Believe it or not, in a pop culture filled with mindless reality shows and slick formula franchises, there are still a few players out there whose work offers a glimmer of hope that originality and intelligence can prevail. Tilda Swinton is one such player. It is heartening that at 50, her career is in red-hot mode. Her next film, We … More Details

I’ve just sat down dutifully and read the reviews for the new 3-D rehashes of Conan the Barbarian and Fright Night, as well as the treacly-sounding One Day, and realized once again there is no reason to make my way to the multiplex this weekend. Just where are all the great movies these days? I think I’ll stay home and … More Details

As the most barbaric event of the twentieth century, the Nazis’ mass extermination of Jews during World War 2 has served as the basis of countless books, plays, and films over the past sixty years. No surprise there, since we humans have always drawn our most powerful, memorable stories from the most tragic events of our time. In great tragedy … More Details

Can it really be that Benjamin Braddock, the disaffected young man starting out his adult life in “The Graduate,” turns 73 today?
That character was of course immortalized in 1967 by a then unknown Dustin Hoffman, whose sheer talent and nervous energy compensated for a conspicuous absence of classic leading man attributes.
It’s sad to think young people today may know this gifted actor primarily as Ben Stiller’s hippy-dippy Dad in the execrable “Meet the Fockers” (2004). In truth, over the past fifteen or so years, almost invariably Hoffman’s performances have outclassed the movies featuring them.
More Details

Whether portraying the folly or glory of armed conflict, outstanding war films place the best and worst of our shared humanity in stark relief: on the good side lies our capacity for courage and sacrifice in the interest of a cause bigger than ourselves; on the other, we confront our innate barbarity and impulse toward aggression, which thousands of years … More Details