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CRITIC AT LARGE RAND RICHARDS COOPER Emotional Intelligence An appreciation of Gene Hackman I learned of Gene Hackman’s recent death on the New York Times website, which ran a 1973 photo of...

Criticizing the critics (February 2025)

RAND RICHARDS COOPER The Shredder’s Trade The pleasures and perils of criticism Years ago I got an email from a friend who knew a fiction writer I’d reviewed in the New York Times. It...

â€˜Civil Warâ€™ (June 2024)

RAND RICHARDS COOPER Bangs and Whimpers Alex Garland’s ‘Civil War’ Ours is a boom time for anxiety. Still reeling from a global pandemic, we now face the advent of avian flu. The...

'Oppenheimer' (September 2023)

FILM RAND RICHARDS COOPER History Channel Mode Christopher Nolan’s ‘Oppenheimer’ Is anyone else surprised by the popularity of Oppenheimer? The film has triggered a mammoth cultural...

â€˜TÃ¡râ€™ (December 2022)

RAND RICHARDS COOPER Careening Toward Disaster ‘Tár’ Few directors have whetted anticipation more keenly, or for longer, than Todd Field, who burst onto the scene in 2001 with In the...

The steadfast gaze (September 2022)

SHORT TAKES RAND RICHARDS COOPER The Steadfast Gaze In Poland, unanswered questions about the war in Ukraine In the main square of Krakow, packed with May Day tourists, a solitary...

The films of Asghar Farhadi (July 2022)

FILM RAND RICHARDS COOPER Suspense in Real Life The films of Asghar Farhadi The unsettling start of Asghar Farhadi’s 2016 film, The Salesman, shows the residents of a Tehran apartment...

"Wachapreague" (April 2022)

Wachapreague Rand Richards Cooper Part II The room next to Langen’s had been his brother-in-law’s man-cave. Langen had helped Liddie clean it out, leaving only books, framed nature photos Jason...

â€œWachapreagueâ€ (March 2022)

Wachapreague Rand Richards Cooper What Langen noticed most, arriving in his sister’s village, was the emptiness. “Little City by the Sea,” a peeling sign announced, yet the place was home to just...

'The Power of the Dog' (February 2022)

RAND RICHARDS COOPER Gorgeous to a Fault ‘The Power of the Dog’ In 1996, reviewing Jane Campion’s The Portrait of a Lady, critic David Ansen called it “the kind of failure only a very gifted...

The mourning after (March 2021)

SHORT TAKES RAND RICHARDS COOPER The Mourning After Trump's style will have lasting effects. He is finally gone. The Fool departs, the Reign of Error closes. The feeling in our household, as in...

The Open Heart Club (February 2021)

BOOKS THE OPEN HEART CLUB A Story about Birth and Death and Cardiac Surgery GABRIEL BROWNSTEIN PublicAffairs $28 |368 pp. 'The Miracle of Everything' RAND RICHARDS COOPER Was Gabriel...

'Les Rose' (January 2021)

SCREEN RAND RICHARDS COOPER Hurricane Quebecois 'Les Rose' Fifty years ago, Quebec was in the throes of a secessionist movement, its French-speaking majority venting long-accumulated resentment...

Savers and unloaders (October 2020)

ARTICLE Savers and Unloaders Rand Richards Cooper On getting your things in order Like many Americans fortunate enough to remain healthy while working and attending school remotely, the Cooper...

Jonathan Stevenson (June 2020)

INTERVIEW An interview with Jonathan Stevenson The Foreign Policy Process Is ‘Dysfunctional’ Rand Richards Cooper Jonathan Stevenson is a senior fellow at the International Institute for...

â€˜Luce,â€™ â€˜Uncut Gems,â€™ â€˜Transitâ€™ (March 2020)

SCREEN RAND RICHARDS COOPER Oscar Oversights 'Luce,' ‘Uncut Gems,' 'Transit' Apost-Oscar cleanup yields a trio of films blithely swept aside by the Academy—all streamable, and all worth...

Deepening the Riddle (February 2020)

SCREEN RAND RICHARDS COOPER Deepening the Riddle ‘A Hidden Life’ s there a contemporary director who can match Terrence Malick for enigmatic genius? A summa cum laude philosophy...

â€˜The Irishmanâ€™ (December 2019)

SCREEN RAND RICHARDS COOPER The Life You Lead ‘The Irishman' Three years ago in these pages I interviewed Martin Scorsese about his adaptation of the Shusaku Endo novel Silence. At the end of...

â€˜Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voiceâ€™ & â€˜Judyâ€™ (November 2019)

SCREEN RAND RICHARDS COOPER Different Drums 'Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice' & 'Judy' Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice documents the career of a singer who burst onto the popular...

'Mike Wallace is Here' (October 2019)

SCREEN RAND RICHARDS COOPER From Muckraking to Clickbait ‘Mike Wallace Is Here' Could there be a more timely documentary about journalism, in our era of fake news, warring cable-news shows, and...

'Echo in the Canyon' & 'Yesterday' (September 2019)

RAND RICHARDS COOPER What's That Sound? 'Echo in the Canyon' & 'Yesterday' E cho in the Canyon refers to a hilly Los Angeles neighborhood whose winding roads link Sunset Boulevard to the San...

