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Anselm
It was Wim Wenders not Anselm Kiefer that drew me to watch the documentary Anselm. I knew next to nothing about his work and, if I had known, probably wouldn’t have been that big a fan. But Wenders’ uses the camera to get inside Anselm’s work and make you experience it. Even the paintings seem,…
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The Three Body Problem
My (fairly stupid) rule of thumb when it comes to a TV miniseries is that I will only watch it if I have read and enjoyed the book it’s based on. Three Body Problem qualifies, though it’s probably the only trilogy I’ve read where the first book is my least favorite. Still, this is a…
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Harakiri
A meditation on honor that captures its essence and its danger. Though wrapped in the form of a vengeance movie, the suspense is genuine and you never quite know exactly how it’s going to come out. Nor does the ending disappoint – though in some respects it definitely DOES disappoint. No spoilers, but…justice? Forget it,…
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The Incomparable Mr. Buckley
In a world of consumer-packaged ideology, we have come to expect our political thinkers to be stupid. Sometimes, as with so many of the “thinkers” of the new right, they are rabidly stupid: dogs in heat screwing ideas. Often, particularly on the left, they are profoundly stupid: obscuring their Saharan cranial emptiness with a word-salad…
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How to Live: Montaigne and the Role of Exemplars
Sarah Bakewell’s How To Live or A Life of Montaigne may have a Frankenstein title, but the title perfectly represents what the book is trying to do. It is very much a biography of Montaigne. But it’s a biography organized around a series of life lessons drawn from his Essays and his life. Combining biography and practical philosophy makes…
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Enough Said
James Gandolfini’s work in Sopranos was so powerful and defining that it’s an effort to not think he’s Tony Soprano whenever you see him on screen. But his final performance in Enough Said is modest, touching, and utterly without edges. He’s a surprisingly strong romcom lead, and wonderfully paired here with Julia Louis-Dreyfus. As Seinfeld…
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Comfort Books
When you’re depressed or feeling stressed, there’s no better cure than friends. But when you’re sick, there isn’t much friends can do for you. You’re at home, feeling bad. If you’re too sick to work but not quite at the vegetative stage (like I was for a good chunk of February), you tend to go looking…
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Office Space
A late ’90s classic that captures what office work is really like. That’s not something Hollywood does well. This isn’t the ham-fisted satire of Gerwig’s Mattel scenes (what a contrast from Ladybird). This is white-collar working life written by someone who knows something about it. “Write what you know,” turns out be pretty good advice.…
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The World Is Spinning
As of a week ago, Wednesday, the world was spinning. I do not mean literally spinning — though of course that’s true regardless of the date. Nor do I mean this metaphorically as in picking some political or cultural event and suggesting that it is somehow new and world-turning. I give it as a statement…
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Brooklyn
A remarkably faithful adaptation of Colm Toibin’s excellent novel. It has most of the strengths of the book (courtesy of a fine and well-cast group of actors) and also its biggest weakness. Because what Eilis does when she returns to Ireland didn’t feel either right or true when I read the book and still feels…
We are not rational animals, we are animals that must work to be rational
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