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With few exceptions, the films that tackle historical periods and their figures best are those that attack their subjects a bit obliquely. When asked to summon a cinematic image of D-Day, for instance, most might think first of Saving Private Ryan, which merely uses Omaha Beach as the visceral prologue [...]

In 1968 at the Ford Motor Company’s factory in Dagenham, England, the roof leaks and it’s sweltering in the section that turns out seat covers for the Ford Escort. Women “man” the sewing machines and blouses are doffed to make the workday bearable. The girls are working class and full of [...]

The Social Network, directed by David “Fight Club” Fincher and written by Aaron “Sports Night” Sorkin, purports to be a slick behind-the-scenes account of the meteoric rise of everyone’s favorite social networking site, and it certainly is that: slick. My first warning: this film is about as likely to offer you the [...]

Michael Sheen returns for his third portrayal of Tony Blair (the first two being 2003’s The Deal and 2006’s The Queen) in The Special Relationship, a savvy and absorbing HBO-produced movie dramatizing the diplomatic and personal ties between Blair and President Clinton (Dennis Quaid). It can indeed be considered something of a sequel to The [...]

Among some of those who study the long stretch of Western history commonly known as classical antiquity, the period is bookended by two Greek names: Homer (not the yellow one) at the beginning and Hypatia at the end. The latter name is not a household one, which is regrettable for a number of reasons. Hypatia [...]

Italian cinema was once distinguished for its postwar “neorealism” movement, with films that were shot on location in a stripped down, almost documentary style, exemplified by titles like Rossellini’s Rome, Open City (1946) and de Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1948). Times seem to have changed, though not necessarily for the worse. With a [...]

The late Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski said of the making of his masterwork The Decalogue, “We know no more than you. But maybe it is worth investigating the unknown, if only because the very feeling of not knowing is a painful one.”
Kielowski created influential works that delved into man’s relationship [...]

As the 1960’s fade further from view, and the images of an unquestionably important decade in world history are sanitized to the point of parody, it’s imperative to remember that not everyone can look back with the benefit of rose-colored glasses. With the hippie wigs in mothballs, the music re-packaged again [...]

The latest film from Polish director Andrzej Wajda, Katyn, recalls the horrific event of the Soviet-led massacre in the Katyn forest (Circa 1940). This is a dark movie and justifiably so, for in my opinion, there is no other place in this world with a history as violent and gritty as Eastern Europe’s. Katyn is [...]

When one stops to think of exactly how many films in the last sixty-odd years have been made about World War II, it boggles the mind. An encyclopedia that listed each of them, alphabetically, would run thousands of pages, and would still need to be updated every month. Today, we will open that book and [...]