Duck Season (Temporada de Patos)
A charming, unpretentious little movie from Mexico that gradually reveals to us hidden depths and a surprising emotional power
Entry from March 6, 2006
Did Hollywood wimp out by not giving the Best Picture Oscar to Brokeback Mountain? Were the electors of the Motion Picture Academy quaking in their Gucci loafers at the thought that red-state America would rise up in fury at the insult to traditional American popular culture represented by a couple of gay cowboys — or,…
The Neutering of the American Male
Harvey Mansfield has written a difficult but immensely important book about the future not just of manhood but of mankind — from The New York Sun of March 6, 2006
Joyeux Noel
An often-moving fictional account of a real event in World War I suffers from the same fault it criticizes in those who led their countries into war
Sorry, Haters
A bizarre movie that looks like a vanity project for Robin Wright Penn, who gets to chew the scenery as a dangerously unbalanced but utterly implausible woman
Our Brand is Crisis
Rachel Boynton tells a good story — at least for political junkies — but tries to make it mean something it doesn’t
Condescending Respect
Who is entitled to our respect? The only answer everyone seems to agree on is that it’s not our elected officials — From The New Criterion of February, 2006
Spielberg Stress Disorder
Hollywood’s paranoia and love of victimhood team up with pride of intellect to vitiate every cinematic foray into politics or war — from The American Spectator of February, 2006
Entry from February 24, 2006
“Gotti Judas” read the splash headline in the New York Post on Thursday. “Mob turncoat Michael ‘Mikey Scars’ DiLeonardo. . . betrayed John ‘Junior’ Gotti,” the article continued, pointing particularly to the fact that the betrayer was the betrayed’s “former best friend.” On an inside page, another headline referred to him as a “gangland rat.”…
Orfeu Negro (Black Orpheus)
Near the end of Black Orpheus (Orfeu Negro), Marcel Camus’s masterpiece of 1959, there comes what can only be described as an authorial disclaimer that strikes the film’s one seriously false note. “The happiness of the poor is the great illusion of Carnival,” we are told, more or less out of the blue. Up until…
Unknown White Male
A documentary about a man who lost his memory gradually turns into a celebration of his right to self-reinvention
Black Orpheus (Orfeu Negro)
A classic reissued in time for Mardi Gras remains well worth-seeing