Some recent Mexican cinema has been outstanding. Let me cite three examples: María Navaro’s El Jardín del Edén (The Garden of Eden, 1994), Carlos Reygadas’s Japón (2002), Eugenio Polgovsky’s Tropic of Cancer (2004). Others, though, are too compromised to take altogether seriously. Sometimes they are bad films and lightweight ones—and partially objectionable ones. This is […]
Daily Archives: February 5, 2007
A lot is missing from Rob Marshall’s film of Chicago, and much of it can be summed up in a single word: heart. Unlike the marvelous 1942 Wild Bill Wellman comedy Roxie Hart, which is based on the same 1920s play as the Watergate-era stage musical, Maurine Dallas Watkins’s Chicago, Marshall’s chilly, frilly film gives […]
Mikio Naruse makes fine, sensible films; Mother (Okaasan, 1952) and Late Chrysanthemums (Bangiku, 1954) are lovely achievements. (Regrettably, I haven’t seen what is generally considered Naruse’s masterpiece: Floating Clouds—Ukigumo, 1955.) When a Woman Ascends the Stairs—Onna ga kaidan wo agaru toki—is the most interesting and finely realized of these three works, although (because of Kinuyo […]
One of his “Tales of the Seasons,” Eric Rohmer’s Conte d’hiver is just as wonderful as his Le beau mariage (1981), the best romantic comedy of the 1980s. Of course, in this genre one expects a lot from Rohmer, the artist who wrote and directed Claire’s Knee (1970). But one of A Tale of Winter’s […]
Dennis Grunes 