“Take care of things close to home first. Straighten up your room before you save the world. Then save the world.” — Ron Padgett, “How to be Perfect” Interior, bedroom — Monday morning. An aerial shot on a sleeping couple. It’s about 15 seconds before the clock hits 6:12 and Paterson (Adam Driver, “Star Wars:…
Fear that your children may mimic your worst qualities is the driving force in Hirokazu Koreeda’s (“Our Little Sister”) After the Storm (Umi yori mo mada fukaku), a compassionate look at the struggles of a Japanese family. Its title derived from the lyrics of an old pop song, the film is set in Kiyose, a…
Dedicated to Ozu star Setsuko Hara, Argentine director Matías Piñeiro’s Hermia and Helena follows his three previous films, “Viola,” “The Princess of France”, and “Rosalinda,” with a work depicting characters loosely based on female heroines in William Shakespeare’s comedies. Shot in Buenos Aires and partly in New York, the film centers on Camila (Agustina Muñoz,…
There exists no alternative in critiquing James Steven Sadwith’s Coming Through the Rye without first discussing the novel which both its title and story derives from. Personally speaking, I never finished reading The Catcher in the Rye. Despite the national uproar that the novel stirred by its addition to school curriculums in the United States,…
First of all, despite the title, The Birth of a Nation, this film is in no way connected to the 1915 silent classic directed by D. W. Griffith. Secondly, I was led to the “Confessions Of Nat Turner” (the real jailhouse interviews in 1831, not the 1967 William Styron novel) from an article in “The…
Crimson petals. Red rose. Scarlet sheets. Silk shirt. That’s Julieta’s torso, moving with a breath of agony as she packs her stuff. When we finally see her face, we see the evened eyes of long held pain, the kind that leaves deep-carved scars in what seems to be a life-long depression. It would not be…
Indian filmmaker Mira Nair (“Amelia,” “New York, I Love You”) presents a rather uniquely touching, emotional and winning spirit in the coming-of-age biopic/sporting drama Queen of Katwe. Nair concocts an uplifting and personalized story of hope and adversity that should be profoundly inspiring especially for young females from all walks of life that face daily…
