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The Myth of Unlikability: ‘The Girl on the Train’

October 6, 2016 in Book Matters, Feminist Matters, Film Matters, Reviews

trainedFirst things first: “The Girl on the Train” is a wonderfully faithful adaptation.

In a move that seems downright brilliant now, the film rights for Paula Hawkins’s dark mystery were bought months before its early 2015 publication, at which time it went on to sell more than eleven million copies, spend months on international best-seller lists, and capture us by the throat with an unnerving, elegantly wrought tension. Yet the early purchase of those rights was not eerily prescient, for the book is cinematic in the very best of ways: At core, it is about the power and pain of the female gaze. Continue Reading →

Priggishness as Virtue: ‘A Man Called Ove’

October 5, 2016 in Age Matters, Book Matters, Film Matters, Reviews

oveIt’s a good thing that “A Man Called Ove,” writer/director Hannes Holm’s Swedish import about an aging widower who finds new reasons to live, wasn’t made in America. Next to hookers with hearts of gold, grumpy senior citizens are Hollywood’s go-to cliché; no fewer than Shirley MacLaine, Christopher Plummer, and Jack Nicholson have been felled by such two-dimensional roles. But Ove is something different – something deeper and more complex. This is partly because, well, he’s Swedish – the Swedes do tortured and deep very well; hello, Ingmar Bergman! – and partly because this character already was so richly formed in the pages of Fredrik Backman’s eponymous international bestseller.

On the topic of what makes a good adaptation, Holm has said:

My task as a director is to, like a thief, steal the story out of the book and make a film of it. So when I began shooting, after I had read it one hundred more times than anyone will ever do, I set it aside to focus on the production.

Whatever he did, it worked. Continue Reading →

Of ‘Goat’ and Toxic Masculinity

September 24, 2016 in Book Matters, Country Matters, Feminist Matters, Film Matters, Reviews

goat_movie_2016-320x320“Goat” is so far from what you’d expect from a Jonas Brother movie that calling it a Jonas Brother movie misses the boat. It is true that it stars Nick Jonas. But given that he delivers a considered, nuanced performance as someone besides himself, and given that this adaptation of Brad Land’s 2004 eponymous memoir is about as far from a pop-star vehicle as an American indie about white men can get, let’s dispense with any biases you may bring to this film. I had to, and I’m glad I did.

Ironically, this is about a fraternity, which easily could qualify it as a boys-will-be-boys lark a la “Animal House” or “Neighbors.” Directed by Andrew Neel, “Goat” is a more serious venture – one that tackles the sadism of this all-American institution with a refreshing candor.

The film begins with a blurred close-up of a mass of shirtless frat brothers bounding up and down and howling in a primal scream drowned out by a wordless, ambient Arjan Miranda composition. It is a shot that summons the ecstasy of a primitive tribe. Continue Reading →

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy