North Country is one of those “See it for the great performance and not much else” movies, although this one doesn’t depend on Charlize Theron to quite the degree that some of these films do. There’s a whole group of great actors supporting her, all at the top of their game: Frances McDormand (trotting out […]

Seemingly everyone has already talked about Good Night, and Good Luck. from nearly every angle imaginable. And there are a hell of a lot of angles, because as trifling as the film ends up being, it’s got a lot going on. For one thing, (and I’m going to start with the purely cinematic), it evokes […]

Dear Ms. Moore, Congratulations on adding yet another 1950’s pre-feminist housewife to your résumé with The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio. You have become quite the poet of the Eisenhower era, and yet your roles have not been slavish repeats of each other: in Far from Heaven, you played a woman who learns to express […]