Pictureland

There's a very telling fire escape exchange between Amy-Jo  (Elle Fanning) and Alain (Peter Dinklage), two of the many marginal characters who inhabit a Los Angeles hotel/apartment building in the film Low Down.  The young woman points out that the music heard is being played by her father.  "Is Joe your dad?" Alain asks.  "Yeah," responds Amy-Jo, beaming.  Alain says nothing, but the expression that appears on his already sad countenance is all too eloquent.  There's the brief suggestion of a smile, but the lingering cast is knowing, rueful.  "Poor thing," he might as well say. The 1970's Los Angeles of Low Down is pretty well circumscribed by the film's title.  One half expects Charles Bukowski to wander into the frame or be sitting in one of the dives into which we're which we're occasionally taken.  In that basin of almost indomitable brightness, what sunlight we see is indirect, often refracted through dirty windows...

Here, there and everywhere:  Daniel Day-Lewis as the weary, rambling commander in chief in Steven Spielberg's Lincoln. Lincoln lives.  Mind you, he does nothing so outlandish in Steve Spielberg's latest film as stalking vampires.  But it is to the credit of this  Lincoln that   old Honest Abe is made so credibly real and yet seems no less mythical for the exercise.  Out of the history books. Up from the Tennessee marble of that famous sitting position in his stately memorial.  Down off all those pedestals that bear statues - five in Chicago alone -  of the 16th American president around the world. This 150 minute reanimation succeeds as it does owing to a recipe of roughly one part Spielbergian mastery and several parts Daniel-Day Lewis shape shifting.  If the Irish actor is mentioned in any chat amongst friends or co-workers, perhaps bruited between drinks at a gathering, you're likely to hear some seemingly facile testament to his bri...

It wasn't cinematic, complained a friend after a screening of The Sessions .  Much as I might like to disagree with that friend, if only to make her life more difficult,  it's a fair criticism of the film written and directed by Ben Lewin.  Mr. Lewin's film, based on the story, "On Seeing a Sex Surrogate," by Mark O'Brien often plays like a television movie and not a terribly distinguished one at that. Mark O'Brien was a journalist, poet and advocate for the disabled.  The contraction of the polio virus during childhood deprived him of the use of his limbs for the remainder of his life and often confined him to an iron lung.  Moving about Berkeley on a motorized gurney, he was able to complete a bachelor's degree in English literature in 1982.  Illness prevented him from completing a masters degree, but he was still able to pursue a career in journalism.  After writing an article on sex and disabled people, he was forced to confront fears about h...

"How far are we?" "From what?" "Yesterday." That exchange between sisters Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) and Lucy (Sarah Paulson) determines that the former is one day and some 300 miles removed from the place she fled, somewhere in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York.  Martha's story to Lucy is that she has left a boyfriend who lied to her, after disappearing from contact for nearly two years.  The truth is that she has left what can safely be described as a cult, much as the effects on her psyche have come along for the ride and will continue to make themselves known during a troubled stay at the vacation home of Lucy and her architect husband, Ted (Hugh Dancy). One of many strengths of Martha Marcy May Marlene , a memorable first feature from writer/director Sean Durkin, is how un-cult-like the rural farm of Patrick (John Hawkes) and his followers is at first look made to seem, just as benevolent and accepting as it might to any new re...