More than Cricket (August 2019)

LAST WORD More than Cricket Rand Richards Cooper The best book I read last year was written in 1963—not exactly au courant. Still, few works better withstand the test of time than Beyond a...

When They See Us (July 2019)

Rand Richards Cooper The Exonerated Five 'WHEN THEY SEE US' Americans fifty and up will recall the notorious 1989 case of five teenagers of color accused of brutalizing a white woman jogging in...

Rafiki (June 2019)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper Hope's High Stakes 'RAFIKI' Rafiki marks the international debut of the thirty-nine-year-old writer-director Wanuri Kahiu. The first Kenyan feature ever officially...

Us & The Brink (May 2019)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper Creepy and Creepier 'US' & 'THE BRINK' Jordan Peele's 2017 smash debut, Get Out, was the rare film that manages to be absurd, hilarious, and deadly serious all at once....

Never Look Away (March 2019)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper Meaning & Mirage 'NEVER LOOK AWAY' It would be hard to imagine a more auspicious directorial debut than The Lives of Others, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's 2006...

Roma (February 2019)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper Ask Cleo 'ROMA' With just eight films made over a thirty-year career, the Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron has won ecstatic accolades from critics. (A. O. Scott:...

Shoplifters (February 2019)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper Getting Away with It 'SHOPLIFTERS' The fifty-six-year-old Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda began his career in TV documentaries, and his movies possess a factual...

Wildlife & Can You Ever Forgive Me? (December 2018)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper Going Small 'WILDLIFE' & 'CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME?' It has been a big year for the movies, and the record-breaking domestic gate receipts, which have hit $12 billion,...

Look Forward in Anger (November 2018)

Rand Richards Cooper Look Forward in Anger BRETT KAVANAUGH & THE NEW SUPREME COURT By October 4 the FBI mini-probe into charges against Brett Kavanaugh was complete, leaving two of the three...

The Wife & A Star Is Born (November 2018)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper Makers & Takers 'THE WIFE' & 'A STAR IS BORN' In a recent New Yorker review of three new books about women's anger, Casey Cep glosses the laundry list of slights,...

BlacKkKlansman (October 2018)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper Spike Lee's American Seminar 'BLACKKKLANSMAN' While prepping for an NPR roundtable discussion on Spike Lee's BlacKkKlans-man, I realized how out of touch I'd gotten...

John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection (October 2018)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper The Sublimity of the Super-Brat 'JOHN MCENROE: IN THE REALM OF PERFECTION' Manners. Ah, manners. Where did they go? Our American purchase on this inflamed topic is...

Eighth Grade and Won't You Be My Neighbor? (September 2018)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper Changes in the Neighborhood 'EIGHTH GRADE' AND 'WON'T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR?' Two recent films speak to the abiding needs, and the evolving predicaments, of children....

First Reformed (July 2018)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper God's Lonely Man 'FIRST REFORMED' Delving into the spiritual crisis of a country parson, First Reformed strives to chart some shape of redemption on a grid of grief,...

Unearthing (July 2018)

SHORT STORY Unearthing Rand Richards Cooper On his seventy-seventh birthday, Dan Slattery drove to Hartford to spend the day with his son. The get-together was a trip down memory lane: Hartford...

Tully & Lean on Pete (June 2018)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper Ambivalence & Oblivion 'TULLY' & 'LEAN ON PETE' Ascene early in Jason Reitman's Tully depicts one of those all-too-familiar situations when an overburdened mom...

A Quiet Place (May 2018)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper Silent & Deadly 'A QUIET PLACE' Scary movies are profoundly polarizing. You either enjoy being made to feel unsafe in the world for two hours, or you abhor it and...

Black Panther (March 2018)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper Making Wakanda Great Again 'BLACK PANTHER' Some movies get discussed more for their significance than for their quality. A reviewer can feel churlish about this—about...

The Shape of Water (February 2018)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper Monsters, Politics, Romance 'THE SHAPE OF WATER' The Spanish director Guillermo del Toro is a one-of-a-kind talent among contemporary filmmakers. Skipping nimbly among...

The Last Jedi (January 2018)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper Escapist Adventure, Timely Irreverence 'THE LAST JEDI' On D ecember 19—opening night—I saw The Last Jedi, Episode VIII of the Star Wars saga. As both a cultural and...

Novitiate (December 2017)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper Not So Great Escape 'NOVITIATE' In either a film or a novel, the challenge of capturing the past is to re-create, and allow us to inhabit, outlooks, practices, and...

Blade Runner 2049 & Ex Libris (November 2017)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper Gloom- Struck 'BLADE RUNNER 2049' & 'EX LIBRIS' It’s been thirty-five years since Ridley Scott made Blade Runner, his tale of an android-killing bounty hunter set in...

Logan Lucky (October 2017)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper A Hillbilly Heist 'LOGAN LUCKY' What a monster of versatility Steven Soderbergh is! Can the person behind the coolly ironic sex, lies and videotape (1989) really also...

Obit & Jeremiah Tower (July 2017)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper The Fundamentals 'OBIT' & 'JEREMIAH TOWER' These two documentaries are a bit off the beaten path, including the path to the movie theater, so you'll have to stream them...

La La Land & Silence (January 2017)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper Song and Solitude 'LA LA LAND' & 'SILENCE' La La Land presents itself as a bold atavism, both paying tribute to, and reviving, the glittery, glamoury musicals of the...

