Theological themes may not be a notable element in Edmond Rostand’s play Cyrano de Bergerac, or in most screen adaptations, but Joe Wright’s showy musical version, starring Peter Dinklage—adapted for the screen from her own stage play by Dinklage’s wife, Erica Schmidt, with songs by members Read More …
Women Talking is a deeply important film dramatizing almost unimaginable courage and humanity in the face of also almost unimaginable terrible misdeeds and pain. It names harm more profoundly by showing its aftermath, and it tells the truth about religious and cultural oppression. It does all this Read More …
It is tempting to parse the title as speaking of the time of armageddon. I think instead the film reflects on the nature of armageddon’s duration. The catastrophic time for the Jewish family in the film is in the past, but the past is always Read More …
Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 film Ikiru follows a man who receives a terminal diagnosis. Thisbureaucrat decides to stop “killing time” as he has done for so many years, and begins trulyliving a life of service and compassion with the small time he has remaining. A remake Read More …
It’s rare that I can recommend a Park Chan-Wook film, but Decision to Leave is a masterful exercise in suspense devoid of the director’s characteristic graphicness. As a detective story, Park’s latest film is a tribute to Vertigo, which inspired him to become a filmmaker. The same obsession Read More …
There was a glorious moment in The Banshees of Inisherin when Pádraic (Colin Farrel) tells Colm (Brendan Gleason) why he refuses to be shunned by his former friend despite the latter’s threats of self-mutilation. At that moment, I thought perhaps he was acting as an Read More …
Can you remember a time in your teenage years when you feared pleasure and joy? Can you remember someone pitching faith as a kind of sanctifying anxiety—a conditional relationship with God, contingent upon your constant worry about it? Many of us can. Many of those Read More …
Spotlight is pervaded by incredulity, pain, and anger, laced with sadness and guilt. Working with a script co-written by Josh Singer, director Tom McCarthy brings precision and persuasive detail to a portrait of a specific time, place, and perspective: Boston, seen through the eyes of The Globe‘s Read More …
A companion piece to Joshua Oppenheimer’s previous documentary about the bloody history of genocide in Indonesia The Act of Killing, The Look of Silence takes a more intimate and contemplative approach. Where the previous film featured bombastic murderers and gangsters giving elaborate reenactments of their brutal killings, this Read More …
The Israeli film Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem is the rare work of craft that takes a single location conceit and morphs it from filmed theater to something purely cinematic. Director-writer siblings Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz are sure-handed in how they tell the story of Viviane’s Read More …