Audrey Kupferberg

Sometimes a movie holds my attention and even excites me, though I realize it’s a flawed piece. Such is the case with the recent release Six Minutes to Midnight. The movie tells a story of Britain just days before war was declared against Germany in 1939.

Driveway and All My Life are two recent films that bring real-life situations to viewers with exceptional delicacy and deep emotion.

Theater is back. That means many of us have been buying tickets for upcoming stage productions, whether on Broadway, London’s West End or local or regional productions.

This year film enthusiasts celebrated the first National Silent Film Day. It took place on September 29, and I am betting that most folks did not participate in the appreciation of this almost completely lost artform. So, in anticipation of next year’s holiday, or simply to offer some of the greatest cinematic fare ever created, here are several of the most significant and utterly beautiful silent films.

The Mole Agent, a recent documentary feature from Chilean filmmaker Maite Alberdi, is a unique film in both style and content. The story is straight forward at first.

I understand that actress Kate Winslet relishes playing what she refers to as “ballsy” women. Well, she hit paydirt when she signed to play the character of Mare Sheehan, a police detective, family matron, and well-integrated member of the fictional small city of Easttown, Pennsylvania.

Willow is an award-winning 2019 release, the most recent feature film from New York-based Macedonian artist/writer/director Milcho Manchevski. The theme of this noteworthy film is the yearnings of couples, primarily the women, for having a child.

The Wild Pear Tree is a Turkish film from Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Since the 1990s, Ceylan has been making internationally recognized films.

British actor/comedian/author Sanjeev Bhaskar is known in the U.S. mainly for his role as DI Sunny Khan (he who carries the much-discussed backpack!) in the popular ITV crime series Unforgotten. After a shake-up at the end of series 4, which recently aired on PBS and is available on DVD and for streaming, an announcement confirmed that there will be a season 5, and Sanjeev Bhaskar will continue to be starred or co-starred.

Why do so many films about academics focus on the oddball personalities? I’m not complaining about the quality of these films, simply questioning the genre of the nonconformist academic.