Theater/Film Reviews
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The Girl Who Played With Fire
"The Girl Who Played With Fire" is the second book in Stieg Larsson's magnificent trilogy about Lisbeth Salander, equally talented in coaxing the secrets out of a computer or beating them out of an gangster twice her size, and Mikael Blomkvist, the kind of crusading reporter who makes every living reporter or former reporter not
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I Am Love
Remember all the stories about the birds and the bees? Here's a switch. The birds, the bees, a variety of other insects and all the flowers of the Italian hills are busy learning from Tilda Swinton and Edoardo Gabbriellini, quite wonderful teachers. Director Luca Guadagnino, his focus ever tighter, and composer John Adams, his music
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Stonewall Uprising
If only cameras then were as ubiquitous as cameras now, "Stonewall Uprising" would have been a much better film, and the Greenwich Village riots would have had more impact. The documentary, co-directed by Kate Davis and David Heilbroner, with a writing credit for him and an editing credit for her, provides some splendid interviews with
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Cyrus
As a pickup line, it's among the best ever. John is at a party. He meets Molly. Shortly thereafter, he's in the back yard when he feels a call of nature and ducks into the bushes. Apparently not deeply enough. Molly walks by. "Nice penis," she says, and keeps on walking. And that's how John
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The City of Your Final Destination
The movie-making team of Producer Ismael Merchant, Director James Ivory and Writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala made a name for themselves with literary films, slow-paced, intricate, character-driven stories set in glamorous locales, with fine acting, lovely settings and people who had interesting stories to tell. They triumphed with "A Room With a View," "Heat and Dust,"
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Ondine
It's a crying shame that fantasy and folklore cannot carry an entire film. The multi-talented Neil Jordan has written and directed "Ondine," a lovely, romantic movie about an Irish fisherman who catches a selkie in his nets one day. A selkie, by the way, is a creature similar to a mermaid who does not have
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Reel Injun
The word play in the title of the documentary film, "Reel Injun" is rather easy to decipher–it's about the treatment of American Indians in movies made by American filmmakers. Directed by Neil Diamond (a Cree Indian, not a singer), it covers a lot of familiar ground, but seems to show some optimism for better treatment,
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Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work
The movie opens with a shocking sequence. A woman, her mouth a mere slit, her face pasty and lined, is about to be made up. The name of the movie could easily be changed from "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work," to "Joan Rivers: An Old Woman Being Re-Created By Being Worked On, a Piece
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Knight and Day
March may come in like a lion, but summer comes in like "Knight and Day," an utterly predictable action movie that opens today, with impossible things becoming everyday events. Cameron Diaz, who may be the first Kansas-based heroine since Judy Garland, runs an auto repair shop in Wichita and is restoring her father's treasured GTO
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Wicked
When a baseball team changes a pitcher, there are conferences at the mound, and signals to the bullpen, and warmup throws, and time for several commercials and even a beer or two. When a well-run theatrical company needs to make a change, the replacement slips onto the stage between numbers, and few in the audience