There are mass murderers and former dictators rotting away in prison cells who have done better for the human condition than author, Nicholas Sparks. If Nicholas Sparks was a conflict he would be the Hundred Years War; if he were a baseball team he would be the 1962 New York Mets; if he were a…
Have you ever succumbed to a frightening dream or twisted fantasy where your life slowly falls apart before your own eyes? Well what would happen when you mix these feelings of insecurity with a quelling desperation to mend the bridges that you’ve burned along the way? The answer just may come in the form of…
In the Buddhist tradition, breathing grounds us in the present moment. According to Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, “Breathing opens the door to stopping and looking deeply in order to enter the domain of concentration and insight.” For Roman Kogler (Thomas Schubert) in Karl Markovics remarkable debut film Breathing, it is simply the means to…
Every act has a consequence. In 2002, Fisher Stevens directed “Just a Kiss” which offered an absurd view on what can happen in the case of gross misunderstandings and infidelity. In Stand Up Guys, he proffers an absurd view on what could happen if one were to accidentally kill a kingpin’s son. Only this time…
Cinematic sentimental gestures don’t come much more desperately inspirational than the slow motion shot of a person reaching skyward with a swelling score accompanying their ascent. In his syrupy drama The Impossible, director J.A. Bayona reserves this moment for the third act, but it’s not like the sentimentality sneaks up on us. This kind of…
In a film within a film, director Sebastian (Gael Garcia Bernal) and producer Costa (Luis Tosar) are shooting in Cochabamba, Bolivia in the year 2000. The film they are working on proposes to depict Christopher Columbus’ exploitation of the indigenous native population in his voyage to the Americas and the effort of two priests to…
In Michael Haneke’s Amour, Palme d’Or winner at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) watches over his loved one, Anne (Emmanuelle Riva), as she gradually loses control of the precious attributes of body and mind after a series of strokes. In his usual austere style, Haneke avoids sentimentality and even outward displays of…
