Children of Men

Panic, written and directed by Henry Bromell, does a fine job of setting up the classic therapeutic paradigm so beloved of the theorists of what they call “patriarchy.” This it does, I take it, for political reasons, since the very existence of “patriarchy” depends on an explicitly political assumption, namely that there is some realizable…

Making her movie comeback on Friday the 13th as part of a double-act with half of the cursed and talent-deprived Bennifer duo? What could Jane Fonda have been thinking?

Krippendorf’s Tribe, directed by Todd Holland, is almost as unfunny a comedy as An Alan Smithee Film. Richard Dreyfuss plays James Krippendorf, a professor of anthropology with three children whose wife has recently died. Prostrated by grief he has shut himself up in the house and lived on his research grant until, one day, a…

An often-funny but too-bland and predictable romantic comedy that can’t find a way to live up to its potential

Anyone who may still be treasuring fond memories of the 1950s has got to have a hard time of it in coming up against the tendency of late 20th century culture—which seems to be obsessed with the notion that that decade was a horrible time in America’s history. Well, you may think as I do…

Inventing the Abbotts directed by Pat O’Connor from a story by Sue Miller is set in the 1950s and runs through the usual movie and journalistic clichés about that era as a time of “innocence.” In addition to authentic cars and clothes and appliances and TV shows (surprisingly, there is little period rock ‘n’ roll),…