Bend It Like Beckham
A celebration of the rich, multicultural tapestry that is Britain today whose sunny, funny approach to questions of cultural difference is perhaps just a tad overoptimistic.
Bringing Down the House
With the help of a black ex-con, Dad becomes a hip, freaky, fun-loving guy and his wife and kids are overjoyed. Best of all, he gets to keep the Mercedes and the job as a high-priced tax lawyer.
Safety of Objects, The
Ours is a scary old world, all right, and we cling to our toys like children — but this is a point that it is way too easy to overdemonstrate.
Entry from March 5, 2003
As I was coming out of Sam Mendes’s production of Uncle Vanya starring Simon Russell Beale and Emily Watson — brought over (along with Twelfth Night) from the Donmar Warehouse in London and running at the Brooklyn Academy of Music through Sunday — I overheard one of my fellow theatre-goers saying to a companion: "So…
Elsker dig for Evigt (Open Hearts)
Yet another terrifically well-made film from the Danish Dogme 95 group. How do they do it?
Open Hearts (Elsker dig for Evigt)
The best movie I have seen so far this year is Open Hearts, a Dogme 95 film directed by Susanne Bier from a script she co-wrote with the great Anders Thomas Jensen, who also co-wrote Mifune and The King is Alive, two other Dogme productions that are among the best films of recent years. The…
Entry from February 26, 2003
Adam Nicolson, writing in the London Daily Telegraph, makes a connection between the death at 88 of Captain Philip, “Pip,” Gardner — one of the last 16 surviving holders of the highest British decoration for valor, the Victoria Cross — and the dying English habit of understatement. In the battle for Tobruk in 1941, Captain…
Gods and Generals
The ultimate in Civil War re-enactments is, alas, much less successful as a movie.
Old School
Formerly, the American dream was being able to buy a house in the suburbs with a picket fence; now, perhaps, it is being able to live in a frat house like a college boy until retirement
Entry from February 20, 2003
It’s amazing to me to see in this run-up — more of a limp-up, actually — to war with Iraq how many different ways we have to talk about honor without ever mentioning its all-but forbidden name. The most favored alternative is “credibility,” as in Henry Kissinger’s apodictic contention that “if the United States marches…
Confidence Motion
Trent Lott had the confidence of his Republican colleagues in the Senate — but only for so long as that was OK with the media
— From The New Criterion, February, 2003