It happens all too frequently that even when they’re worth the trouble—and God knows there are plenty of different kinds of trouble—too many books appear on the shelves to announce themselves with the fanfare of their packaging, a fine illustration, or the sheer volume and heft of their multitudinous pages,…
In the browbeating rage and turmoil running like a poisoned artery through the body and life of Johnny, a low-class and frustrated shmuck of an intellectual from Manchester, a rapist wandering London in search of a living, breathing person on whom he can inflict his spleen and disappointment, something of…
The style of put-‘em-up scuffles erupting from time to time in The Strawberry Blonde, directed by Raoul Walsh, is a glove-like fit for the belligerent character assigned to the impressive, balletic, and pent-up James Cagney, who had a background as a dancer segueing into his film career that shows in…
In the fourth part of Albert Camus’ humane and heartfelt masterpiece, The Plague, taking place in the French port of Oran on the Algerian coast, there is a moment of quiet surprise following a scene where an innocent child lets out a final, death-rattling wail as he expires in a…
The close-set and benign features on the face of the Italian actor Ninetto Davoli seem to incarnate stupidity more completely than in any other actor that I’ve ever seen. It is almost uncanny, the perfect embodiment of a trait not always easy to bring out—and not always gratifying to bring…
If ever the well-worn idea of Stockholm syndrome were to have a Spanish equivalent, complete with the passionate flair of the urban landscape and the compact but spacious flats and apartments, it would have to be that of this mid-career movie directed by Pedro Almodóvar with his frank drollery, darkness,…
There are many things to be said about the Before trilogy, among them the impressive range of its defining qualities: the long tracking shots of extended dialogue in which both Jesse and Céline, played with natural charisma and chemistry by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, take up the threads of…
Somewhere in the Amazon basin, an isthmus between the Urubamba and Camisea Rivers serves as the principal location for the feat of dragging a boat over a mountain, captured on film by Werner Herzog in his true-to-life creation Fitzcarraldo. It is a strange, obsessive, somewhat outré take on the historical…
Proust—what an author, eh? He can be difficult to dig into, and not only because his work can give rise to an infamous snobbery, an ironic response to an author that made much of his undying contempt for snobbery. He can also inspire so much thinking and self-reflection that his…
The Tramp has to be the most imperishable character in the history of physical comedy. Buster Keaton, his stoic and graceful attitude toward the beleaguered lives of his characters, his immense poise in the midst of disaster, the well-thought-out stunts and set designs—his might have been a greater talent. And…
