Stairway to Heaven (A Matter of Life and Death)

The novel was a best-seller in the US and a massive best-seller in the UK, so maybe people will be glad to see the movie. I wasn’t.

People who are obsessed, as so many people are these days, with racial, ethnic, or sexual identity must lead very dull lives, for it is ridiculously easy to entertain them. In Whatever, for instance, I heard be-sandaled feminists burst into hoots of laughter when one woman told another that she wishes her scruffy-looking daughter would…

An enjoyable account of Charles Dickens’s love affair with a much younger woman whose historicity, however, must remain largely speculative

If you’ve seen The Lost Embrace (El Abrazo Partido) of 2004 by the young Argentine director Daniel Burman, your first reaction to his new film, Family Law (Derecho de Familia), is likely to be that we have been there, done that. Like the earlier picture, this one is about the troubled relationship between a Jewish…

Le Huitième Jour(The Eighth Day) by Jaco Van Dormael begins with a somewhat whimsical attempt to portray the world as seen through the eyes of Georges (Pascal Duquenne), a Downs syndrome sufferer. Like Genesis (the pop group of the same name makes an appearance later in the film), it begins “In the beginning. . .”…

[See discussion under “My Diary” for June 21, 2012] Discover more from James Bowman Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email. Type your email… Subscribe