Now and Then
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Now and Then: The Mad-As-Hell Women of Mad Men
History is not the most useful dramatic backdrop for a television show. It is, really, just one big spoiler alert: we already know what happens. But "Mad Men" is canny enough to twist this problem to its advantage, letting the past knock on the door in the middle of the night.
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Now and Then: In Two Foer Adaptations, Surprises and Disappointments Abound
I'll admit it came as a shock, near the end of "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close," to find myself crying. As it turns out, movies can still surprise us, and I don't just mean that they defy the expectations set by Rotten Tomatoes. I mean they can, in the midst of things, find what they've been miss...
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Now and Then: How to Ruin a Marriage Without Really Trying, from 'Carnage' to 'Virginia Woolf'
A quick tip for anyone interested in making a film about class resentment in a recession: as the Soviet filmmakers proved, it usually helps if you're juxtaposing two distinct points of view. Roman Polanski's film "Carnage," about a quartet of outraged — and outrageous — New Yorkers, doesn't quite fo...
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Now and Then: Katharine Hepburn, Consummate Comedienne
Early in "The Philadelphia Story," Cary Grant's society playboy arrives for his ex-wife's wedding. When he comes across her in the drawing room, they take up a little two-step. He advances, she retreats; he thrusts, she parries. If you want to understand the genius of Katharine Hepburn, this is the ...
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Now and Then: All About Almodóvar
The problem with Pedro Almodóvar's "The Skin I Live In" is one of expectation. What we have come to want from him are hues of tomato, fire engine, blood. What he gives us are shades of cream, eggshell, off-white.
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Now and Then: From 'Ferris' to 'Sleepover,' Teens, and Times, Have Changed
"The Myth of the American Sleepover," David Robert Mitchell's independent film about a group of suburban Detroit teens messing around, and messing up, on a single night near the end of summer, is a quiet reminder of the power, and price, of looking.
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Now and Then: Gay Biopics 'J. Edgar' and 'Milk' Reveal How History Is Made
"We must never forget our history," growls aging anti-Communist lion J. Edgar Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio) near the end of "J. Edgar." "We must never lower our guard." Here, Janus-like in their fusion and opposition, lay the film's two faces: To narrate the past and hopefully to redeem it.
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Now and Then: Dunham's 'Tiny Furniture' Bodes Well for HBO's 'Girls'
Midway through "Tiny Furniture," writer-director-star Lena Dunham launches into a monologue — a tantrum, really — that smacks of a tin ear. The plaintive wails seem ginned up for "dramatic effect," though the real effect is to undercut the film's poignant understanding of how scary "coming-of-age" s...
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Now and Then: 'The Getaway' and 'Drive' — Heist Films with Arthouse Roots
To call "The Getaway" (1972) a heist flick is like calling "Jaws" a film about fish: technically speaking you'd be right, but you'd also be missing the point entirely. Sam Peckinpah's Steve McQueen/Ali MacGraw vehicle is a tough, mean, innovative picture in which "getting away" has to do with a lot...
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Now and Then: Making Sense of Miranda July
I am not a Miranda July hater. "Me and You and Everyone We Know" (2005) felt almost painfully fresh to me — I'd never seen anything like it. It had, in offbeat colors and patterns, a preternatural understanding that love and sex vibrate on wavelengths we can't quite see or hear, only sense.
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