Trials of Faith (January 2017)

INTERVIEW Trials of Faith Martin Scorsese & Silence Rand Richards Cooper On December 23, 2016, Paramount released Silence, Martin Scorsese's long-awaited film about the persecution of Christians...

Denial (December 2016)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper Sighs, Tears, and Jogging 'DENIAL' Is there any movie setting more familiar to Americans than the courtroom? When you stop to think how many of them you've racked up...

Hell or High Water (October 2016)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper Lone Star Robin Hoods 'HELL OR HIGH WATER' Is it really possible I've never reviewed a western? A check down the list of roughly two hundred movies discussed in these...

Weiner (July 2016)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper Thriftless Ambition 'WEINER' During presidential campaigns I'm often struck by how hard and how well candidates labor to claim our loyalties—and get our votes—by...

Eye in the Sky (May 2016)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper Grim Reaper 'EYE IN THE SKY' The taut military drama Eye in the Sky stars Helen Mirren as Colonel Katherine Powell, a hardnosed British officer overseeing, from a...

Germany, Eurabia & the End of Europe (May 2016)

SHORT TAKE Rand Richards Cooper Germany, Eurabia & the End of Europe THE RISE OF THE IDENTITARIAN RIGHT Bear with me as I shift our gaze from the drama of our politics to the even more fractious...

Where To Invade Next (March 2016)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper Moore’s Utopia 'WHERE TO INVADE NEXT' Last year at a Republican campaign event, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani bluntly charged that President Obama does not...

A 2015 Movie Roundup (January 2016)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper The Pleasures & Perils of Hindsight A 2015 MOVIE ROUNDUP The end of a year conduces to retrospection—in our lives, and in cinema too. All six movies I watched between...

Burdens & Blessings (December 2015)

SHORT TAKE Rand Richards Cooper Burdens & Blessings CARING FOR AGING PARENTS I spent a weekend in Vermont with three old college friends, an annual fall ritual. We’re in our mid-fifties, and...

Purity (October 2015)

Rand Richards Cooper The Blame Fame Game Purity Jonathan Franzen Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $28, 576 pp Jonathan Franzen is America's foremost practitioner of the Big Novel— that doorstop-sized...

Phoenix (October 2015)

Rand Richards Cooper Atrocity's Daily M.O. 'PHOENIX' There can be no poetry after Auschwitz, philosopher and social theorist Theodor Adorno famously asserted. Yet there are movies, and plenty of...

The End of the Tour (September 2015)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper Narrative Control 'THE END OF THE TOUR' In recent years, the troubled writer has been a theme in movies as disparate as Wonder Boys, Adaptation, The Door in the Floor,...

Judgment In Neoprene (September 2015)

Rand Richards Cooper Judgment in Neoprene POOLSiDE PLURALISM My wife and daughter and I recently spent two days at the Jersey shore. One afternoon the sun was fiery, the motel pool crowded. One...

Collapse & Rescue (July 2015)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper Collapse & Rescue 'SAN ANDREAS' & 'LOVE AND MERCY' Iam mesmerized by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, the ex-professional wrestler cum action-film hero. Did you know he is 6'...

Flick, Flick (June 2015)

THE LAST WORD Flick, Flick Rand Richards Cooper Arecent article in the Washington Post profiled a photographer with the pleasingly gangsterish name of Babycakes Romero, who photographed couples...

It Follows & '71 (May 2015)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper Dark Thrills 'IT FOLLOWS' & ''71' Does any cinematic product deliver as much bang for the buck as the indie horror film? The Blair Witch Project (1999) was shot on a...

American Reckoning (April 2015)

BOOKS Rand Richards Cooper Unexceptional American Reckoning The Vietnam War and Our National Identity Christian G. Appy Viking Press, $28.95, 382 pp. Rudy Giuliani went on an Obama-bashing...

The Babadook (January 2015)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper Uncanny 'THE BABADOOK' My pleasure in being scared silly by movies dates to age eight, when I shrieked in my seat as a murderous Alan Arkin, kitchen knife flashing,...

Life & death at the border The Charms of the Conqueror (January 2015)

The Charms of the Conqueror How John Updike Made It Look Easy Rand Richards Cooper Imagine a writer who would be the perfect antithesis to today’s literary culture, where confessional narratives...

Listen Up Philip (December 2014)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper Insufferable 'LISTEN UP PHILIP' Sometimes rave reviews of dreadful movies seem like a conspiracy to lure you into the theater and force you to endure the same misery...

The Trip to Italy Land Ho! (October 2014)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper Roads to Nowhere 'THE TRIP TO ITALY' & 'LAND HO!' As Hollywood knows perhaps all too well, road movies and buddy movies churn out powerful cinematic pheromones long...

Ida (July 2014)

SCREEN Rand Richards Cooper Out of Great Silence 'IDA' Austere, quiet, its gravity tempered by bursts of harsh irreverence, Ida grabs your imagination and won't let go. Set in the dreary...

Give It to Us Straight, Doc (March 2014)

SHORT TAKES Rand Richards Cooper Give It to Us Straight, Doc WHY CAN'T POLITICIANS BE HONEST ABOUT OBAMACARE? Can we please get some clarity on the politics of the Affordable Care Act? A...

