Category: Film

  • The Believer (2011)

    The phrase “self-loathing Jew” is rife with provocative and unsettling meaning for Jews. For a people whose shared identity and history is partly tied to having endured persecution and injustice, some Jews might recoil from a sense of victimization that gnaws away at them even while remaining proud of their perseverance. Or maybe I’m wrong.…

  • American Teen (2008)

    They say youth is wasted on the young. That might be true, but high school is one rite of passage for which young people definitely earn their Purple Hearts. With its unforgiving caste system, peer pressures and never-ending crises, high school could reduce even the most hard-bitten survivalist into a knock-kneed mess. Regardless of your…

  • Plane (2023)

    I think it’s fair to say you will never see Plane as an in-flight movie. At least, I sure as hell hope you don’t. In Plane, after all, the fictional Trailblazer Airlines relies on faulty technology and pushes its pilots into dangerous situations, all for the sake of saving a few precious dollars. Can you…

  • Death Sentence (2007)

    As trashy vigilante fantasies go, you could do a lot worse than Death Sentence. That might sound like damning with faint praise, and perhaps it is, but director James Wan deserves credit for dressing up this Death Wish-knockoff with honest-to-goodness visual flair.  Kevin Bacon lends a welcome intensity to the role of Nick Hume, a well-heeled business…

  • The Great Debaters (2007)

    Among the many intellectual exercises connected to competitive debate is the ability to defend stances that, at first blush, might seem indefensible. I know; I debated in high school and remember many a contest assailing the evils of seatbelts and motorcycle helmets. Judging by The Great Debaters, however, you wouldn’t think that debate requires much…

  • 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007)

    4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is a starkly told tale of abortion and rape in the waning years of Romania under the oppressive Ceauşescu regime. Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, it is all the more brutally effective because it is so quotidian, chronicling a day in the…

  • The Greatest Game Ever Played (2005)

    If it didn’t happen to be true, you might dismiss it as feel-good fantasy. But part of what makes The Greatest Game Ever Played so appealing is that this is a real-life Cinderella story tailor-made for classic drama. Based on the 2002 book by Mark Frost (who also wrote the screenplay adaptation), the film details…

  • Before Midnight (2013)

    In Before Midnight, the third and final installment of director Richard Linklater’s odes to romance, there’s a sly bit that reflects the personal baggage that fans of this trilogy brought to this film. Jesse (Ethan Hawke), the writer we’ve watched meet, fall for and settle down with Celine (Julie Delpy), tells some colleagues about a…