At a tightly budgeted New York hospital, young pathologist David Coleman arrives to join the department head, Joe Pearson, who is burned-out from years of fights with hospital administration, and who is set in his ways and not up-to-date. Callow, egotistical and cutting-edge, Coleman constitutes a challenge for Pearson. Two cases in particular find them […]
Daily Archives: July 12, 2008
Gary Oldman gives a tough, pungent and surprisingly poignant performance as Clive Bissel, “Bex,” a “30-year-old kid”—this is his wife Sue’s description of him—who holds down a respectable job and is a hands-on father to his infant son, but who also belongs to a “firm” of football hooligans who trade high-level street violence with fans […]
Japan’s Hiroshi Teshigahara: I dislike his fictional films. But his documentary Antonio Gaudí, about Catalan architect and sculptor Antoni Plàcid Guillem Gaudí i Cornet, is exceedingly beautiful and adventurous. Teshigahara, assisted by color cinematographers Junichi Segawa, Ryu Segawa and Yoshikazu Yanagida, has created a nearly silent waking dream, with one “talking head” who (very late) […]
Jo Armitage is miserable in her third marriage, which has given her one child to add to her five others. Written by Harold Pinter (from Penelope Mortimer’s novel) and directed by Jack Clayton, The Pumpkin Eater is structured as Jo’s long flashback followed by a present-tense coda. Screenwriter Jake Armitage convinces Jo to abort their […]