Not Coming to a Theater Near You

Despite a few detours, we will remain on the Darjeeling Limited as Peter Whitman reunites with his brothers, Francis and Jack, during a journey through India in search of spirituality, atonement, and badly needed family bonding. Director Wes Anderson’s fifth feature relies on this now perhaps too familiar theme of estranged families and mutual grief, certain to please his zealous fans but not necessarily enamour the rest of us.

While Nielsen’s portrayal specifically picks up on Hamlet’s famous indecision, there is little to imply that her concealed female identity renders her weak. Lithe and slender, Nielsen’s facial features are as striking as Garbo’s, while her body language as Hamlet is as self-aware as Tilda Swinton maneuvering between sexes in the more recent Orlando.

Lee’s great achievement in Secret Sunshine, his first film after serving for two years as South Korea’s Minister of Culture and Tourism, is not only in crafting a natural, well-paced, and utterly uncontrived screenplay, but also in exercising the patience necessary to follow Shin-ae as she weathers the story’s many trials. Even as the film piles awkwardness and suffering upon its character, it never feels exploitative or emotionally manipulative, maintaining a restrained tone entirely devoid of melodrama.

Alex’s conscious decision to remain silent significantly offers up a moral ambiguity that is applicable beyond the circumstances of what has happened to one boy in Portland, Oregon. As with his recent work, it becomes clear that Van Sant has become not only an essential auteur, but more specifically an American one, concentrating on and drawing from emotional rhythms that pulse within this country.

Vacation has allowed them a little breathing room, a small escape from the complications and conundrums of their life back in New York. There is a tiny indication on Andy’s face that once back in the clutches of their life in the city, these distractions and problems will return; there is no permanent escape from them. Unless, of course, you have money.

Though our perspective is precisely aligned with Jean-Do Bauby’s functioning left eye throughout the film, our point of view is still unmistakably Schnabel’s, with its flashes of color and restive hunger for light, images, text, and beautiful women. As in Orson Welles’ aborted adaptation of Heart of Darkness, in which the camera was to tell the story entirely from Marlow’s (that is, Welles’) point of view, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly aggressively conflates the camera and the audience’s vision with Bauby’s, all under the control of Schnabel’s own particular way of seeing.

The Man from London bears Tarr’s aesthetic and tonal signatures pronouncedly—some are even lifted verbatim from his prior films. But there is an anomalous element at play, as well, one that resists the esotericism and nuance of Tarr’s previous work. To wit, in lieu of images of mammoth, biblical import, we have here a suitcase full of money.

Todd Haynes’ self-proclaimed supposition on one of music’s most prominent artists deals extensively with the projected relationships we conjure between our idols and ourselves. It’s almost an unwieldy concept, and certainly an intimidating one, but focusing on Bob Dylan, shape-shifter through more than four decades of history, reveals an occasionally reckless, extremely imaginative Haynes who seems intent on challenging both himself and his audience.