Remember the Night (1940)

Four Days in September by the Brazilian director Bruno Barreto has about it the sepia tones of an old photograph. How strange people were in those far off days of 1969, and what strange things they did. Much credit is due to Barreto, himself a former leftist, for the skill and artistic restraint involved in…

Permanent Midnight, written and directed by David Veloz and based on the autobiographical book by Jerry Stahl is chiefly notable for the performance of Ben Stiller as Jerry Stahl, the TV writer who became a heroin addict and then, in recovery, managed to carve out a nice little career for himself as an ex-addict. Stiller…

A bleak portrait of the still-primitive mountain society of the Ozarks but one notable for a remarkable character-study of its heroine

What happens when anything can happen? Pretty much nothing. Or at least nothing that anyone needs to care about

How on earth did Ron Howard hope to succeed where Peter Weir failed? Hubris, I suppose. Ron Howard’s done a guest shot on “The Simpsons” (along with those other giants of the silver screen, Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger) and Peter Weir hasn’t. But for those of us not giddy with success, however, the idea…