Two brothers lost their mother when they are small children, and their father was mostly on the road in a vain effort to achieve fame as a third baseman. When the father became too old to play, he retired to México, watched a lot of baseball on television, including his son Terry’s big-league career, […]
Along for the Ride Read More »
Just as serious films about the Vietnam War haunted the 1980s, so now in the late 1990s World War II is the war of choice for filmmakers. Except that not all are so serious. If in 1998 Life Is Beautiful could make filmviewers ponder about the need for hope and humor to make life meaningful, now
Only a master thief can catch a lesser thief, according to Catch Me If You Can, directed by Stephen Spielberg. When the film begins, Frank Abagnale, Sr. (played by Christopher Willem), is accepting an award from the New Rochelle Kiwanis Club, an award based on con games with the townspeople. IRS is after him for some
Catch Me If You Can Read More »
Bollywood/Hollywood, directed by Deepa Mehta, is a quirky love story involving Rahul Seth (played by Rahul Khanna), a successful Indian entrepreneur in Toronto who is looking for a spouse because his parents insist that he should be betrothed before wedding bells ring for his soon-to-be-married sister. Rahul’s fiancée is a Hollywood star, whom he brings
Bollywood/Hollywood Read More »
Abandon, directed by Stephen Gaghan, is about a young man, Embry Larkin (played by Charlie Hunnam), who disappeared two years earlier. When the film begins, the missing persons case is assigned to Detective Wade Handler (played by Benjamin Bratt) because he was the heir to a large fortune. The law does not allow a missing
Political Film Society awardwinner Jim Sheridan has directed many powerful biographical films, from In the Name of the Father (1993) to The Boxer (1998). In America, therefore, comes as somewhat of a surprise, showing a sentimentalism that doubtless informed his previous classics but was hidden from view. The story is loosely autobiographical, portraying Irish immigrants to America in New York
Civil Brand, directed by Neema Barnette, asks us to believe that twenty-five African American female inmates of a racially segregated Tennessee prison won a lawsuit against administrators to end a reign of terror. The prison is maximum security Whitehead Correctional Institute, which is managed by a corporation in the private sector that makes up rules
The film City of Ghosts, cowritten and directed by Matt Dillon, appears to be a remake of The Third Man (1949), with a man arriving in a strange city to pursue something lucrative with someone notorious, but Dillon’s story is far more gruesome. In the early part of the film, a hurricane has devastated many homeowners in
What is the psychological effect of being laid off permanently? Statistics show a high correlation with suicide in many countries, but Spain has a low suicide rate. Accordingly, the film Mondays in the Sun (Los lunes al sol), directed by Fernando León de Aranoa, provides more complex answers about some 200 dockworkers in Vigo, Galicia, who,
Mondays in the Sun Read More »
In Merci Docteur Rey, directed and written by Andrew Litvack, two dead bodies threaten to bring reality to the fantasy lives of several narcissistic characters. The first dead body emerges quite early in the film. Twenty-three-year-old Thomas Beaumont (played by Stanislas Merhar), who has been paid 1,500 francs to hide in the closet of a Paris