Colin Farrell

Two lifelong friends find themselves at an impasse when one abruptly ends their relationship, with alarming consequences for both of them.Read More »

A war photographer on assignment in Kurdistan is traumatized by the death of his best friend. He is then nursed back to health by his girlfriend’s grandfather, who may or may not be a notorious war criminal from the Spanish Civil War.

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When I looked up a bit of information on Triage after watching it, I was genuinely surprised to discover that it’s not a true story. I suppose it’s the touch of an actual war correspondent that gives it that real life cache, as the author of the novel it’s based upon is a veteran in that arena. While it had a degree of Hollywood polish and shine, it felt tremendously possible, which made it easy to relate to as a viewer, despite my having spent the entirety of my own life lazy and safe and nowhere near anything approximating war.Read More »

August Strindberg felt that the entire world had gone crazy. The “norms” of class hierarchies and gender roles were starting to shatter, and he saw chaos pouring into that vacuum. His 1888 play “Miss Julie” is the prime example, although it’s evident in all of his other disturbing, great modern works. “Miss Julie” plays in almost real-time, taking place in one setting over the course of a single evening, Midsummer Night’s Eve, the one long night of the year when the classes blend together, when rich dance and drink with poor, when the boundaries have blurred. There are only three characters in the play, and it opens with Jean, an upwardly-striving valet remarking to his pal and sort-of girlfriend, the kitchen maid, that “Miss Julie is crazy!” Miss Julie is the daughter of the count in whose manor they both work.Read More »

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The film, a thoroughly enjoyable ‘odd duck’, with a typical quasi-political artistic stance on the follies of war. Highly entertaining and, at times, touching.

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WHEN Joan Littlewood’s London improvisation, “Oh! What a Lovely War,” opened on Broadway five years ago, it had a cast of 18 men and women dressed as Pierrots and Columbines. In the pit was an orchestra that managed to recreate the nostalgic musical sounds of World War I and to comment on them—sometimes simultaneously.

The show itself, described as “a musical entertainment,” was a jolly satire on the madness of the First World War, done mostly in period songs and sketches in which the Pierrots and Columbines slipped in and out of almost invisible disguises as emperors, generals, nurses, music hall stars, Tommies, wives, nurses and spectators, some appalled, some bored.Read More »

Woody Allen wrote and directed this London-set feature, a modern noir with black comic trimmings. Colin Farrell and Ewan McGregor play working class brothers who dream of better things than their respective mechanic and restaurant jobs. Hard-drinking Terry (Farrell) has a weakness for gambling, while brother Ian (McGregor) hankers for the finer things when he starts dating a very ambitious actress (Hayley Atwell). Fate deals a hand when their rich American uncle (Tom Wilkinson) slinks into London with a murderous proposition. Named for the boat the lads buy during a rare flush moment–a symbol of the morally compromising power of money and the inevitability, perhaps, of fate–CASSANDRA’S DREAM is another of Allen’s loving looks at moneyed urbanites and their penchant for living out Greek tragedy, a la MATCH POINT and CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS. This time around, it’s a bit darker, but with Farrell and McGregor in the leads, there’s plenty of star power. The lads are clearly having a ball acting under Allen’s direction, and they’re allowed to develop a charming, rapid-fire fraternal rapport that carries the film–along with Wilkinson’s old-school gravitas and Atwell’s luminous charisma. Phillip Glass composed the score.Read More »