Many of the more talked-about movies this season concern themselves with barbarity, in one manifestation or another. “Lincoln,” is about slavery; “Argo,” imperialism, radical fundamentalism, sociopathic politics; “Les Misérables”—where can you even begin? They are very different movies, of course, but they share a common impulse: Regarding the inhuman, the uncivilized or the cruel, they are pretty much against it.
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December 24, 2012
We’ve all had those moments in December when we clicked through the channels and found It’s a Wonderful Life nearly everywhere. Yet it would be tragic if the past over-exposure of Frank Capra’s 1946 film fooled us into seeing it as anything less than a masterpiece. What’s more, the film offers a profound understanding of the Gospels.
Is George Bailey a saint? Not exactly. He might just be lucky or unlucky or human.
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January 7-14, 2013
Les Misérables arrives in theaters this Christmas bearing a distinguished lineage as one of the most beloved novels and certainly one of the most popular theatrical musicals of all time. Since the English-language adaptation premiered in London in 1985, it has played to over 60 million theatergoers around the world. Its Broadway production ran for 16 years, and its various touring companies traveled the country for 18 years. The Hollywood version seems long overdue.
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Anyone with a desire to preserve our planet has no choice but to see Chasing Ice, the gorgeous, inventive documentary released last month. As of this writing it has been shown to selected audiences but has yet to reach the popularity of a film like “An Inconvenient Truth.” Give it time, however, and hopefully further promotion, because it is truly revelatory. Produced by Paula DuPré Pesmen and Jerry Aronson and directed by Jeff Orlowski, the film is a unique pictorial about...