Time After Time

The Time Traveler’s Wife
Running time 107 minutes
Written by Bruce Joel Rubin
Directed by Robert Schwentke
Starring Rachel McAdams, Eric Bana, Arliss Howard, Ron Livingston

In the boring, benign and inconsequential transfer from best seller to film of The Time Traveler’s Wife, an adventurous Chicago librarian is cursed with a genetic mutation that Read More

An Ode to Writing, the Only Thing Harder Than Marriage

Arliss Howard’s Big Bad Love , from a screenplay by James Howard and Arliss Howard, based on stories by Larry Brown, gives me the opportunity to pay my belated respects to Debra Winger on the occasion of her return to the screen at the reported urging of her actor-director husband, Mr. Howard, after being voluntarily Read More

Sam Shepard on Screen: Confusing but Simpatico

Matthew Warchus’ Simpatico , from the screenplay by Mr. Warchus and David Nicholls, based on Sam Shepard’s play Simpatico , demonstrates how the avant-garde theater of 30 years ago can be reduced to the rear-guard cinema of today. From the moment we first see hobo-like Nick Nolte’s Vinnie hunched inside an outdoor telephone booth, his Read More

How Sweet Sweet and Lowdown Is

Penn Sharpens Woody Allen Winner

As the Christmas countdown begins, don’t expect much seasonal joy from the movies. As I sit through one after another of this year’s crop of dismal and depressing holiday releases about drugs, child abuse, incest, murder, violence, prison, cancer, poverty and man’s inhumanity to man, it becomes clear that this Read More