Review of Trance, Directed by Danny Boyle What is the role of memory in shaping our identity and our motives? This question drives the plot of Trance, Danny Boyle’s (Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire) newest film. If you just watch the trailer, you immediately know that the film is not what it seems. There are going to be twists and turns and subplots within subplots that somehow merge into the main plot. But the question posed to Simon (James McAvoy)—and us—is, “Who... Read more
Review of To the Wonder, Directed by Terrence Malick Terrence Malick, the reclusive filmmaker of Badlands, Days of Heaven, and The Thin Red Line, has turned to more explicit religious themes in his most recent films. The Tree of Life, Malick’s 2011 epic, included a long creation sequence and a mystical moment of reunion with deceased loved ones as the film’s protagonist walked along a shoreline. Tree also further developed Malick’s use of voiceover—whispered prayers and inner musings set to lush visuals... Read more
Review of 42, Directed by Brian Helgeland The story of Jackie Robinson is familiar to most Americans, but being an American who grew up overseas, I must confess ignorance of this iconic hero before watching 42. (The educational value of the film itself makes it worth watching: among other things, 42 underlines the exalted position of “race” in the American consciousness). America’s pastime was tainted by the pollution of segregation and 42 tells us of a man who tried to... Read more
Review of Warlock by Oakley Hall The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron. (Deut. 28:23) For a Western, Warlock is a ridiculously complicated book. In one sense, it is a novelization of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and the Lincoln County War. In another sense, it is the story of Marshall Clay Blaisdell in his quest to keep law and order without becoming a criminal himself, as told through the eyes of the townspeople. In yet another sense, it is the story of... Read more
Review of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Directed by Steven Spielberg When I was growing up, I read a lot of The Hardy Boys and The Sugar Creek Gang series, adventure stories in which boys solve mysteries, chase bad guys, rescue strangers, discover mysterious caves, explore abandoned mansions, recover exotic artifacts from far off lands, and learn Important Life Lessons along the way. Much later I learned these were the latest in a long and venerable tradition of boys adventure... Read more
Review of End of Watch, Directed by David Ayer The first thing I heard about End of Watch was its realistic and moving portrayal of male friendship. I watched the film with that expectation and it did not disappoint. End of Watch follows the patrols of Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Mike Zavala (Michael Peña), two policemen in South Central Los Angeles. We watch them drive the streets, engage in shootouts, encounter violence against a female policewoman, catch drug smugglers,... Read more
Review of The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes The Sense of an Ending is a novella by Julian Barnes that explores the limits of memory and how memory affects defines us. Published in 2011, it won the Man Booker Prize in October of that year. Often, The Sense of an Ending reads more like a compilation of philosophical one-liners or paragraphs that make you sit there and ponder about abstractions, rather than a story. But Barnes’s craftsmanship lies... Read more
Review of Evil Dead, Directed by Fede Alvarez Some viewers like movies that leave them thinking about themes and ideas for weeks and months after they see them. Others want an experience at the cinema, a couple of hours that make them laugh, cry, scream or jump out of their seats. The pleasures of those films are in the moment, and the lingering impression they leave is one of the shared experience of chills and cringing, cowering fear—at least until... Read more
Review of Jurassic Park 3D, Directed by Steven Spielberg The year is 1993, and fictional bajillionaire (and genetic engineering tycoon) John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) has finally done the un-doable: he has brought the dinosaurs back to life. Using DNA recovered from prehistoric mosquitoes preserved for millions of years in amber (and supplemented with frog DNA, to fill in any ‘gaps’), Hammond and company have successfully cloned a whole bunch of freaking awesome dinosaurs, from the gentle Brachiosaurus to the clever... Read more
Review of The Place Beyond the Pines, Directed by Derek Cianfrance Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling) and Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper) have parallel lives, though on the surface Luke is a criminal and Avery a policeman. Luke and Avery both have a woman and child, their mother-in-law lives with them, and they both are absent fathers. But the audience favors Luke over Avery because the former knows and accepts that he’s a criminal, while the latter lives the life of a... Read more
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