A more scattershot, multiple-personality comedy than Hamlet 2 you’ll rarely see, and after some thought I think I’ve figured out the chief reason why: it quickly establishes in bold, broad strokes that its main character is an idiotic fuck-up, and then proceeds to tell a whole story that hinges on our hope that he’ll make […]

The British, they do know how to romp. That’s all The History Boys is, really: a romp, a frolic, just a bit of fun to fill the time between here and there. There’s a healthy bit about growing up, and adolescent sexuality, and a great huge pile about the changing face of teaching, but it’s […]

An inevitable problem with seeing a movie weeks after it opened, and then only because of the many good reviews I’ve read, is having nothing original to say about it. This I already knew. Such is my experience with Half Nelson, the Sundance-beloved drama about an inner city history teacher with a crack addiction and […]

My continuing quest to see everything now leads me to Take the Lead, a film whose considerable charms would be a great deal easier to appreciate if they weren’t bogged down in grotesque and inconsistent libertarian propaganda. …sorry, wrong film. One of the most consistent genres in cinema history is the “noble liberal teacher who […]