Christmas in July

Fairy Tale by Charles Sturridge tells the story—sort of—of the fairy-photograph hoax perpetrated by a couple of young girls in Yorkshire in 1917-18. Now if you are going to do this on film, this way of doing it, with a bunch of ostensibly real fairies buzzing about on dragonfly wings, is probably the best way…

A relatively fair and dispassionate look at anti-abortion activists by a couple of young film-makers on the other side which, however, doesn’t tell us much that we don’t already know

A thrilling adaptation of the work of a popular historical novelist almost succeeds in taking us back to the days of Hollywood’s innocence

Imagine a more up-to-date, slick-looking Norwegian version of a “Twilight Zone” episode

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),…

The Girl on the Bridge (La Fille sur le Pont), written by Serge Frydman and directed by Patrice Leconte, I take to be a sort of parable or allegory of married love. In order to accentuate its rather spooky and tangential relation to reality, it is shot in black and white and makes use of…