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Carol
Acting is the art of the inscrutability of the self. If, as Sartre would have it, the other person is unknowable, and, as Grotowski said, “no one can know the mind of the other person,” then it is the actor’s conundrum to know the mind of the person she plays and make him knowable to…
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Her
The advance press for Under the Skin, by virtue of playing none-too-subtly upon the presence in the film of Scarlett Johansson in a state of undress, has prompted me to revisit my thoughts on Spike Jonze‘s HER, which I didn’t manage to set down when first I saw it. Johansson, of course, plays the voice…
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Ain’t Them Bodies Saints
David Lowery’s AIN’T THEM BODIES SAINTS is a strong silent type of movie, a Lone Star noir full of the unspoken feelings of decent people and the stoic acceptance of what men and women must do when faced with the consequences of their actions. There is more than a touch of nostalgia about it, of…
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Side Effects
I can’t imagine a subtler thriller than Steven Soderbergh’s SIDE EFFECTS, if, that is, it is a thriller at all. For one is never quite sure, until the whole thing is over, just what sort of movie it is – if then. It begins ominously, the camera moving in on a window behind which something…
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The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
I have no doubt that, if compelled under pain of death and force of arms to watch Meryl Streep play Maggie – or, somewhat more willingly, to see Michelle Williams portray the pitch-perfect Marilyn – that I would still, if given a vote in the Oscar race, cast mine for Rooney Mara in THE GIRL…