The straightforward matter-of-factness is right there in the title: A Man Escaped (Criterion, $31.86 Blu-ray, $23.99 DVD). It’s in the past tense, so you know before starting Robert Bresson’s 1956 prison-break masterpiece – based on the memoirs of Andre Devigny, a French POW during World War II – that the protagonist will succeed. For Bresson, suspense has no appeal; it’s all … [Read more...]
Less isn’t more as Norton asks ‘Now WHAT?’
Two strangers in a museum find themselves sharing the same opinion about that thing facing them. They call it “thing” because they don't know what it is. And the brave one's loud comment (“What the heck is this?”) is the shy one's relief. Such a flow of communication might be common at the Now WHAT? show, which opened recently at the Norton Museum in West Palm Beach in an … [Read more...]
‘Brothers’ a shattering story of the cost of war
The release date couldn’t be more fortuitous. Hitting theaters nationwide the week Barack Obama announced his plans to send an additional 34,000 troops to secure Afghanistan, Jim Sheridan’s family drama Brothers is at once timely and transcendent. An explosive and sobering reminder of the emotional and mental cost of war at home and abroad – and particularly this war, in its … [Read more...]