Blithe Spirit (David Lean, 1945). Adapted from Noël Coward’s 1941 play of the same name, Blithe Spirit is a mere wisp of a movie comedy that generates domestic drama from supernatural falderal. Writer Charles Condomine (Rex Harrison) invites a daffy … Continue reading Then Playing — Blithe Spirit; Layer Cake; Algiers
The Help (Tate Taylor, 2011). I think a strong, important movie can (and arguably should) be made about the continued racial-based social inequities imposed in the American South–really all over the country, but those below the Mason-Dixon line had a special skill for it–in the early nineteen-sixties as the power of the Civil Rights movement was beginning the much needed push back against the monied classes that wanted to maintain some diluted but still despicable variation on the slavery system abolished about a century earlier. The Help, for all its noble intentions, simply isn’t that movie. Even putting aside the … Continue reading Clooney, Goldwyn, Kiarostami, Taylor, Vaughn
Mary and Max (Adam Elliot, 2009). A beautifully downbeat stop-motion animation feature about unlikely penpals on the opposite side of the Atlantic who correspond over a number of years, developing a moving, warm, fragile and occasionally fractured relationship. Despite the distance–or, arguably, because of it–they drawn strength and even courage from one another, muddling through the unique challenges of their respective lives in part because they’ve got a lifeline out there somewhere in the world, someone who may not understand them, but at least takes the time to try. Max, voiced by Philip Seymour Hoffman, is an especially wonderful creation, … Continue reading Audiard, Curtiz, Elliot, Polanski, Vaughn
Coffee for Two 