Public Enemy, The

Healing by Killing by Nitzam Aviram, an Israeli director, is a documentary which pretty persuasively establishes the case that it was the Nazi practice of euthanasia for victims of handicap, mental retardation and so forth which led to the holocaust. “Without the psychiatric death industry,” as one of Aviram’s interviewees puts it, “Auschwitz and Treblinka…

If the title is coming to seem an accurate description of our world, it is the only thing about this movie that rings true

Goodness reduced to helplessness in the face of evil is the characteristic feature of the moral universe of today’s popular culture

Anywhere But Here, Wayne Wang’s adaptation to the screen of a novel by Mona Simpson, is a total chick-flick but still worth seeing for the terrific performances of Susan Sarandon and Natalie Portman as the mother and daughter whose troubled relationship it is all about. In fact, the greatness of these two performances rather exaggerates…

A bit of magical realism that is too heavy on the magic and too light on the realism

[Also see discussion in “Entry from July 27, 2011” under “My Diary”] I liked After Life by Hirokazu Kore-eda, whose previous film was Maborosi. It is a witty contribution to the genre that includes Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Stairway to Heaven and so forth, but it gives the bureaucracy of death a peculiarly Japanese look….