Screen
Object of my Affleck-tion
It’s easy to thrill people when they don’t know what’s coming. OK, maybe not easy — paging Mr. Shyamalan — but certainly less difficult than whipping up tension in a film based on a decades-old actual incident, the resolution of which is but a Google search away. ...
Topple the patriarchy
Sex in cinema is a complex thing. Depicting something so private, yet so routine, with taste and titillation at the same time has been...
‘Serious Man’ a new Coen classic
A Serious Man is a tart, brilliantly acted fable of life's little cosmic difficulties, a Coen brothers comedy with a darker philosophical outlook than No Country for Old Men but with a script rich in verbal wit. This time it's God or chance, or fate with a grudge ...
‘Once upon a time in Uganda’
Isaac Nabwana was a bricklayer with movies on his mind. But Uganda didn’t have the resources for Isaac’s dreams. By Isaac’s admission, his neighborhood,...
Those wonderful people out there in the dark
Open Secret — a nearly forgotten and difficult-to-find B-programmer from 1948 — ought to be seen by everybody. In it, newlyweds John Ireland and...
A story of fire and ice; silver and gold
Depending on whom you talk to, anywhere between 75 and 90 percent of all silent film is lost forever. The vast majority of everything...
The world’s bigger than you think
There comes a moment, nearly three-quarters through the abysmally dull and bizarre Deadhead Miles — starring Alan Arkin as a long-haul truck driver —...
Pick a side
The year is 1918, and Red troops are rounding up the White guards. War is on, and the insurgents are to be executed. But...
reel to reel | Week of Feb 2, 2012
Addiction Inc In the 1980s, Victor DeNoble was a research scientist at a major tobacco company, where he was given the task of finding a substitute for nicotine that would not cause heart attacks. He succeeded, but in the process he proved something that the ...
The eternal appeal of The Great Stone Face
Still wonderful, isn’t it? And no dialogue. We didn’t need dialogue. We had faces. There just aren’t any faces like that anymore. —Norma Desmond,...
