As a movie star, Gerard Butler owns January like Will Smith owns Memorial Day and the Meg movies own August. That Butler’s B-grade thrillers now dominate frozen oblivion at the box office in the first weeks of the year may seem like a Pyrrhic victory, but at least he’s king. Something. And Butler’s gruff, beady-eyed, … Read more
It takes a while on “a beautiful evening, a beautiful day” to reach Baren Island, a notorious penal colony in the former Yugoslavia, where no cells were needed and armed guards counted on the sea to keep the prisoners in line. However, a prison without bars reveals itself early in writer-director Ivona Jukka’s stark and … Read more
In his second theatrical feature, Mehran Modiri, one of Iran’s most beloved satirical TV comedians, turns his hand to the thriller genre, with mixed results. He writes, directs and performs in the intense and increasingly contrived social issues thriller “6 AM,” in which a small incident escalates into a major tragedy. Although this independent feature … Read more
Arguably one of the most insufferable characters in literature is the main character in Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther – a martyr of unrequited love who ultimately commits suicide. The author quickly distanced himself from this early work, despite the fame it brought him. There is no doubt that this is … Read more