Boys will be boys. Girls will be girls. Girls will be boys? Sometimes. Tomboy is a sweet exploration of a young girl’s summer gender journey across the boundaries of girlhood and boyhood. This exquisite film directed by Celine Sciamma was not released in Detroit, but is happily available on Comcast On Demand and is well worth the struggle to ...
What makes a method “dangerous”? David Cronenberg’s controversial 2011 film “A Dangerous Method” is the prolific director’s attempt to explore the inherent risk–danger really–to those embarking on a psychoanalytic journey through the unconscious armed with “the talking cure” The film has been applauded and dismissed by critics, praised and renounced by psychoanalysts, labeled as riveting and boring ...
Sometimes the films we ought to see do not fall into our laps or avail themselves on numerous multiplex screens….”The Father of My Children” directed by Mia Hansen Love is such a film. It never was screened in the Detroit Metro area, but is available via Netflix and Amazon…..so, you might ask, why go to ...
How does one “learn” to process tragedy? Is there a lesson to be taught? Phillipe Falardeau’s wonderful film “Monsieur Lahzar” is a attempt to immerse us in such an experience lived through the lives of a classroom of middle school students whose beloved teacher has hung herself(in the classroom) and an equally traumatized Algerian substitute teacher(Monsieur Lahzar) quickly ...
Is the father a “footnote” to his son or is the son a ‘footnote” to his father? Joseph Cedar’s poignantly remarkable film “Footnote” plunges us into the heart of the question. The American-born Israeli director has selected his father-son duo to duke it out over the terrain of Talmudic scholarship….the father, Eliezer, has devoted his ...
“Beware of passion Hester. It always leads to something ugly.” Terrance Davise’s new film “The Deep Blue Sea” nudges us through the emotional rubble of a young woman (played by Rachel Weisz) who can no longer endure the pain of a life without passion. She has already left her stable judicial husband for a dashing ...
The pastoral photograph that I chose for “The Kid with a Bike” is misleading because it captures a moment of sweet mother-son tranquility without a hint of the frenetic motion and pain it took to get there. Jean Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s newest film takes us on this journey without dodging the anguish shared by its ...
The Hunger Games opened this weekend earning $155 million dollars, making it the third most successful opening of all time (lagging behind Harry Potter and The Dark Knight). In case you have been hermetically sealed in a vault somewhere in a galaxy far far away, the film is based upon Suzanne Collins blockbuster trilogy of ...
“The Gold Rush” is one of those classic films I felt I must have seen…after all, Chaplin’s 1925 masterpiece(at least the film HE hoped to be remembered for) seemed so familiar..I could of course instantly recognize The Tramp and had seen pieces of the film numerous times(the famous shoe-eating scene that must have sparked Herzog’s own shoe-devouring ...
“Shakespeare meets the Hurt Locker ” has been used by a number of critics to describe Ralph Fienne’s film version of “Coriolanus.” The film was shot in Serbia, in modern military dress and is packed with IED explosions and AK-47s…but the words are all Shakespeare. The play itself may not be as accessible as others ...