In "The Ghost Writer," Ewan McGregor's character, simply credited as the Ghost, is reassured by someone that he cannot be killed like his predecessor was, because ghostwriters are not cats. This is little comfort to the Ghost, for he is well-aware that he (like many characters in Roman Polanski's films), is someone in conditions that do not favor him, and against characters that are not ones to advance...
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
A Fish Called Wanda
Many have noted filmmaker Errol Morris' article in the New York Times on anosognosia. Morris tells the story of David Dunning, a professor of social psychology at Cornell University, reading the newspaper to discover a bizarre story. The article was about a man named McArthur Wheeler who was arrested after attempting to rob two Pittsburgh banks. He attempted to rob the banks in daylight, but what...
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Inception
Christopher Nolan's "Inception" is a film about characters who perchance to dream. There is something deeply philosophical and fascinating about man's ability to dream, to analyze and reflect on one's own dreams, one's own nightmares, that offers women and men the ability to command such creative power that would make everyone a Dante or Shakespeare, as H.F. Hedge put it, and Nolan capitalizes on...
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Empire of the Sun
Steven Spielberg has created a legacy as the ultimate magician of the cinema. His movies have, for the most part, been bright, magical pictures, as is the case here in his 1987 film "Empire of the Sun." With this film, a coming-of-age World War II story, Spielberg indulges in familiar formulas: a lost boy without his parents, a yearning towards reconciliation, a feeling of miraculousness.
Almost...
Saturday, July 3, 2010
The Dead Zone
As the film opens, Christopher Walken, the patron saint of eccentricity in the movies, is reading out loud Poe's "The Raven" to a classroom of students. It is immediately clear that his will be an enjoyable film. David Cronenberg's "The Dead Zone," from a screenplay by Jeffrey Boam based on Stephen King's novel, is an epic picture, despite its relatively short length of about 103 minutes, and immensely...
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