The Nation magazine recently held a "Salon" to explore the question, What Will Become of Our Culture? A rewarding evening, overall, but I'm sorry it didn't occur during the current New Moon juggernaut, as that phenomenon may answer by half any questions about our culture's future.

And I'm willing...

Somewhere inside Serious Moonlight is a provocative theme struggling to get out: the dilemma of longtime wives who've been traded by their husbands for a newer model. In contrast to the "First Wives" fantasy, where fired mates mount an improbable revenge, Serious offers a cheeky alternative: don't get even --...

Conventional wisdom in Hollywood has it that Iraq War-themed movies are fated to fizzle at the box office. Now the superb, not-to-be-missed The Messenger may deservedly break the hex. In his directorial debut, Owen Moverman, who also co-wrote the screenplay, has delivered a powerful, nuanced film about the soldiers stateside...

By now it's no news that the 2009 New York Film Festival, winding up this weekend, has taken a whipping from some critics and bloggers for the unrelenting grimness of its slate. Viewers have been treated to a parade of miseries ranging from wartime barbarism (Lebanon by Samuel Maoz), to...

Perhaps no film event, with the possible exception of Cannes, comes in for more scrutiny than the New York Film Festival. Unlike other fests, the NYFF has no agenda other than to present what its selection committee considers the best in global cinema. So the lineup inevitably invites the question,...

TIFF 2009 is the year America took it on the chin. In past fests, especially Cannes, we could usually thank Lars Von Trier for savaging the U.S. in such wicked parables as Dogville. But this time around it's mostly American filmmakers who find the amber waves have turned, well, brown....

Finally, at TIFF, a film that soars above the rest: A Single Man from Gucci-designer-turned-director Tom Ford, who gets it spectacularly right in his first feature. Giant, truncated closeups in the present paired with fluid, grey-toned flashbacks create a mood of elegiac sadness that seeps into your system. I've always...

Besides offering a smackdown of corporate culture, this year's Toronto Film Festival also offers an impressive number of films by women. A partial list includes Bright Star by Jane Campion, An Education by Lone Scherfig, Vision by Margarethe von Trotta, The Vintner's Luck by Niki Caro, and The Private Lives...

Over halfway through the fest and I"m vowing to subsist after I get home on seaweed and brown rice. There are only so many lobster mini tacos and BLT's made with Dungeness crab a critic can consume. These delicacies were on offer at a Vanity Fair party for "Tanner Hall,"...

Hey, the hard-working film journalist has gotta play, too. Unlike some colleagues who disdain parties, with their trans fatty nibbles, I actively seek them out -- provided the party starts before 11 P.M. when I'd rather be flossing. After the day's quota of 4 or 5 films I need to...

You could think of Up in the Air by Jason Reitman and The Informant by Steven Soderbergh as an amuse-bouche before the main course of Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story. The film is everything I hoped it would be: hard-hitting, instructive yet entertaining, sad and funny both -- in...

Some things at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), which kicked off September 10th, remain unchanged. As always, the fest is insanely front-loaded; you practically turn wall-eyed wanting to sprint for three competing morning films: A Serious Man from the Coen bros, much ballyhooed An Education, and Telluride triumph Up...

I've always thought of Toronto as the mellowest film festival, where the staff is unfailingly pleasant and everyone pronounces "about" "aboat." It's the Cannes and Berlin festivals that are roiled by political passions, skewed left of left. After the Cannes screening of Michael Moore's Sicko we shot to our feet...

Usually, I'll move heaven and hell to avoid spending Labor Day weekend in New York City. A shaky sense of self worth tells me I'm a loser if I'm stuck here during major holidays. The very prospect calls up high school humiliations, like getting picked last for the soft ball...

Not to be a misanthrope, but I find I'm at some pains to avoid contact with other people. To follow my drift, picture yourself among subway riders de-training at Times Square during rush hour. At such moments the greatest luxury is space.

New Yorkers zealously patrol their space. The other...

Now I know what it feels like to be a hooker in Amsterdam or Thailand - or any of those places where rows of prostitutes sit in windows or open cubicles offering their wares.

I got to experience this at the Saturday East Hampton Library Benefit. As one of roughly...

In a recent interview Nora Ephron (68) was asked if the portrait of marital delight in her new film "Julie & Julia" reflected the happiness she'd found in her own life - i.e. her twenty-two year marriage to writer Nicholas Pileggi. Ephron answered, "Living alone in misery, would I have...

At a recent posh event on the East End of Long Island it struck me that everyone I chatted with was in some sort of hurry to get away from me. As if they had a rolfing appointment or a helicopter to catch. I could see it in the darting...

I recently read a wonderful comment by Israeli novelist Amos Oz about his trade. He said, roughly, I get up in the morning, have a cup of coffee, and try to imagine what it's like to be someone else.

Trouble is, for some novelists, much comes between...

Sex is in the air, what with Governor Sanford going AWOL for a cruise with his Argentine hottie (joining the club of Republicans with conservative mouths and liberal dicks). Which brings me to Cheri, Stephen Frears's new film about courtesans of the Belle Epoque who parlayed sexual savoir faire into...