When a close long-term relationship ends in the death of one partner, the survivor will understandably grieve even after the memorial service, which is supposed to bring closure in ordinary circumstances. In Dragonfly, Dr. Joe Darrow (played by Kevin Costner) is an emergency room physician at Chicago Memorial Hospital whose wife Dr. Emily Darrow (played […]

  The Iranian film Daughters of the Sun (Dakhtaran-e Khorshid), directed by Maryam Shahriar, pictures the poverty of the rural countryside, where desperate families send their illiterate daughters to a small-scale rug factory in order to gain remittances from their wages while they live in virtual slavery. They are cruelly punished for accidents rather than treated

The Emperor’s Club affords us an opportunity to revisit a New England prep school to learn a different lesson from The Dead Poets Society (1989), where we caught a glimpse of what a Jewish boy had to endure during the 1950s. The Emperor’s Club, directed by Michael Hoffman and based on The Palace Thief (1995) by Ethan Canin, focuses on the

Enough, directed by Michael Apted, presents a textbook example of male chauvinism. Since there have been many such films before, Enough hints at the unique element of the story by casting Jennifer Lopez in the lead role. “Slim” (played by Jennifer Lopez), a humble waitress in a Los Angeles restaurant, is the prey for Mitch (played by

Damaged Care, directed by Harry Winer, is a docudrama about the unsavory health maintenance organization (HMO) industry, which began through Congressional legislation in 1973. One day, Dr. Linda Peeno (played by Laura Dern) is hired by profitmaking Humana Health Care in Louisville, Kentucky, to approve requests from physicians for extraordinary expenditures on behalf of patients.

  Titles at the beginning of Dahmer tell filmviewers that the infamous Milwaukee serial killer was convicted in 1992 of more than a dozen counts of murdering young men. When the film begins, Jeffrey Dahmer (played by Jeremy Renner) is on his way home from work at a chocolate factory when he spots Khamtay, a good-looking Laotian

When The Crime of Father Amaro (El Crimen de Padre Amaro) begins, a handsome, twenty-four-year-old priest is taking a busride to his new pastoral assignment in Los Reyes, a mythical Mexican town. The bus is robbed en route, but he gives a wad of cash to his seatmate as he exits, thus establishing him as a generous,

To the haunting and sentimental music of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, Michael Cacoyannis has directed a masterful cinematic production of Anton Chekhov’s 1904 play The Cherry Orchard. The plot is much less complicated than the character studies, so the cinematic version is particularly impressive due to fine acting, costuming, and magnificent sets. Checkov’s aim was to demonstrate

There are now three cinematic versions of Stephen King’s first novel, Carrie (1974), each with a different slant on the telekinetic high schooler who wreaks havoc. The first, called Carrie (1976), directed by Brian De Palma, followed the story fairly carefully. Katt Shea directed The Rage: Carrie II (1999), which is based in part on a true story about Lakewood High

The plight of the aboriginal peoples of North America is scarcely visible to most Americans. Few go to reservations, except to gamble, and Native Americans seem invisible off the reservation. One visible Native American, who has met the president of the United States and the pope, is Seymour Polatkin. The Business of Fancydancing, directed by Sherman