The Woman in Black, directed by James Watkins (“Eden Lake,” “My Little Eye”) and written by Jane Goldman, is a cinematic adaption of Susan Hill’s popular novel of the same name. Daniel ‘Harry Potter’ Radcliffe plays a young widowed Victorian lawyer named Arthur Kipps, who is forced to leave his young son in London with…
Revisionist history being what it is, it’s still interesting to view a movie or documentary based on something one remembers. Such is the case with Universal’s newest offering, Big Miracle, starring John Krasinski and Drew Barrymore and directed by Ken Kwapis (“He’s Just Not That Into You,” “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants“). Based on the…
When men dress up as women in the movies, it is almost always in a comedy or farce; think “Some Like It Hot,” “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” and “Tootsie.” However, when the situation is reversed and the film concerns women dressing up as men, the movie is habitually a drama bordering on tragedy: “Yentl,”…
It took two viewings for me to appreciate We Need to Talk About Kevin, the neo-surrealist drama helmed by Lynne Ramsay. Based on a book of the same name, the film, scribed by the director alongside Rory Kinnear, explores the theme of “nature versus nurture” through the eyes of Eva Khatchadourian (Tilda Swinton), a disenchanted…
As a heterosexual male, I am probably among the minority of those who have read Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum books. I’m totally cool with that. I find the books funny enough without being degrading, intelligently written, and full of excellent, memorable characters. So I was more than a little leery when I heard that the…
There are several factoids I learned after watching The Wicker Tree, the 39 years in the making sequel to cult favorite “The Wicker Man.” For one, nuclear power plants make all men who drink or bathe in its cooling source sterile (although on the flip side it also grants them the gift of being able…
Our society has often been called “death-denying,” one in which grief is suppressed and the inevitability of death ignored. Author John Fowles said, “Death’s rather like a certain kind of lecturer. You don’t really hear what is being said until you’re in the first row.” The children at a primary school in Montreal are definitely…