Her (February 2014)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper A Soulless Soul Mate 'HER' Her is a movie I've been waiting for. Portraying the curious romance that develops between a man and, well, a digital operating system, it...

Gravity (November 2013)

FILM Rand Richards Cooper Weightless 'GRAVITY' I can't recall a film released to more unanimous critical joy than Gravity, Alfonso Cuaron's taut chronicle of a space mission gone disastrously...

The Spectacular Now Blue Jasmine (October 2013)

FILM Fearsome Correctives Rand Richards Cooper 'THE SPECTACULAR NOW' & 'BLUE JASMINE' At the outset, James Ponsoldt's The Spectacular Now looks like a throwback to such 1980s teen comedies as...

Hannah Arendt A Hijacking (August 2013)

Film Rand Richards Cooper Words & Deeds ‘Hannah Arendt’ & ‘A Hijacking’ The German-Jewish political philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) lived a life emblematic of her era, a casualty of...

The Gatekeepers (May 2013)

SCREEN Rand Richards Cooper Walled In 'THE GATEKEEPERS' & 'THE HOUSE I LIVE IN' Shin Bet, Israel’s security agency, oversees counterterrorism and intelligence gathering in Israel and the...

Amour (April 2013)

Rand Richads Cooper A Nation of Two ‘amour’ As part of my annual catching up with Oscar, I overcame my reluctance and saw Michael Haneke’s Amour. Haneke’s preoccupation with cruelty, both...

The Central Park Five 56 Up (February 2013)

SCREEN Rand Richards Cooper Class Photo ‘the central park five’ & ‘56 up’ Most Americans forty or older will recall the 1989 case of the young woman brutalized by a rampaging mob of...

Life Of Pi & The Flat (January 2013)

Screen Rand Richards Cooper Survivors ‘Life Of Pi’ & ‘The Flat’ Often when the film adaptation of an acclaimed novel fails, it fails through excessive deference— a filmmaker overawed by...

Detropia (November 2012)

SCREEN Rand Richards Cooper Love Among the Ruins 'LOOPER' & 'DETROPIA' The time-travel action film Looper closely resembles James Cameron's 1984 sci-fi classic The Terminator, reiterating that...

Trouble With The Curve (October 2012)

SCREEN Rand Richards Cooper The Age of Regret 'TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE' & 'HOPE SPRINGS' Given its overwhelmingly young audience demographic, it's interesting to see what Hollywood does when it...

Tunneling (July 2012)

FICTION Tunneling Rand Richards Cooper It began, Eleanor would remember later, when she caught him in the basement, masturbating—or so she thought, anyway, for a strange and topsy-turvy...

Bully (June 2012)

SCREEN Rand Richards Cooper A Rough Injustice ‘BULLY’ The issue of bullying is everywhere in schools these days. My daughter’s grade school sponsors anti-bullying workshops and plays, keeps...

Footnote (May 2012)

Screen Rand Richards Cooper Text & Subtext `footnote' The theme of father-son conflict has figured richly in movies, often bearing a conspicuously manly aspect. Consider the...

Margin Call (December 2011)

SCREEN Rand Richards Cooper Dead Men Walking 'MARGIN CALL' Last year, at a college reunion, I attended a panel on the financial meltdown featuring three classmates with long careers on Wall...

Point Blank (September 2011)

SCREEN Rand Richards Cooper From Nightmare to Tragedy 'POINT BLANK' & 'SARAH'S KEY' It was the end of August and, marooned in the silver-screen doldrums, I went to see what the French were up...

Another Earth Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes (September 2011)

SCREEN Rand Richards Cooper Almost Us 'ANOTHER EARTH' & 'RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES' Acosmic sci-fi parable shot on an earth-bound budget of $150,000, Another Earth stars Brit Marling as...

Cave Of Forgotten Dreams (June 2011)

SCREEN Rand Richards Cooper They Dreamt 'CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS' & 'THE DOUBLE HOUR' In 1994 three spelunkers in the south of France stumbled upon a huge find. Exploring a fissure in a...

Another Year (March 2011)

SCREEN Rand Richards Cooper The Good Life 'ANOTHER YEAR' The annual Oscar postmortem is the time for second-guessing and bitter complaint, and in that spirit I want to blast the near-total...

Waiting for Superman Inside Job (January 2011)

SCREEN Rand Richards Cooper Disaster Movies 'WAITING FOR "SUPERMAN"' & 'INSIDE JOB' Adecade ago, TV director Davis Guggenheim (NYPD Blue, Deadwood) made Teach, a documentary about heroic...

32 The Masque of Africa (October 2010)

FALL BOOKS Rand Richards Cooper Curmudgeon on Safari The Masque of Africa Glimpses of African Belief V. S. Naipaul Alfred A. Knopf, $26.95, 256 pp. Born in 1932 into a middle-class Indian...

Greenberg City Island (June 2010)

Screen Rand Richards Cooper Secret Lives 'GREENBERG' & 'CITY ISLAND' Recently I checked in again with two directors whose films earned praise in the past. Noah Baumbach made a name for himself...

Labyrinth (May 2010)

Labyrinth Rand Richards Cooper T he priest, Fr. Monaghan, sat in his office listening to the clock. The office was a small and windowless room behind the auditorium, cluttered with books and...

