I live on the Brooklyn waterfront, just across the harbor from lower Manhattan. On that horrible morning on September 11, my father phoned me from Louisiana to tell me to look out my front door, the World Trade Center was on fire. It was, and I ran down to the basement to grab my reporter’s … Read more
The Ice Storm reveals the big chill at the heart of the Age of Excess In several of his more memorable poems, Philip Larkin wrote with insightful bitterness about the sexual revolution and its disappointments. In “High Windows,” he explored the crushing emptiness and nihilism that followed the casting off of traditional virtue, which his … Read more
Sylvester Stallone probably will be nominated for an Academy Award next year. You’re saying, sure, and Andrew Greeley will join Opus Dei come Christmas. But seeing the man’s iconoclastic performance in Cop Land is believing. He’s that good. Stallone is one of the wealthiest and most recognizable figures in Hollywood, but prior to Cop Land, … Read more
Quiet, elegant and brimming with unaffected charm, the Japanese film Shall We Dance? would be a dreamy movie any time of year, but it is especially so in blockbusterized summer, when the cineplexes are rocking and rolling with dinosaurs, aliens, Batmen, and bombastic testosto-fests. Here is a small but beautiful meditation on the sweet pain … Read more
Though not much of a TV watcher myself, I could not escape the hype surrounding the infamous “coming out” episode of the ABC sitcom “Ellen.” Happily, the program came and went, and the republic still stands, more or less, but both enthusiasts and detractors of that episode agreed that it was a landmark for American … Read more
Australian writer-director Bruce Beresford has made some fine films in his career, including Breaker Morant, Black Robe, and the Oscar-winning Driving Miss Daisy. Paradise Road, nobly intended but banal and almost trite, is not one of them. It’s not a bad film, just disappointing. Beresford’s World War Two-era tale concerns a group of women held … Read more
What’s so funny about abortion? That’s not the question to ask of Citizen Ruth, the first (and probably last) film satire to examine the passions surrounding the acrimonious struggle over abortion rights. It’s not really about abortion, but more the fanaticism and hypocrisy attending the protestations of both pro-life and pro-choice camps. The film strives … Read more
Establishment Hollywood was shocked and appalled by the nominations for this year’s Academy Awards (still a month away at this writing). That’s because for the first time ever, studio system films were virtually shut out of the important categories, which were dominated by independently produced films. This shows what serious moviegoers have known for years … Read more