Because I Said So

Nicole Kidman as a Russian mail-order bride? Who wouldn’t let her beat him up and turn him to a life of crime?

Another slick product of the contemporary movie business’s propaganda arm

Not that I approve of it myself, but the metaphor of “culture war” would seem to imply two more or less evenly matched forces struggling with might and main to master and destroy or disperse each other. Yet much of what goes under that name is more like culture murder. Even that expression would be…

A never-less-than-watchable film about the immigrant experience in America that diminishes its own considerable power with touches of magic realism

A sort of post-modern tragedy — if that’s not a contradiction in terms — that is too faithful to the novel but will probably win lots of Oscars for it

A gently comic and poignant film about the hope of youth and the disappointments of age set against the backdrop of Arab-Israeli relations