Two Guys in a Lighthouse: What Could Go Wrong?
The sum total of what I knew before walking into the theater to see “The Lighthouse” last night: “Two guys in a lighthouse, and things go south.” Wasn’t hard to foresee a taut psychological thriller,...
View ArticleSeventh Annual Holiday Photo Gallery
I’ve noticed something of late: In both my work and my blogging life, I pore over so many thousands of photographs through the course of a day and a year that I have sometimes begun to feel jaded and...
View ArticleTwo Popes Make for One Great Movie
Early in the current Netflix release, “The Two Popes,” I recalled the outlandish, unexpected success of “My Dinner With Andre,” Louis Malle’s 1981 film featuring two guys talking—and talking, and...
View Article“Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band”
Some people are just born for the camera and stage and storytelling. Robbie Robertson was 16 years old and a high school dropout (not because he was a ne’er-do-well stoner, but because he had a serious...
View ArticleMight Make Things Worse…But Give “Babette’s Feast” a Taste Anyway!
Let’s face it: we’ve got ourselves a full-on feast famine. No restaurant gatherings with their familiar bustle and clinkings and clatters. No coffee joints or cocktail lounges, brewpubs or burrito...
View ArticleDevotion, Betrayal, Conformity, Freedom: Netflix’s “Shtisel”
I know a little bit about Judaism in general but next to nothing about its Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox versions, about which Jews themselves have huge differences of opinion. (And part of what I know...
View ArticleNot Your Typical Reunion: Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods”
A few minutes into Spike Lee’s newest film, “Da 5 Bloods,” there is a lovely scene of old pals, African American Vietnam veterans, reuniting in the lobby of a Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) hotel...
View ArticleZombie Apocalypse Alert: Reviewing “The Social Dilemma”
Last night, at the end of my viewing “The Social Dilemma,” a documentary now streaming on Netflix that launches a howitzer at the purported addictive evils of modern social media manipulation and the...
View ArticleEighth Annual Holiday Photo Gallery
Once a year during the holiday season, we turn more into a photo rather than word blog, with the objective being nothing more than the pure pleasure of beholding striking images that tell a story,...
View ArticleJimmy Carter (Our First) Rock & Roll President
In a 2018 interview that opens the recently released documentary, “Jimmy Carter Rock & Roll President,” the now 96-year-old ex-POTUS places a vinyl record on a small turntable at his home in...
View ArticleA Dignified Dying in Love: Harry Macqueen’s “Supernova”
Hardly any of us want to leave this earth before reaching a ripe old age with plentiful living and loving in our memory storehouse and some inclination toward finally letting these noble but frayed...
View ArticleThe Literary and Cinematic Triumph of “An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge”
A well-dressed and carefully coiffed man is poised on a plank in the middle of a bridge, surrounded by Union officers, all of them silent and stoic, mostly staring straight ahead. We hear birds...
View ArticleBattling the Apocalypse Blues
On the very night that my beloved daughter was taking a red eye flight into New York City to attend a wedding this weekend, residents of that city were drowning in their basement apartments, being...
View ArticleSix Magical Sundays: Ahmir Questlove Thompson’s “Summer of Soul”
Pretty much from its first moment to last, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s “Summer of Soul,” a film chronicling six magical Sundays of stirring soul music holding forth as the “Harlem Cultural Festival”...
View ArticleAnd in the End, Love: Matthew Richardson’s Gay “Hallelujah” Dance
One of the great temptations in this Age of Vitriol is to grow so weary and exasperated that we seek release, turning willfully away from the darkness, covering our eyes and ears to all that we fear is...
View ArticleNinth Annual Holiday Photo Gallery
Nine revolutions around the sun for “Traversing” this week, which lands us on the doorstep of our Ninth Annual Holiday Photo Gallery. Today, we will wander as we please, linger where we want, and...
View ArticleHark! Get Thee to Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth” !!
For the average person born and brewed in everyday contemporary English, reading Shakespeare is no walk in the park. Despite his essentially one-name status reflecting a worldwide reputation as a...
View ArticleThanks, But No Thanks: Lisel Mueller’s “Monet Refuses the Operation”
We’re not much given to ecstasies, visions or fantastical disruptions of form, light and sound in the workaday world. Observe the social conventions, show up in the conference room at the appointed...
View ArticleWho Would Be on Your Train? A “This Is Us” Tribute
A beautiful woman—the matriarch in the sprawling, multi-generational television show “This is Us”—is sitting alone, gazing out the window of a luxurious passenger train car. What appears to be a...
View ArticleProtest and Patriotism: Kota Ezawa’s “National Anthem” Video
A row of black men clad in black uniforms is down on one knee, their arms interlocked along the sideline of what is obviously a football field. Their heads are bowed, while behind them stands a row of...
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