Movies Archive

“Everyone” watched “Succession”— but was it a success? - A few days after the final episode of “Succession,” I asked a culturally savvy, critically astute friend what she thought of it. She hadn’t watched it.  More surprising, she’d never

“Game Changers” (“Someone asked me, ‘How could you get as strong as an ox without eating any meat?’ And my answer was, ‘Have you ever seen an ox eat meat?’”) - When was the last time I encouraged to watch something on Netflix? Never. But I encourage you to stream "Game Changers." Why? Because I read Nate Herpich's article, ‘Game Changers’

“The Wife” - “The Wife” got enthusiastic reviews (The Times: “pulls off the not inconsiderable feat of spinning a fundamentally literary premise into an intelligent screen drama that unfolds with real juice and

“Zero Dark Thirty” - UPDATE: After writing this, I saw ZERO DARK THIRTY. (I didn't pay. The studio sent me a DVD.) The torture scenes are, I think, deliberately ambiguous. Not

A Face in the Crowd - A story from a simpler time, when a guy could get his start as a media god... in jail. We meet Lonesome Rhodes when he’s a drifter doing short time in

A Farmhouse in France: a retreat to rent, a movie to watch - If you’ll recall 2004, a bogus war was raging. And George W. Bush and his crew, having built the war on a lie, were sustaining that war with a steady

A Late Quartet - The title is a double entendre. The music that anchors the film is Beethoven's String Quartet No. 14, opus 131. Half an hour long, played straight through, it is a bold,

A Most Beautiful Thing - "A Most Beautiful Thing" is based on a book by Arshay Cooper. In it, Cooper — who grew up in a violent and drug-and gang-dominated neighborhood on the West Side

A Most Beautiful Thing: a much needed shot of inspiration - James Fallows, speechwriter to Jimmy Carter and longtime writer for The Atlantic, found today’s inspiration, a much praised documentary that was destined for theaters. “A Most Beautiful Thing” is now

A Poet on the Frontline: The Reportage of Ryszard Kapuscinski - Over 40 years, he covered 27 revolutions and coups, mostly in Africa.   He was sentenced to death four times.   John Le Carre: “He is the conjuror extraordinary of modern reportage.”   Gabriel García Márquez:

Academy Awards 2014: They shoot movies, don’t they? - Oscar Week. It’s like the week before the Super Bowl --- we’re all supposed to care. I’m a bad citizen, I guess, because I’m having trouble with that. My problem?

Academy Awards Special: Jessica Chastain cheered Tammy Faye Bakker’s “radical acts of love.” When I profiled the Bakkers for Vanity Fair, I may have met another Tammy Faye. Here’s my piece… - For 99.99% of Oscar viewers, the takeaway moment was Will Smith bitch-slapping Chris Rock. I may have been among a tiny minority of viewers who were also struck by Jessica

After Paris: a reading/viewing list - Think back, please, to the weeks immediately following 9/11. In New York, they were quiet, contemplative, even profound. Eager to understand why it happened, many of us read Ahmed

After the Wedding - Americans are lucky. We’re spared war and famine and apocalyptic weather. What we’re not spared is a crazed white man with a gun who needs to kill 18 people before

Alexander Nevsky - The greatest score in all of film --- so good that it inspired John Williams' shark theme in “Jaws” and James Horner's music for “Star Trek II:

Alfred Hitchcock: Foreign Correspondent - You may have noticed that we are witnessing the absolute low point of the American media in our lifetime. Reporting is ignored, only punditry matters. And the pundits, en masse,

Amadeus -     February 27, 2006: Mozart's 250th birthday. He's looking good for someone his

An Inconvenient Truth - A few years ago, Naomi Oreskes got tired of the Bush administration's insistence that "most" scientists disagree with the notion of global warming. Dr. Oreskes is a

Arlington Road - Noon. A suburb of Washington, DC, a street dotted with houses just a shade too small to be McMansions. No one is around. Wait --- here comes someone. A boy. White,

Asghar Farhadi: Three Remarkable Films - Only a handful of directors have won the Best Foreign Film Oscar more than once: Vittorio de Sica and Federico Fellini (four times each), Ingmar Bergman (three times), and René