Dirty Work

A one-joke wonder — and the wonder is that anyone finds even the one joke funny

I thought that the cowboy who loved his horse more than any ole woman went out with Tom Mix, but make him P.C. and he’s back again

There is sometimes a fine line between the pitiless, unflinching gaze that sees things as they are and the impulse to glory in moral squalor. Todd Solondz doesn’t avoid crossing it.

Affliction, based on a novel by Russell Banks, is written and directed by Paul Schrader, and, like so many other Hollywood products these days, it asks us to believe that traditional ideas of masculinity are psychically and socially destructive. Though it is well-written, well-acted and well-photographed, the movie really has nothing else to say to…

Lucie Aubrac by Claude Berri (the great director of Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring), is another illustration of the use of cliché in great movie-making. Based on the true life events recorded in the memoir, Ils partiront dans l’ivresse by Lucie Aubrac herself, this film hits us over the head with its…

Follow your bliss, middle-aged America! Quit your job, speak your mind, buy that muscle car you’ve always wanted. Start smoking pot again. Buff up and start an affair with a teenage girl. You may die for it, but you will die happy. Where have we heard this before? Periodically, the popular culture becomes receptive to…