A mighty fortress is our God, A bulwark never failing; Our shelter He, amid the flood Of mortal ills prevailing. The White Ribbon, Michael Haneke’s chilling tale of mystery and violence engulfing a small German town prior to the start of the First World War, is a drama that bears as much relevance to our modern times as it does to the historical period it presents. Set in the fictional, idyllic community of Eichwald, the film recounts the experiences of a... Read more

When George Bernard Shaw first learned of the creative licenses taken in an effort to make the ending of his play Pygmalion more marketable, he was outraged. Confronted by Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree’s claim that “My ending makes money, you ought to be grateful,” he responded (with his trademark sharpness of wit and tongue): “Your ending is damnable; you ought to be shot.” Two years later, still stinging from the change, he penned a 5,000-word essay—“Sequel: What Happened Afterwards”—in which he emphatically... Read more

The Fall, a genre-defying film from the Indian-born director Tarsem Singh, perfectly encapsulates the occasionally awkward marriage between Hollywood’s independent filmmakers and their commercial counterparts. Tarsem, probably best known for his visually arresting music video to R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion,” has produced a mind-bending, one-of-a-kind work one could accurately describe as both a vanity project and a labor of love. The film, which took more than four years to shoot and features more than twenty-eight extraordinary locations from around the globe, was primarily self-financed. After viewing,... Read more

To say that death has become an unimportant part of our cinematic vocabulary would seem like the height of absurdity. The body count from Sly Stallone’s two latest features alone could easily populate a small country, and there are few plot points so frequently used as: “unexpected death of parent/sibling/lover throws protagonist into deep, expressive turmoil.”  Yet shuffling off this mortal coil, while omnipresent, is rarely the focus of much cinematic attention; all too often, movie mortality finds itself cast... Read more

This review discusses a number of SPOILERS. Proceed with caution. “…out of gloom and darkness, the eyes of the blind will see.” — Isaiah 29:18 From time to time, a film will end in a way so unexpected and so significant that it profoundly influences its audience’s reaction to everything that has come before. In most films, this is achieved by a twist — letting the audience members in on a secret they could not have known beforehand. But in a... Read more