Tag: Joan Ellis
Scene On Film: 'Hyde Park on Hudson'
By Joan Ellis
Hyde Park on Hudson is an unexpected pleasure. Despite the extraordinary tension between England and America in 1939, director Roger Michell focuses...
Scene On Film: 'Amour'
By Joan Ellis
Amour has arrived on a wave of superlatives. Critics, who I suspect may be quite young, have hailed it as a masterful...
Scene On Film: 'Silver Linings Playbook'
By Joan Ellis
The comically dysfunctional family in Silver Linings Playbook has no villains, and that happy circumstance leaves us free to enjoy the dysfunction.
Within...
A Fair Trial?
By Joan Ellis
The premise is stark: The fight to stop the state of Arkansas from killing an innocent man.
West of Memphis (a Sony Pictures Classics release)...
Scene On Film: 'Lincoln'
By Joan Ellis
Rarely has a slice of American history been delivered with such panache. Based on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals, Lincoln is driven...
Scene On Film: 'Skyfall'
By Joan Ellis
Bond to a beauty: “I like you better without your Beretta.” Skyfall is first-rate James Bond from beginning to end.
Writers Neal Purvis, Robert...
Scene On Film: 'The Other Son'
By Joan Ellis
It is likely that you will leave your own life behind and simply disappear into The Other Son. This is a story...
Scene On Film: 'The Flat'
By Joan Ellis
Doesn’t the richness of history lie in the footnotes? It’s there that we find the memories and stories that make our past come...
Scene On Film: 'Taken 2'
By Joan Ellis
Taken 2 opens with scenes of gentle warmth before plunging suddenly into unrelenting violence. The mayhem is entirely physical – guns, knives,...
Scene On Film: 'Argo'
By Joan Ellis
Ben Affleck has hit a thundering home run with Argo.
As director and principal actor, he has managed to avoid excess and melodrama...