The White Ribbon (March 2010)

Screen Rand Richards Cooper It Takes a Village -si 5 'THE WHITE RIBBON' Has there ever been an acclaimed director as inhospitable to his viewers' well-being as Michael Haneke? For a...

Crazy Heart (February 2010)

Rand Richards Cooper Pitch-perfect ‘crazy heart’ What is it that so captivates us in portrayals of down-and out artists, writers, and performers? Playing a creative type...

Paranormal Activity The Stepfather Where the Wild Things Are Saw VI (November 2009)

Screen Rand Richards Cooper Cinematic Scares ‘PARANORMAL ACTIVITY,’ ‘THE STEPFATHER,’ ‘WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE,’ ‘SAW VI’ I’ve enjoyed being scared witless in movies ever...

The Baader Meinhof Complex The English Surgeon (September 2009)

Screen Rand Richards Cooper Bloody Errands ‘THE BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX’ & ‘THE ENGLISH SURGEON’ Some films that don’t create a particularly rich experience for the viewer...

State of Play (May 2009)

Rand Richards Cooper Late Edition 'STATE OF PLAY' As I write this it is 7:37 a.m., and I’ve just finished reading the morning paper. I started at 7:31 a.m. And I’m no speed reader....

To the Visible World (May 2009)

Iknew that someday I would find myself writing this essay. I just didn't think it would be yet. If you'd put money on which American writer of the postwar generation would be blessed with...

Revolutionary Road (February 2009)

The novelist Richard Yates, who died in 1992, was once called “a writer’s writer’s writer,” a witty epithet for a career spent at a maddening remove from the large public its owner craved....

Rachel Getting Married (November 2008)

Commonweal . November 21, 2008 20 sony pictures classics Screen Cake Topper Rand Richards Cooper ‘RaChel geTTINg MaRRIeD’ After stints as a film crit- Jonathan Demme has had enormous...

Stop-Loss (April 2008)

Rand Richards Cooper Warriors’ Code KiMBERLy PEiRCE’S ‘SToP-LoSS’ The opening sequence of the new Iraq war film, Stop-Loss, portrays a U.S. Army squad caught in a terrifying...

Juno Sweet Todd (January 2008)

Rand Richards Cooper Life & Death ‘JunO’ & ‘swEEnEy TODD’ I first heard about Jason Reit man’s quirkily bighearted film Juno from an unlikely source: Rush Limbaugh. The maven of...

In the Valley of Elah Into the Wild (October 2007)

Screen Lost Boys Rand Richards Cooper ‘IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH’ & ‘INTO THE WILD’ Is there an actor working today who conveys a more mythically American presence than Tommy Lee Jones?...

The Bourne Ultimatum (September 2007)

Commonweal . September 14, 2007 24 Screen Identity Crisis Rand Richards Cooper ‘THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM’ Of the cohort of boyish leading actors we’ve spent the last decade waiting to...

Baby on Board (June 2007)

The Last Word Baby on Board Rand Richards Cooper I t has now been almost a year and a half since I embarked on what I think of as "late-onset fatherhood." Becoming a first-time parent...

The Hoax/An Unreasonable Man (April 2007)

Rand Richards Cooper Driven "THE HOAX' & "AN UNREASONABLE MAN' Do you remember the Clifford Irving scandal of longago 1971 ? The episode by now is little more than a footnote on a page of...

Children of Men (January 2007)

Rand Richards Cooper Dark Parable "CHILDREN OF MEN" With a resum~ featuring A Little Princess and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, director Alfonso Cuar6n knows his way around...

Half Nelson Old Joy (October 2006)

Take a Hike Rand Richards Cooper 'HALF NELSON' & 'OLD JOY' Ryan Fleck's downbeat school take this demythologizing to the extreme. sent father; an otder brother in jail for drama, Half...

The Descent/Little Miss Sunshine (September 2006)

Rand Richards Cooper Trapped 'THE DESCENT" & 'LITTLE MISS ~ Horror films divide moviegoers into love 'em or loathe 'em camps, and I confess to being in the former. If you're an aficionado...

United 93 (June 2006)

Screen Rand Richards Cooper Lost 'UNITED 93" United 93, Paul Greengrass's depiction of the 9/11 jetliner whose passengers rose up against its hijackers and crashed it into a field...

Thank You for Smoking (May 2006)

Screen Rand Richards Cooper Spin Doctor "THANK YOU FOR SMOKING" Does it ever seem to you, when you spy those lonely cigarette smokers puffing away outside offices, or sip the crystalline air...

Match Point (February 2006)

Screen 4 e,q g Rand Richards Cooper Advantage Allen 'MATCH POINT" Quick, what was the last Woody Allen film you saw? Husbands and Wives? Bullets over B'a~. way? If you're like many...

The Squid and the Whale Capote (December 2005)

Rand Richards Cooper Literary Conceits 'THE SQUID AND THE WHALE" & 'CAPOTE' ~ A spate of recent movies-films as disparate as Wonder Boys, Adaptation, The Door in the Floor, Sideways,...

The Constant Gardener Grizzly Man (October 2005)

Rand Richards Cooper Wild Things 'THE CONSTANT GARDENER' & 'GRIZZLY MAN' Based on the novel by John le Carry, Femando Meirelles's film The Constant Gardener takes us to an Africa...

