based on fact

Invictus (review)

9 comments

Hoorah! Nelson Mandela united South Africans, black and white, and overcame their long-held suspicions and hatred and bigotries in the postapartheid upheaval by getting them to refocus their hate on Australia and New Zealand. Or at least on their stupid rugby players. Hoorah!

The Blind Side (review)

42 comments

‘Is this some sort of white guilt thing?’ one of Sandra Bullock’s ladies-who-lunch friends asks her Tennessee socialite after she informally adopts a homeless black teen…

Coco Before Chanel (review)

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Audrey Tautou looks *amazing,* surrounded by women who flounce around like fluffy Edwardian fruit cups. But moments like that — in which you really feel the impact of Chanel’s legacy — are, *tant pis,* all too rare…

Amelia (review)

7 comments

This *Amelia* is a quiet, reflective film, and Earhart is not an icon or a symbol: she’s a human being, and the fantasy comes in how the film depicts her life and her achievements and everything about her not as something a *woman* did but something a *person* did.

The Damned United (review)

5 comments

I might not know from football, I do know people, and *The Damned United* is an absolutely thrilling story, one both hilarious and poignant, about a man who is downright classical in his flaws…

An Education movie review: A-plus

69 comments

Someone once said that perfect movies are boring and only flawed movies intriguing, and then along comes a movie like An Education, about which the number of things that are absolutely perfect is impossible to measure… and it’s thrilling and captivating anyway.