Hate-Love Relationships
“You can’t not love and hate the same person,” says Nick (Jim Broadbent) to Meg (Lindsay Duncan) — “usually in the space of five minutes, in my experience.” It’s the kind of writerly line — the writer...
View ArticleMonumental Disasters
In explaining why he wants to save, as he sees it, the cultural heritage of Europe, stolen and spirited away into Germany by the retreating Nazis, George Clooney’s character in The Monuments Men...
View ArticleThe Other Women United
There are a few implausibilities at the heart of The Other Woman, Nick Cassavetes’s female revenge fantasy to a script by Melissa K. Stack. Everything depends on the appearance by Carly (Cameron Diaz)...
View ArticleLost in Transplantation
A friend of mine once described an eerie noise as being “like a spaceship landing.” Of course no one — really — knows what a spaceship landing sounds like. But not-really, everyone does know....
View ArticleAmong the Supremely PC
Ellen DeGeneres opened this year’s Oscar broadcast with a joke about the two possible outcomes of the nearly four hours of self-congratulation to come—hours that, as she could not have known at the...
View ArticleRequiem for the Chatterley Classes
My obituary’s written,” a tearful but paradoxical Eliot Spitzer told Vanity Fair a year or two after his forced resignation as governor of New York, “and that is a very hard thing to live with.” The...
View ArticleIda and Wanda
It’s hard to imagine anything more different from Pawel Pawlikowski’s wonderfulMy Summer of Love (2005) than his new film, but Ida is just as wonderful in its own way. It is essentially a meditation on...
View ArticleRemoving the Magic from Mozart
Recently, my wife and I attended a performance of Mozart’s Magic Flute—which is what German speakers call a Singspiel opera, written in the vernacular and intended for a popular audience. In this it...
View ArticleImagine the World Without America
The exhortation in the title of Dinesh D’Souza’s new movie — America: Imagine the World Without Her— suggests that it is going to be an exercise in what they call “counter-factual” history. In other...
View ArticleThere's No Breaking Away
This year for the eighth summer in succession I presented—along with free pizza—a collection of old movies on a theme.
View ArticleNFL Wrestles With a New Problem
The NFL, under the stewardship of its $200 million-man Roger Goodell, is in such bad shape that it’s on the verge of blowing its one trump card: a virtual monopoly on professional football in the...
View ArticleWhat a Bunch of Hockey Pucks
The lady doth protest too much, methinks. The words may be from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, written over 400 years ago, but the Bard of Avon sure knew people. At issue is the latest sports National Anthem...
View ArticleFigure Eight Diplomacy
I’ve heard of gunboat diplomacy before, but I never thought I’d live to see the world putting its eggs in the basket of figure eight diplomacy. In Korea, we are witnessing a series of diplomatic...
View ArticleThrowing the President’s Weight Around
When the president’s annual physical results were released, you knew anything short of White House physician Dr. Ronny Jackson announcing that Mr. Trump was suffering from late stage dementia and was...
View ArticlePlease Stand for the Super Bowl, Goodell Edition
Welcome to Super Bowl week, which should be the pinnacle of good feelings and excitement for the game of football and the NFL. Instead, a new report just hit the newswire showing that the NFL is the...
View ArticleBaseball Loses It
“You could agree there is more competition to get the number 1 pick in the draft than to win the World Series.” — Jerry Dipoto, General Manager of the Seattle Mariners That one quote illustrates the...
View ArticleMike Pence, America’s Class Act
Did you hear the one about the gay U.S. men’s figure skater in the Winter Olympics? No, this isn’t the start of a barroom joke, but just more of the same PC drivel that has been leveled at Vice...
View ArticleAn Offensive Lineman
Political correctness giveth and taketh away, where one can be a PC rock star one day and shown for who one really is the next. Remember former Miami Dolphin lineman Jonathan Martin? If the name rings...
View ArticleWhat’s in a Street Name? Any Name Except Yawkey
After months of bellyaching and threats by current Red Sox owner John Henry, the official purging of former Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey is upon us as the Red Sox appear to have the proper paperwork in...
View ArticleWhat’s in a Street Name? Any Name Except Yawkey
After months of bellyaching and threats by current Red Sox owner John Henry, the official purging of former Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey is upon us as the Red Sox appear to have the proper paperwork in...
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