While John Kennedy and Bill Clinton’s sexual shenanigans have been the butt of decades of jokes and one impeachment trial, compared to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his multiple long-term mistresses – one of whom was his cousin – Kennedy and Clinton were amateurs. FDR may be one of our greatest presidents, leading the country from…
Few directors have had a run of brilliance that Alfred Hitchcock had in between 1958 and 1963, when he directed in succession Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho and The Birds; four of the greatest films ever made. But surprisingly, Hitchcock was still racked by self-doubt during that period, terrified that he was not good enough;…
When you begin a novel with “I have a story that will make you believe in God,” you have made a bold promise that is very likely to be left unfulfilled. But that is how Yann Martel begins the Booker Prize-winning Life of Pi, with the narrator explaining that an old man has told him…
If you’ve been reading my reviews, you’ll know that I tend to dislike movies about people with disabilities, maladies or unfortunate circumstances overcoming their problems, usually with swells of mediocre music and a cheap plea for tears.It’s not that I don’t like seeing people succeed when the odds are more likely that they’ll fail; rather…
Normally, I balk when I’m confronted with film characters who are mentally ill, have odd neurological ticks or are addicted to some sort of chemical. Partly, this is because I spend so much time in the real world with such people, and the fictional versions are rarely convincing. For every virtuoso performance like Joaquin Phoenix’s…
also playing The last time Stephen Spielberg and Tony Kushner collaborated was Munich, the taut, emotionally devastating thriller about the Israeli agents who hunted down the perpetrators of the kidnapping and massacre of Israeli Olympians in 1972. So, I had high hopes for their latest. Lincoln stars Daniel Day-Lewis as the 16th president, Sally Field…
In 2006, Casino Royale saved the James Bond franchise, ending the redundant self-parody that had characterized the movies since Moonraker in early 1979. Two things happened. Following the amazing success of the grimy, naturalistic, and nearly effects-less Bourne Identity, director Martin Campbell made Casino Royale as gritty and physically possible as the previous film, Die…
Looper I love the idea of time travel. I fantasize about it a great deal: going back and stopping 9/11; going forward and finding out the right lottery numbers; visiting ancient Greece to see the Parthenon in its original form; or to 1970s San Francisco to visit pre-AIDS Castro. I’m always excited by time travel…
Cloud Atlas David Mitchell’s novel Cloud Atlas, considered one of the greatest literary achievements of the last two decades by many critics, has been on my bedside table or very nearby since it came out in paperback in the United States in 2004. I’m not sure why, but I never opened it. I meant to,…
I was not a fan of the Academy Award-winning Precious, because it took Murphy’s Law to beyond what seemed possible: Precious’ suffering was never-ending, always worsening, and virtually meaningless. Director Lee Daniels never flinched from showing us the worst of the worst of the everyday physical and emotional violence suffered by the obese, abused, HIV+…
