Mann fills The Insider with mirrors, windows, and all manner of frames within frames. Based on a Vanity Fair article, the first half of the film narrates the plight of Jeffrey Wigand, the first whistleblower to bring the predatory practices of big tobacco to public attention in Read More …
The theme of waking up plays out on multiple levels in the gorgeously animated The Secret of Kells from filmmakers Tomm Moore and Nora Twomey. Young Brendan awakens to the world outside the walls of the Abbey of Kells where he lives with his uncle, the Abbott. Read More …
The Assassin is a difficult film to summarize, but not because the plot is unclear. Characters constantly fill each other in on where exactly they stand. Roughly, the movie concerns an assassin (Shu Qi) who, having failed in an assignment, is sent to kill her cousin, Read More …
Margaret’s salvation comes through a synchronicity of awakenings: The moment her husband’s disordered priorities are exposed, with painful consequences. The moment her friendships are revealed as relationships of convenience, enabling lives of self-centeredness and denial. The moment she participates in workplace corruption. She begins to Read More …
Shakespeare’s ‘foolish, fond old man’ of ‘fourscore and upwards’ is a cultural archetype, illustrating, among other things, one of our greatest fears about growing older. First Lear loses his wits and then he loses everything else. What makes this production so special is not just Read More …
James Ivory immediately sets the tone for his film adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel The Remains of the Day. In late 1950’s England, Stevens (Anthony Hopkins), head butler of over 30 years for the once thriving Darlington Hall, wanders down or peers into hallways that are Read More …
Do we really believe that wisdom, joy, peace, and courage are the fruit of old age? We may know it from saints or from special people in our own lives, but we probably don’t know it from the movies. Here, then, is our antidote to Read More …
Growing older, in many ways, is a slow and steady reckoning with one’s own mortality. For silent film star of yesteryear Norma Desmond, (Gloria Swanson) growing older is a continual process of denial. The reality that she will not perpetually be twenty-five is a horror Read More …
Spinning inspired variations on Ozu’s Late Spring, Claire Denis draws us close to pensive railway engineer Lionel (Alex Descas, quietly magnetic) and his daughter Josephine (Mati Diop, radiant). They share routines of quiet affection, having grown through grieving the loss of a wife and mother together. Read More …
As Japanese director Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) aged, so did his films’ protagonists. Gone are the unformed young men of earlier decades, ripe for a jolt of enlightenment. Instead, the leads in his late films are reaping the consequences of decades of character formation, either condemned Read More …