Steve A. Vineberg
Portrait of the artist
The satirical comedy Art School Confidential features Jerome Platz (Max Minghella) as a student at a prestigious Manhattan art college who discovers that it’s not the paradise he dreamed it ...
Revisiting 9/11
It’s natural to hesitate before committing yourself to sitting through a movie about a September 11 hijacking....
Family chaos
After her husband leaves her—apparently to run off with his secretary—Terry Wolfmeyer (Joan Allen) is left with four daughters between the ages of 15 and 22....
Royal treatment
I never meant to burn any bridges,” Neil Young sings in “One of These Days” in Jonathan Demme’s movie Neil Young: Heart of Gold....
Mr. Chappelle's neighborhood
If there is a movie that can make you feel optimistic about the possibilities of forming community in America, Dave Chappelle’s Block Party is it....
Racial divide
Classic romantic comedies follow this scenario: the hero and heroine begin as adversaries but are irresistibly drawn to each other; they overcome a series of obstacles and recognize that they belon...
Masked man
Adopting the approach of most movies made about the life of the notorious pleasure seeker, Lasse Hallström’s Casanova isn’t a biography but a free-form embellishment....
Talk to the animals
If you grew up on C. S. Lewis’s Narnia books, you won’t be disappointed in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the first in a projected series....
CC recommends: New on DVD
Christmas recommendations for Off the Map, Crash, Look at Me and more new DVDs—from film reviewers John Petrakis and Steve Vineberg. For recommendations in fiction, nonfiction, memoirs, theology and more, see the December 27 issue of the Century.
Boy soldiers
If Vietnam, with its baffling, Venus-flytrap landscape, is the perfect dramatic background for an existential drama, the Gulf War would appear to be an ideal setting for an existential comedy: so m...
Indecent exposure
Whenever Hollywood has tackled the subject of Joseph McCarthy and the work of the House Un-American Activities Committee, the results have tended to be fatuous if not downright embarrassing....
Twisted childhood
When he wrote Oliver Twist in 1837, Charles Dickens had a cause: he was protesting the harsh and unjust treatment of children in England....
Crusading spirit
Like many John Le Carré novels, The Constant Gardener boasts a gripping, intricately plotted narrative that makes it ideal for the movies....
Intrigue at the UN
Intelligently detailed, impressively mounted, absorbingly told and undeniably gripping, Sydney Pollack’s The Interpreter is a very satisfying movie—unless you’re seeking something more than ...
Hidden lives
The opening scenes establish the unforced style of Nobody Knows, a heart-rending film by Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda about four Tokyo youngsters who are abandoned by their mother....
Free spirit
Spanish director Alejandro Amenábar’s The Sea Inside is a triumph-of-the-spirit picture with an unconventional premise: the hero, Ramón Sampedro (played by Javier Bardem), a quadriplegic f...
Dark secret
In The Woodsman, Kevin Bacon plays Walter Rossworth, a pedophile who, having served a 12-year prison sentence, tries to settle down to a normal life....