I am still trying to work out how I feel about Closer, Mike Nichols’ film version of a 1997 play by Patrick Marber. It is described as a drama/romance. I think it is the drama of attempted romance and a smattering of rather cynical comedy emerges as a result   A young woman, played by Natalie Portman, is hit by a cab as she crosses a London street. She is aided by Dan (Jude Law), a would-be novelist who is employed as... Read more

John Clark (Richard Gere) is a middle-aged estate lawyer in Chicago. As he rides the EL home every night he sees a beautiful young woman standing in the window of Madam Mitzi’s Dance Studio. He is in a kind of mid-life crisis and one evening gets off the train to check out the studio. The young woman, Paulina (Jennifer Lopez), convinces him to sign up for dance lessons that are starting that very night. Unfortunately for John, the teacher is... Read more

After the Nazi horrors of World War II came the Communist oppression of Eastern European countries. People who disagreed with the regimes were sent to prison/labor camps: the Gulag. We know little about these years of the Cold War (1946 – 1989) and the situations that led to so much suffering and death. With I am David we are given insight into the results of fascism and totalitarianism, as well as the consequences of hope, courage, human dignity and love.... Read more

  -spoiler-   Vera Drake, a film by Mike Leigh, is not easy to write about for several reasons. But let this not diminish the fact that Vera Drake is an outstanding example of cinema-craft.   It is London in the early 1950’s. Vera (Imelda Staunton) is a working class wife who lives with her husband, George (Richard Graham), and two grown children. Vera goes about working and helping her house-bound mother and others; she is terminally cheerful, busy and... Read more

National Treasure is a very entertaining film about a family, with links to America’s Founding Fathers, that generation after generation follows historical clues to a treasure hidden – buried by the Freemasons in the early years following the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776) somewhere in the United States.   Nicholas Cage is Ben (Franklin) Gates (re: Bill Gates? Riches?)and his whole life’s mission is to find the treasure. His partner in discovering the last clue on a ship sunk in... Read more

In vino veritas is the first thing I thought of when I was watching director/writer Alexander Payne’s (About Schmidt) new film, Sideways .  Naturally, the marketing team got there first with the connection, but it is true. This is a film that uses wine as a metaphor for life. Sideways is a small film because it never goes beyond itself; it stays courageously focused on a one week journey taken by quasi-middle-aged friends Miles (Paul Giamatti) and Jack (Thomas Haden... Read more

I have always been a fan of Peter Pan. When I was a graduate student living in Kensington, London in the mid-1990’s, I made a literary pilgrimage one Sunday to pay homage to the boy who never grew up and the places that inspired the geography and magic of Neverland. I walked first to Kensington Gardens and then to nearby Hyde Park and the Serpentine to see the island of the lost boys and finally to the wistful statue of Peter... Read more

Christmas with the Kranks will open in a few days starring Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis. It’s based on John Grisham’s 2001 novella, Skipping Christmas. Tim Allen is Luther Krank and Curtis plays his wife, Nora. When their 23-year old daughter and only child, Blair, joins the Peace Corps and departs for Peru the Sunday after Thanksgiving, Luther realizes that he and Nora don’t have to do the Christmas thing this year, and can just skip Christmas. So he... Read more

Mean Girls is the latest in my catch-up program for films released earlier this year that I missed in the theater. Tina Fey, of Saturday Night Live, wrote the screenplay and acts in the film as a math teacher. I have to admit at the outset that my benchmark for entertaining flicks about teen life is Amy Heckerling’s 1995 film Clueless, that is an updated version of Jane Austin’s Emma. Mean Girls is not as funny as Clueless and bears similarities to many... Read more

The Motorcycle Diaries, is the story of a road trip taken by Ernesto “Che'” Guavera (Gael Garcia Bernal of El Crimen de Padre Amaro) and his friend Alberto Granada (Rodrigo de la Serna) in 1952. Their plan was to ride a motorcycle from Buenos Aires, around the southern most tip of South America and north to Venezuela in four months – arriving in time to celebrate Alberto’s 30th birthday. Che’ Guavera is known as one of the major leaders of the Cuban revolution... Read more