Articles by John Petrakis

Film

Love lost

Nov 29, 2005 reviewed by John Petrakis
In the movies, romances fail for reasons of class, money, scandal, race, death, noble sacrifice or—more recently—fear of commitment. Shopgirl may be the first Hollywood love story in a long time to revolve around the inability to love.
Film

Celebrity reporter

Nov 01, 2005 reviewed by John Petrakis
Based on Gerald Clarke’s exhaustive biography, Bennett Miller’s Capote covers the six years that Truman Capote spent working on In Cold Blood. The film begins at a noisy New York cocktail party where Capote is the center of attention, regaling his friends with humorous anecdotes and observations.
Film

Proof of love

Oct 04, 2005 reviewed by John Petrakis
Great plays tend to make mediocre movies. The elements that make a play successful don’t always provide the plot and visuals that are the keys to memorable cinema. Complicating matters further is the fact that theater is, by design, dialogue-heavy. The screenwriter who plans to cram long monologues or extended dialogues into the script is doomed.
Film

Family fallout

Sep 06, 2005 reviewed by John Petrakis
For old-school cinephiles who bemoan the demise of the classical European art film, rife with misplaced passion and rampant guilt, a familiar name has come to the rescue.
Film

Nutty and Chewy

Aug 09, 2005 reviewed by John Petrakis
"Well, well, well, two naughty little children gone.
Film

Sensual morality play

Jul 12, 2005 reviewed by John Petrakis
Latino cinema has a long tradition of tweaking the Catholic Church for its supposed hypocrisy, involvement in secular politics and manhandling of sexual issues. Thirty-nine-year-old Argentine filmmaker Lucrecia Martel now joins in with her own rants on the rigidity and absoluteness of Catholic doctrine, especially as it pertains to children.
Film

The Dark Knight

Jul 12, 2005 reviewed by John Petrakis
As a boy, I was a slave to DC Comics. When the new issues of Superman, Batman, Action, Adventure and World’s Finest hit the stands, I was off to the drugstore to purchase and devour a fistful of 12-cent comics. It was a ritual that continued for many years, until I finally moved on to sports biographies.
Film

Space opera finale

Jun 14, 2005 reviewed by John Petrakis
In creating Revenge of the Sith, the third (chronologically) and final (cinematically) installment in the six-film Star Wars saga, George Lucas confronted a writing challenge unprecedented in movie history.
Film

Out of Eden

May 17, 2005 reviewed by John Petrakis
Love, lust, forgiveness, remorse, tolerance, sin, violence and death—these are just some of the themes engaged in The ,Ballad of Jack and Rose. It’s the third feature film by writer-director Rebecca Miller (Personal Velocity, Angela), a former painter and actress who is the daughter of the late playwright Arthur Miller.
Film

Bunkered down

Apr 19, 2005 reviewed by John Petrakis
Guilt and remorse over Nazi atrocities and the horrors of World War II have consumed Germany for decades, influencing politics, culture and the arts, including cinema. The rise of the German New Wave of filmmakers in the 1970s (led by Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders and Rainer Fassbinder) was fueled in part by a desire to exorcise Germany’s dark past.
Film

Trusting and believing

Mar 22, 2005 reviewed by John Petrakis
A pair of British imports explores faith of different kinds. Millions, directed by Danny Boyle from a script by Frank Cottrell Boyce, is by far the slicker of the two. It is chock-full of glitzy visual effects, something to be expected from the man who directed the kinetic drug film Trainspotting.
Film

Kids with cameras

Feb 22, 2005 reviewed by John Petrakis
Zana Briski is a New York photojournalist who went to India in 1995 to document the plight of women in a patriarchal society. In 1998 she encountered the prostitutes working in the red light district of Calcutta. She moved in with them and got to know their routines.
Film

Room at the inn

Jan 25, 2005 reviewed by John Petrakis
In 1994 Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager in Kigali, Rwanda, risked his life to help save more than 1,200 men, women and children from the ethnic cleansing that wiped out nearly 1 million Rwandans in 100 days. Through this true story Hotel Rwanda tells the story of the genocide in Rwanda.
Film

Standard deviation

Dec 28, 2004 reviewed by John Petrakis
When Alfred Charles Kinsey was hired as an assistant professor of zoology at Indiana University in 1920, he began a two-decade study of the gall wasp, collecting over 1 million samples. He loved the gall wasp, he said, because each one was totally different from the others.
Film

Make believe

Nov 30, 2004 reviewed by John Petrakis
Scottish writer James Matthew Barrie (1860-1937) was a great success during his lifetime, with 40 plays, six novels and numerous works of nonfiction to his name. But he is remembered today for one play only: Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, first performed 100 years ago this December.
Film

Travels with Che

Nov 02, 2004 reviewed by John Petrakis
Road movies provide screenwriters with a built-in structure. It allows them, in the immortal words of the Queen of Hearts, to “begin at the beginning, go on until you reach the end, and then stop!” But what happens when an ending isn’t really the end? Or when the “real” end sends us down a different road altogether?
Film

One of the boys

Oct 05, 2004 reviewed by John Petrakis
Jacob Aaron Estes’s debut feature is being marketed as a Columbine-era fable about a bully who gets his comeuppance. But the film works on levels far more precipitous and challenging.
Film

Unsentimental journey

Sep 07, 2004 reviewed by John Petrakis
Seventeen-year-old Maria is a pretty Colombian girl frustrated with life in her small town. She has a monotonous job at a rose plantation; family responsibilities that eat up her paycheck; and a boyfriend who is content drinking with the guys and working as a mechanic.
Film

Recurring nightmare

Aug 10, 2004 reviewed by John Petrakis
The news that director Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs) was making a new version of the 1962 cold-war thriller The Manchurian Candidate provoked howls of protest from purists who didn’t see the need for an updated version of that memorable film (especially since it was out of circulation for 25 years—a political fallout of the Kennedy assassination).
Film

The heat is on

Jul 13, 2004 reviewed by John Petrakis
Since bursting onto the national scene in 1989 with his celebrated documentary Roger & Me, Michael Moore has gone from being that goofy overweight filmmaker in tennis shoes and a baseball cap to being the resolute voice of the common American. His battles with the powers-that-be have cast him as a modern-day Frank Capra.