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Directed by Marielle Heller, The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015) is morally detached from its depiction of sexual indulgence, and, in the end, mildly stupid.  An unconvincing paean to self-esteem, in fact. No sale.  

I like the fact that, as at least one critic has indicated, it is not the ordinary things people do in Muriel Spark's fiction that ultimately matter.  Rather it is their sins and, implicitly, their standing in the cosmos that matter, although this is never examined...

I just barely know what the FX network is, but I know The Americans is on it, and now because it's come out on DVD I can contentedly watch Season 3.  Last night I saw the first two episodes, and learned how to stuff a naked corpse into a suitcase.  (Ugh!)  Further, it...

Re The Insider (1999): First, it is too long.  Second, a large number of closeups in a movie lasting 158 minutes gets enervating.  Third, it is somewhat pretentious.  Fourth, Lowell Bergman, the Al Pacino character, is two-dimensional.  Fifth . . . oh, never mind....

To a child, a favorite toy acquires a life of its own, with the child as its master.  In the 34-minute French movie, Albert Lamorisse's The Red Balloon (1956), it is for a child (Pascal Lamorisse) that a balloon acquires a life of its own, magically. This simple short...

With multiple plot strands working in its favor, the most recent Jane the Virgin (last night) was thoroughly palatable. The cops/criminals strand was intense and surprising, and the not-very-Catholic Jane now wants to have sex.  Temporarily.  She understandably thinks...

Thomas Vinterberg's film of the Hardy novel, Far from the Madding Crowd (2015), is about the occurrence of discovery---discovery of  another's romantic interest, of responsibility, of sexual pleasure, of heartache.  The first hour and the last few moments, the coda,...

Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott, both actors, scored a lot of points in directing the 1996 Big Night, for which they chose an easygoing but not too slow pace, dabs of effective slow mo, wise medium shots of people, and Felliniesque dramatics.  They both act in the...

Occasionally dopey (groan! those women in the cat costumes), the 1934 Cleopatra is nevertheless Cecil B. DeMille's not-bad historical drama about Cleo, Mark Antony and others. Because she never truly exhibits the Egyptian queen's ambitiousness (and is a...