Heaven Can Wait

There is more than a hint of political correctness about this film’s self-discoveries, which the audience will have figured out long before the characters do

Lovers of the Arctic Circle is a handsomely constructed fable of love and destiny, written and directed by Julio Medem. Those with a taste for magic realism or the sunny po-mo fables of Jaco Van Dormael (Toto the Hero, The Eighth Day) may well enjoy it, though to my taste its weird Spanish romanticism and…

A Brazilian reflection on the vanity of human — or at least of masculine — wishes and the permanence of the eternal feminine

A Merry War is the American title given to the adaptation by Robert Bierman (director) and Alan Plater (writer) of George Orwell’s sunniest novel, Keep the Aspidistra Flying— presumably because Americans don’t know what an aspidistra is. For the record, it is a houseplant with long, leathery swordlike leaves which, in the 1930s was a…

An amusing fairy tale that sometimes flirts with over-seriousness

A too-busy but still enjoyable account of part of the life of the author of The Adventures of Peter Rabbit