Henry V: An Evening at the Globe

Laurence Olivier. Photo: United Artists In Donald Spoto’s 1991 biography on Laurence Olivier, the actor is described as having a somewhat disastrous turn as a soldier during World War II.…

Bicycle Thieves: Desperate Acts

Enzo Staiola and Lamberto Maggiorani. Photo: Compass Film When Bicycle Thieves was released in Italy, it was far from an instant classic. Some critics considered the film too negative in…

Oslo 

In 1993, two Norwegian diplomats (Ruth Wilson, Andrew Scott), who are also married, talk Palestinian and Israeli representatives into secret negotiations. This adaptation of the play may lose some of…

Hiroshima Mon Amour: Prisoners of War

Emmanuelle Riva and Eiji Okada. Photo: Argos Films Another one of those classics that I wasn’t quite prepared for when I was studying film, but which had a much more…

Nomadland: Life of a Vandweller

Frances McDormand. Photo: Searchlight Pictures Watching this movie reminded me of a younger relative of mine. I haven’t met him for many years; he’s spent most of his time on…

Best Years of Our Lives: Coming Home

Myrna Loy and Fredric March. Photo: RKO The premiere of The Best Years of Our Lives seemed to hit America like a ton of bricks. Coming the year after the…

The Last Adventure 

Jimmy Mattsson (Göran Stangertz) abruptly ends his military service and is hired as a high-school teacher… but sleeping with one of the 16-year-old students (Ann Zacharias) causes a problem. One…

Andrei Rublev: Before the Tsars

Photo: Mosfilm Andrei Tarkovsky’s wildly ambitious second film was shown in a cinema in 1966. The audience seemed to like it, but the Soviet censors refused to approve the epic…

The Last Emperor: The Chosen One

Richard Vuu. Photo: Columbia In the late 1980s, the Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci was decidedly an international filmmaker, having made movies in France and the United States. That year he…

Hillbilly Elegy

When future Vice President J.D. Vance’s memoir was published, it was hotly debated; many believed he generalized too much about the white working class, using his personal experiences of one…