A Soviet tragicomedy written wonderfully well by Aleksandr Borodyanskiy and directed by Georgi Daneliya at a fast clip, at least in its urban phase, Afonya charts the slippage into regretfulness of an “indifferent,” self-absorbed 42-year-old plumber who drinks excessively, including on the job, and pursues one woman after another, without giving much thought to them. […]
Based on the 1929 novel and play by future Pulitzer Prize-winner Martin Flavin,* The Criminal Code shows only too well its stage ancestry, like creases in a sheet of paper. Key words and lines of dialogue are often repeated, but in a different context that ironically alters their meaning. (One such line: “It’s what’s in […]
Solemn, fierce and combustible, Zero Dark Thirty, about the C.I.A.’s search to kill al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, is one heck of a thriller. It is a simple revenge plot—bin Laden masterminded the 9/11 and other terrorist attacks—crossed with the Erin Brockovich-thing where a headstrong woman prevails over all the male jerks in the universe. […]
The same year as the enormously expensive, spectacular War and Peace (Sergei Bondarchuk, 1967), another war film emerged from the U.S.S.R.—this one, modest, in black and white, and twenty times better. Gleb Panfilov’s V ogne broda net is a tremendous achievement. In 1917 civil war-torn Russia, as the Revolution approaches, young Tanya, a peasant, works […]
Dense and comprehensive, Days of Glory documents, through archival materials, partisan efforts against both Fascism and the German occupation in Italy, the liberation of northern Italy, and the trials of war criminals such as Pietro Caruso, the Fascist head of the Italian police. A film such as this is cumulative; we get a look at […]
Dennis Grunes 