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 Edward R. Movie— Good Night, and Good Luck and bad history. By Jack Shafer. In this withering review, the editor of SLATE.com appears unimpressed by Murrow's claim to hagiographic icon, and resents Clooney's attempt to build a hero where there was none.
BROKEN FLOWERS (2005) Directed by Jim Jarmusch. Broken Flowers is awash in hip-short hand and symbol. Bill Murray is in it (late of Lost in Translation, the most overrated film of the decade, perhaps, and The Great Tannenbaums....another piece of it’s so inside it’s outside hipness). Murray seems close to falling asleep in this one, as if he simply walked off Sophie Coppola's set and onto JJ's. Murray is perfecting blankness, that is perhaps interesting --- in a culture in such abject need of projection...
THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (2005) Directed by Steven Spielberg; reviewed by John Steppling. "War of the Worlds is a film without a point. The references to 9/11 are clear enough, but probably not as important as its essential emptiness. Spielberg, in Minority Report, created a police state gone into hyper-drive..."
BATMAN BEGINS (2005) Directed by Christopher Nolan. Reviewed by John Steppling. "Like most [comic-book heroes], Batman is, essentially, a vigilante..."
CYRANO DE BERGERAC (1950) Ferrer's Cyrano is at once comic and tragic: his biting wit provides a facade for a soul in torment, for his sensitivity to beauty makes his own ugliness that much more painful. Yet there is so much fire and pride in Cyrano that never once does he beg for our pity, and endures the pain of thwarted love with the same charisma and bravery with which he does battle.
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