Badlands (1973)

An actor’s movie — written by his brother — to show off the considerable talents of Philip Seymour Hoffman

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…

Those darned racists, who used to have it all their own way before the dawn of our own blessed age of enlightenment, are at it again in this visually impressive Australian morality tale.

Mira Nair (I arm Iran?) takes an English classic and de-Orientalizes it, so leaving very little for non-ideologues to enjoy

Lars von Trier is back on his hobby-horse: creating an alternative version of America to attack because he knows nothing of the real America

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…