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"ONE lover, ah ah ah…"
From its somnambulistic opening, a slow-mo Joaquin Phoenix shedding his dry cleaning delivery along a pier and calmly plunging into Sheepshead Bay, his mind’s eye imagining a woman forlornly leaving a home, Two Lovers establishes its pervasive tone as that of fatalistic, romantic depression.  Phoenix is Leonard Kraditor, a young Brighton Beach man with emotional problems whose previous suicide attempt forced him to live in his parents’ apartment and to work for their dry cleaning business.  In quick succession, two love interests enter his life: Sandra …

Some critics of Francois Truffaut’s 1962 film, Jules et Jim have argued that the film’s central character, Catherine (brought to life by the incomparable Jeanne Moreau), is an impulsive and unpredictable force of nature. You cannot anticipate what she will do, and perhaps that’s why she is so enchanting to her male friends. Though there is something to this idea, I think there are too many patterns in her behaviour to it off as completely random. To the audience, she is not enchanting because she is impulsive, but rather because …

This year’s pseudo-foreign import — just in time for Academy Awards season! — is a Horatio Alger story (called a “fairy tale” by some), Slumdog Millionaire, whose mouthful of a title may make usage in conversation a bit of a self-conscious affair, but whose supposed “momentum” in the Oscar race is unsurprising. Slumdog Millionaire is rooted in the detritus of India, but like any good former-colonialist-turned-tourist, director Danny Boyle takes Mumbai and universalizes the struggle of its impoverished inhabitants.

When people think of the great romances of the screen, they are inevitably drawn to the classics of Old Hollywood, or else the stale and uninspired romantic blockbuster comedies of recent years. The recent cash cows seem to be trying to leach on the successes of the seemingly unaffected and painless comedies of Leo McCarey and to a lesser degree, Howard Hawks. McCarey’s films bringing a unique and unparallelled humanism, while Hawks offers a complex and thorough exploration of gender roles within relationships and society. It’s hidden under the guise …