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I've read only a couple of Francois Mauriac's short stories, but naturally they serve up the same Christian-Catholic vision of life we find in his many novels. It was in a 1969 book called Voices from France that I discovered "A Christmas Tale," an absorbing Mauriac...

Seabiscuit was a famous and outstanding racehorse of yesteryear.  Seabiscuit the movie (2003) is, in my opinion, a superficial, pedestrian bore.  So horse trainer Chris Cooper thinks would-be jockey Tobey Maguire might be able to handle feisty Seabiscuit because...

I doubt that this is Charles Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby, but I can't say since I've never read the novel.  On its own, however, Douglas McGrath's film is palatable and admirably directed.  Nearly as dandy as the mature dialogue is Rachel Portman's soothing score and...

The French Amelie (2000), a monster hit in the country of its origin, is as offputting as it is enchanting.  Winsome Audrey Tautou enacts an intensely shy, peculiar do-gooder of sorts who falls hard for a solitary fellow employed at a porn shop. "Am I the only one who...

I said below that Chinatown is the 1970s' 1937.  The Australian director Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby (2013) is not 2013's 1922.  It's fantasyland's 1922, with its hyperbright visuals, formidable set design, quicksilver editing, etc.  It's a pretty pleasurable trip...

Chinatown (1974) is a genuinely great pop movie, film noir par excellence. This is the 1970s' 1937, and how interesting it is!  True, the film's ending is too grim and ugly, but it serves to remind us that the world of crime is more horrifying than noir was ever...

Directed and scripted by Terence Davies, The Deep Blue Sea (2012), based on Terence Rattigan's 1952 play, is a thematically rich enterprise about a woman who leaves her older husband for another man, only to be rejected by him after the woman's failed suicide attempt....

In early '02 I had the chance to see, here in Tulsa, Warren Leight's excellent play, Side Man (1998), whose themes include 1) the decline of jazz performance as a profession, and 2) when the stable household is naught but a ghost. Trumpet player Gene moves in with...