Basic Instinct (June 2005)

The Last Word Basic Instinct Rand Richards Cooper L ast month, the State of Connecticut executed serial killer Michael Ross, resuming capital punishment after a forty-five-year hiatus. Ross,...

The Woodsman (February 2005)

Rand Richards Cooper Unforgiven 'THE WOODSMAN' i kind d~ protago , t suppose would top the American moviegoing public's list of hardest to sympathize with? Not far down from...

Screen (January 2005)

refugee camp. The Interahamwe [the murderous Hum militia leading the bloodletting] believe this is a four-star Sabena hotel. That is the only thing that is keeping us alive." As a trainee,...

Sideways Closer (December 2004)

Rand Richards Cooper MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE 'Sideways' & 'Closer' The unanimous critical approval greeting Sideways has created some surprising Best Picture buzz-surprising, because Oscar rarely...

Vera Drake (November 2004)

Rand Richards Cooper NO CUP OF TEA Mike Leigh's 'Vera Drake' British director Mike Leigh came of age in the 1960s, and his movies deliver sensitive studies of working-class English life, with its...

The Dust Diaries by Owen Sheers (November 2004)

THE HEART OF AFRICA Band Richards Cooper With an ambivalence tracing back to Conrad, modern european writers portrayed Africa in extremes of innocence and violence, depravity and delight....

Fahrenheit 911 Control Room (August 2004)

Rand Richards Cooper AT WAR Fahrenheit 9/11' & 'Control Room' hen Cannes bestowed the Palme d'Or on Fahrenheit 9/11 last May, it wasn't all that surprising, a political paint bomb lobbed from...

Still, We Believe: The Boston Red Sox Movie (June 2004)

S C R E E N Rand Richards Cooper NICE GUYS FINISH LAST 'Still, We Believe: The Boston Red Sox Movie' Europeans experience history itself; a Red Sox fan is an Irishman, a Serb, an Armenian,...

The Punisher Hellboy (May 2004)

Rand Richards Cooper DEVILISH ADAPTATIONS 'The Punisher' & 'Hellboy' he current boom in comicbook-based movies is partly technological. Yet in addition to providing a vehicle for digital wizardry,...

Touching the Void Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (April 2004)

}RSCREE Rand Richards Cooper SCALING THE DEPTHS 'Touching the Void' & 'Eternal Sunshine' n 1985, British mountain climbers Joe Simpson and Simon Yates scaled the twenty-one-thousand-foot Siula...

My Father's Footprints (January 2004)

My Father's Footprints Colin McEnroe Warner Books, $23.95, 198 pp. Rand Richards Cooper here's a short story by Ethan Canin in which a young man complains about how hard his father is to get to...

Autumn Spring: Something's Gotta Give (January 2004)

NEVER SAY DIE 'Autumn Spring' & 'Something's Gotta Give' ome year's end, with Hollywood serving up another round of high-gloss, $100-million epics, it's nice to be able to turn to European movies....

DELICATE NEGOTIATIONS Peacemaking is hard, especially at home (December 2003)

DELICATE NEGOTIATIONS War & peace in the neighborhood Rand Richards Cooper This past year our country has been preoccupied with questions of violence so distant and vast, a citizen hardly knows...

Sylvia (November 2003)

SCREEN Rand Richards Cooper DADDY'S GIRL? 'Sylvia' A film about an artist is inescapably an act of interpretation. Here is the artist's life; now what does it mean? From Vincente Minelli's Lust...

Mystic River The violent bear it away (November 2003)

Rand Richards Cooper UNFORGIVEN IN BOSTON Eastwood's 'Mystic River' Three current box-office titans raise the question: How do you like your movie violence? As schlocky entertainment (the...

Dirty Pretty Things (August 2003)

SCREEN Rand Richards Cooper DOWN & OUT IN LONDON Stephen Frears's 'Dirty Pretty Things' Movie stars tend to fall into two groups-chameleons, who assume a different per-sona with each new role,...

Capturing the Friedmans (July 2003)

'Capturing the Friedmans' Rand Richards Cooper SEX, LIES (?) & VIDEOTAPE Home movies are about innocence-our lost, fuzzy, glowing personal pasts, all horseplay and funny hats and the promise of...

Down with Love The Shape of Things Blue Car (June 2003)

Rand Richards Cooper BIRDS & BEES 'Down with Love,' 'The Shape of Things,' & 'Blue Car' Spring is in the air, when a moviegoer's thoughts turn naturally to romance. If innocent fun is your idea...

A Mighty Wind Spellbound (May 2003)

'A Mighty Wind' & 'Spellbound' Rand Richards Cooper AMERICAN VOICES Whristopher Guest has carved a niche for himself as our master of the mockumen-tary, wreaking comic havoc by taking a serious...

'The Man He Killed' (May 2003)

THE LAST WORD 'THE MAN HE KILLED' Rand Richards Cooper Now that the war in Iraq is won, I've been thinking about how it was fought. Operation Iraqi Freedom had its setbacks and breakthroughs, but...

Tully Russian Ark (April 2003)

SCREEN Rand Richards Cooper SLOW MOTION 'Tully' & 'Russian Ark' Hully, an independent film by first-time director Hilary Birmingham, is all about pace. Slow pace. Meditative and meandering, this...

