Philosophers throughout history have wrestled with the question of ends and means, right and wrong, and good or bad. Socrates said, “It is never right to do wrong.” Others maintain that it is right to act in such a way that it produces the most desirable consequences whether or not it follows society’s rules. For…
Well, the title of this action-thriller, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, warns you to “never go back,” but when the first movie bankrolls more than $100 million, that adage seems to go right out the proverbial window. Part of the fun (although some would say “ridiculousness”) of films like “Jack Reacher” — and the James…
Imagine if “Rear Window” were in motion, the fragmented but persistent yearning to see given (literal) added dynamism. What we glimpse through windows is always partial, but if viewed from a moving train the glimpse is even more fleeting. Then replace James Stewart in a wheelchair with Emily Blunt addled by alcohol and you have…
While The Unknown Girl, the latest film by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (“Two Days, One Night”), is suggestive of social and political issues such as immigration, unemployment, and economic imbalance, its main concern is with moral character, accountability, and spiritual redemption. Like many other films of the Dardenne Brothers, it is simple, natural, and direct,…
The exotically disturbing character-driven Dutch drama Meat (a.k.a. “Vlees”) is most definitely not your old-fashioned grandmother’s tenderloin steak of a sexual psychological thriller. Filmmakers Victor Nieuwenhuijs and Maartje Seyferth (who also is credited as a co-screenwriter along with consultant scriber Stan Lapinski) literally and figuratively leads the wide-eyed lamb to the slaughter in this twisted,…
When I first saw the trailers for When the Bough Breaks, I was excited. It looked like “Obsessed,” “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle,” or “Single White Female,” except with fewer white people (something most movies these days could benefit from). When I first sat down in the theater, I was still excited. The pacing…
What I want to say about Morgan is that it was a good idea that suffered from a poor execution. Unfortunately, I can’t say that, because, aside from a partial (which is wording it generously) explanation by way of a deus ex machina (which, contrary to what is ostensibly the belief of screenwriters at large,…
