Robert Redford (“Our Souls at Night”) is an American icon and, in David Lowery’s (“A Ghost Story”) The Old Man and the Gun, has ostensibly made his final curtain call as an actor. Adapted by Lowery from a 2003 article in the New Yorker about Forrest Tucker by David Grann (“The Lost City of Z”),…
“So why do I step upon the ruins of those most near and dear to me, I, who can be so simply and so sharply wounded and can wound others with such deadly ease?” — Yevgeny Yevtushenko, “Wounds” Loneliness and pain can be concomitants of old age, but the wounds may often be self-inflicted. Loosely…
Stating that history is determined by the struggle between the ruling classes (the exploiters) and the oppressed classes (the exploited), nineteenth century German philosopher Karl Marx blamed poverty and starvation on the evils of capitalist society and declared that class conflict could only be ended by the overthrow of capitalism and the building of a…
“And if the earthly no longer knows your name, whisper to the silent earth: I’m flowing. To the flashing water say: I am” — Rilke, “Sonnette an Orpheus” (II, 29) Chiron, in Barry Jenkins’ Oscar-winning film “Moonlight,” in addition to being gay and black, has to deal with drug abuse, bullying, and the lack of…
“You’re right from your side and I’m right from mine. We’re both just one too many mornings and a thousand miles behind” — Bob Dylan In the Israeli-French co-production West of the Jordan River, Israeli director Amos Gitai (“Rabin, the Last Day”) returns to the West Bank to interview journalists, politicians, non-profit groups, and ordinary…
Like a lonely, mysterious gunslinger from the Old West, a tall, slender rugged-looking man with a thick mustache comes to a small Bulgarian village near the Grecian border as part of a German work crew in Valeska Grisebach’s (“Longing”) Western. The man is Meinhard (Meinhard Neumann), in Bulgaria to work on a hydroelectric power station…
Whether or not it is designed as an allegory of modern Russia, no film in recent memory has examined the growing emptiness of human relationships with such expressive force as Andrey Zvyagintsev’s (“Leviathan”) Loveless, a heart wrenching drama about a couple on the brink of divorce whose emotional neglect of their son leads to devastating…