Willard Spider (April 2003)

SCREEN 'Willard' & 'Spider' Rand Richards Cooper CREEPY THINGS attered by round-the-clock coverage of war, I decided to seek refuge in scary movies and let fantasy images of dread replace the...

The Hours (March 2003)

Rand Richards Cooper TRIPLE PLAY 'The Hours' I belatedly went to see The Hours, the Virginia Woolf biopic that figures to dom-inate Oscar night with its trifecta of female stars. The Hours is...

About Schmidt The Pianist (January 2003)

SCREEN Rand Richards Cooper TRAPPED 'About Schmidt' & 'The Pianist Alexander Payne made a name for himself with Election, his wry study of a high school teacher's demolition by an aggressive,...

Far from Heaven Frida From Hartford to Mexico City (January 2003)

SCREEN Rand Richards Cooper ART DECO 'Far from Heaven' & 'Frida' A pair of films offers variations on the theme of passion and its impediments and privileges. Far from Heaven, Todd Haynes's...

Comedian (December 2002)

SCREEN Rand Richards Cooper STANDUP GUY 'Comedian' Is it true, as F. Scott Fitzgerald famously remarked, that there are no second acts in American life? Few celebrities are better positioned to...

The Trials of Henry Kissinger Bowling for Columbine Political cinema (November 2002)

SCREEN Rand Richards Cooper REALPOLITIK 'Trials of Henry Kissinger' & 'Bowling for Columbine' As a kid I had a "radical" uncle who delighted in rocking my parents' suburban world. One year he...

Tadpole Igby Goes Down (October 2002)

SCREEN Rand Richards Cooper HOLDEN ON 'Tadpole' & 'Igby Goes Down' 0ecently I heard a private-school English teacher discuss her ninth-graders' surprising hostility to The Catcher in the Rye....

Mostly Martha (October 2002)

SCREEN Rand Richards Cooper CLIMATE CHANGES 'Mostly Martha' Mostly Martha, Sandra Net-telbeck's dourly comic look at life in an upscale restau-rant in Hamburg, exploits a tantalizing oxymoron:...

One Hour Photo The Good Girl Behind the counter (September 2002)

SCREEN Rand Richards Cooper BLUE-LIGHT SPECIALS 'One Hour Photo' & 'The Good Girl' Robin Williams has a Jekyll and Hyde kind of career. Williams's triumphant roles have been the ones tailored to...

Summer summary (September 2002)

Rand Richards Cooper SUMMER SUMMARY 'Signs,' 'Greek Wedding,' 'Rain,' & more Home summer closeout reflections on movies I didn't get to talk about-and you might not have gotten to see-in recent...

Road to Perdition Sunshine State (August 2002)

Rand Richards Cooper DIFFERENT CLIMATES 'Road to Perdition' & 'Sunshine State' It's nice when two talented directors serve up films from opposite poles of inspiration, like Sam Mendes and John...

ONE BOY'S STORY My meeting with Father M (June 2002)

ONE BOY'S STORY 'Father M would like to see you in his office' Rand Richards Cooper This is a story about a priest I knew, and what he did to me. I was not molested, exactly. But something...

SCREEN: Last Orders (April 2002)

son; and Ray, his best friend and old army mate: with a borrowed Mercedes Benz for a funeral wagon, the four make their pilgrimage, as willed by Jack in his "last orders," from their South London...

John Q Storytelling Denzel Washington won't take no for an answer (March 2002)

Rand Richards Cooper SWEET & SOUR 'John Q.' & 'Storytelling' Politicians take note: if box office figures reveal what America has on its mind, then it seems we're thinking health care. The hugely...

Gosford Park (February 2002)

Rand Richards Cooper SCREEN CLASS ACTION Altman's 'Gosford Park' Robert Altaian seems an unlikely director for Gosford Park. How could the sensibility behind a film as sprawling and wild as...

Monster's Ball Lantana (January 2002)

Rand Richards Cooper SCREEN FINDING PASSION 'Monster's Ball' & 'Lantana' The run-up toward movie-award season is getting more and more like Christmas shopping madness. All year long, whole weeks...

In the Bedroom (January 2002)

Rand Richards Cooper SCREEN WHO'S AFRAID OF SISSY SPACEK? In the Bedroom' Writer Andre Dubus, who died in 1999, never became a big name with the gener-al public. But he was revered by other...

Waking Life 'Slacker' philosophers (December 2001)

Rand Richards Cooper REALLY BIG IDEAS 'Waking Life' Writer-director Richard Linklater created a name for himself with 1991's independent-film cult hit, Slacker. Slacker toured...

Berlin Babylon (December 2001)

SCREES! Rand Richards Cooper ARCHITECTURAL ANGST 'Berlin Babylon' Two years ago, while renovation of Berlin's former Reichstag building was still underway, I asked a German diplomat why...

Lumumba: How we fought the cold war (October 2001)

SCREEN Rand Richards Cooper HISTORY AS TRAGEDY 'Lumumba' In the early 1980s I spent two years in Africa, including several months in the calamity formerly known as Zaire. Mobutu's Congo was...

