Thursday, August 25th, 2011
The Help
Pauline Kael wrote that the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird, produced in 1962 and set in Alabama during the 1930s, was in “part Hollywood self-congratulation for its enlightened racial attitudes.” And now we have The Help, based on a 2009 best-seller set in Jackson, Miss., circa 1962, “honoring white viewers for not being [...]
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Thursday, June 2nd, 2011
Bridesmaids
If you’re into weddings, bridal showers, bitch slaps, and/or women shitting in the middle of urban thoroughfares while wearing designer gowns, you’ll fit snugly into the demographical canyon that Bridesmaids aims to please. And, chances are, you will be pleased. There’s some scuttlebutt being slung around that the film’s no more than a few skits [...]
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Thursday, April 28th, 2011
Night Catches Us
It’s been far too long since I’ve had the chance to see a new movie on the big screen, but I finally got to watch a film that skulked in and out of far too few theaters at the end of last year. Its title, Night Catches Us, makes it sound like a flick spawned [...]
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Thursday, March 24th, 2011
Vision
I was going batty trying to figure out who the star of Vision, Barbara Sukowa, reminded me of—and then, like a godsmack, it hit me: Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched. This is an odd affinity, considering that Sukowa is playing Hildegard of Bingen, the 12th-century Rhenish abbess whose resurgence has made strange bedfellows of Catholic, [...]
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Thursday, December 16th, 2010
Howl
Howl is a hardcover CliffsNotes of Allen Ginsberg’s poem. It may not have its own legs to stand on, but it has a handsome body, albeit one assembled in an unusual way. A mishmash of styles, it’s Frankenstein’s monster as a svelte if suave hunk, and though it can’t seem to find its own voice, [...]