Ema (2019)
[This review is part of my ongoing coverage [...]
War
Green Zone (2010)
Green Zone is one the of cleverest war pictures that I have ever seen. More than any other film about the war in Iraq – and there are a lot of them – this film uses the standards of an action picture to ask questions about a war that was suspicious from the beginning. Why […]
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983)
All through Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, I kept asking myself if this was a dream. Yeah, it seems somewhat grounded but the textures of this film don’t flow in a normal sense, scenes seem to flow in and out in a disjointed way. When the movie was over, I wasn’t sure how to feel about […]
Circle of Deceit (1982)
Watching Volker Schlondorff’s Circle of Deceit was, for me, a humbling experience. Here I am, a well-fed American living in the quiet suburb experiencing, night after night, the magic of a boring evening in my living room. The worst thing I have to worry about is a telemarketer or, possibly, not being able to find […]
Hanover Street (1979)
There was a period in the early 1980s when Harrison Ford could do no wrong. For five years between The Empire Strikes Back in 1980 and Witness in 1985, he starred in at least one hit movie after another and even ended this successful run with his only Oscar nomination. And YET in the two wintery years preceding […]
The Wild Geese (1978)
I saw The Wild Geese for the first time on a crummy old UHF station when I was a kid and even then I knew that this movie was a dumpster fire. It says a lot when an action movie is too stupid to even keep the attention of a 9-year-old, but here we are. […]
