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The Invention of Lying: The Truth Hurts
"You have a lot to live for." The kind thing to say about The Invention of Lying, the new comedy starring Ricky Gervais — which the comedian wrote and directed with Matthew Robinson — would be that...
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A Serious Man: Schrödinger’s Jew
"Do you take advantage of the new freedoms?" Back in 2000, the Coen brothers were nominated for an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a movie based — or so its opening...
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An Education: Clever Like You
"Isn't it nice to meet a young person who wants to learn things?" The Coens aren’t the only ones concerned with serious men. Jenny, the heroine of Lone Scherfig’s An Education, is also on the lookout...
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Where the Wild Things Are: Just Regular
"I'll eat you up, I love you so." Where the Wild Things Are, directed by Spike Jonze from a screenplay by Jonze and Dave Eggers, is many things: a kids’ movie that many kids won’t like; an experimental...
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The Men Who Stare at Goats: More Than a Feeling
"I was like a blond farmboy on a distant desert planet." The Men Who Stare at Goats, a poker-faced comedy about paranormal research in the United States military, has a lot of problems. Director Grant...
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A Christmas Carol: Link by Link, and Yard by Yard
"While Scrooge remained unaltered in his outward form, the Ghost grew older, clearly older. " I’ve been dreading A Christmas Carol for a long time. Exactly how long? Thanks to the internet, I can find...
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Precious: The Protagonist’s Circumstances Are Unrelenting
"The other day I felt stupid. Fuck that day." “What do I mean,” a teacher asks a class of problem students late in Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, “when I say ‘The protagonist’s...
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A Single Man: Mannequins
“Sometimes awful things have their own kind of beauty,” a young Spanish stud (Jon Kortajarena) tells George Falconer (Colin Firth), a bereaved professor, in A Single Man. He’s talking about a lurid,...
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