“Colette” and “The Wife” – two films about not-writing

These two films hinge on the theme of non-writing male “writers.” The wives write the novels and the men take the credit. The films begin one hundred years apart, “Colette” in rural France in 1892, “The Wife” in the United States in 1992. Both depict marriage breakdowns mainly caused by the whale-sized egos and infidelities…

“Human Flow”: a film by Ai Weiwei

For a film with ‘flow’ in its title, the only surprise in this superlative documentary is that the most powerful images are those of stillness. An old refugee woman sits incongruously on a bench in the middle of nowhere. A young man stares out at us, daring us to enter his life. The implacable sea,…

“Hatred and Pity”: James Baldwin in “I Am Not Your Negro”

Anyone interested in race and civil rights needs to see this film. It’s based on thirty pages of notes compiled by James Baldwin for a book about the most famous of the slain martyrs of the Civil Rights movement: Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Medgar Evers. The book was never written. “I Am Not Your…