The Deep End Ghost World Fighter: Seeing movies through Pauline Kael's eyes (September 2001)

SCREEN Rand Richards Cooper THROUGH KAEL'S EYES 'The Deep End/ 'Ghost World' & 'Fighter' Pauline Kael, New Yorker film critic from 1969 to 1991, died in September at the age of eighty-two....

A.I.: How Steven Spielberg & Stanley Kubrick imagine the future (August 2001)

SCREEN Rand Richards Cooper PINOCCHIO REDUX 'A.I/ One summer day back in the mid-1970s, a woman I know was hitchhiking on Cape Cod with two friends. The three, all college students, got...

Ozoners: My night at the drive-in (July 2001)

SCREEN Rand Richards Cooper OZPNERS When the Fogmaster & spooning were king Tum off your lights and drive left," our friendly booth guy said. "Soundtrack's on 88.1 FM." It was only mid-June,...

Pearl Harbor (June 2001)

SCREEN Rand Richards Cooper BPNBS AWAY 'Pearl Harbor' One way to see Pearl Harbor is as the opening salvo in this season's blockbuster wars—a consummate action film, all high-tech mayhem...

Amores Perros Memento (June 2001)

S C R E E N Rand Richards Cooper KILLING TINE 'Amoves Perros' & 'Memento' Isn't the durability of film noir amazing? With its dark visions of violence and despair, 1940s noir drew...

Bridget Jones's Diary The Widow of Saint-Pierre: Love in two cold climates (May 2001)

SCREEN Rand Richards Cooper PRISONERS OF LOVE 'Bridget Jones's Diary' & 'The Widow of Saint-Pierre' I lived in Germany for several years, and it almost destroyed me for romantic comedy. I...

Ratcatcher Series 7: The Contenders: A brilliant Scottish coming-of-age drama (May 2001)

SCREEN Rand Richards Cooper REALITY, COOKED & RAW 'Ratcatcher' & 'Series 7: The Contenders' Ratcatcher opens with a slowmotion close-up of a child spinning around in a lace curtain, and...

Heartbreakers The Brothers: Marital mischief (April 2001)

Rand Richards Cooper DREADED BLISS 'Heartbreakers' & 'The Brothers' I recently went to two topgrossing new releases for a dose of marriage, money, and morals, Hollywood style. Maybe we're...

The House of Mirth The Pledge: Victorian dead ends & male obsessions (March 2001)

SCREEN Rand Richards Cooper TRAGEDY IN TWO GENDERS 'The House of Mirth' & 'The Pledge' Part way through Terence Davies's lavish, bitter The House of Mirth comes a fabulous movie kiss....

Hannibal Sound and Fury (March 2001)

To St. Peter (After Herbert) The cock crowed as you denied all and let them all deride Him while you fled to hide. You abode still in your lie as they spiked Him to a tree stripped and...

Chocolat Traffic: The good & bad in mind-altering substances (February 2001)

C ORRESPONDENCE A clarification In my letter inquiring about the church's agenda regarding a sexual orientation that it considers objectively disordered, the editors of Commonweal replied,...

Cast Away You Can Count on Me: Stranded in the wilds of the South Pacific and the wilds of upstate New York (January 2001)

Rand Richards Cooper SURVIVORS 'Cast Away' & 'You Can Count on Me' Director Robert Zemeckis has made all sorts of films in his charmed career—offbeat comedies (Used Cars), thrillers (What...

How the Grinch Stole Christmas & Two Family House (December 2000)

The old cartoon movie, like the...

Girlfight the Contender (November 2000)

gans; the wizened coach with his own - s - N...

Dancer in the Dark Get Carter (November 2000)

shapes of color set to swelling...

Almost Famous (October 2000)

Rand Richards Cooper ...

Bless the Child Chuck and Buck (September 2000)

to be a godly child with special...

Croupier Winter Sleepers (August 2000)

Rand Richards Cooper DOOMED 'Croupier' & 'Winter Sleepers" C roupier begins with a black screen and an ominous cawing sound, like a mob of mad birds. In fact, it's the amplification of...

The Color of Paradise (June 2000)

perately intent on putting his best self...

American Psycho High Fidelity (May 2000)

ble entendres, as during Bateman's date ...

MEN OF A CERTAIN AGE (May 2000)

MEN OF A CERTAIN AGE What I saw in the whirlpool Rand Richards Cooper t was as a teen-ager that I first read The Great gotiating their way in the...

Boiler Room Boys Don't Cry (April 2000)

sight to install a certain tiredness at...

TOM WOLFE, MATERIAL BOY (May 1999)

TON WOLFE, NATERIAL BOY Embellishing a doctrine Rand Richards Cooper om Wolfe splashed into the national consciousness in the summer of 1970 with "Radical Chic," his New York magazine...

CHARMING ALICE (March 1998)

CHARMING ALICE A unique voice in American fiction Rand Richards Cooper ne of the pleasures of going back to a talented writer's early work is finding the promising failure, the intriguingly...

A ZAIRIAN JOURNEY Chaos in Mobutu's Zaire isn't new More than a decade ago, our author saw the country sliding into the void (May 1997)

A ZAIRIAN JOURNEY Life under Mobutu, thief of all thieves Rand Richards Cooper Watching the tumultuous events in Central Africa in recent years, I've found it hard to square the ongoing agony...

Bad Land by Jonathan Raban The "land of big sky" finds its Conrad (April 1997)

The frontier that failed Bad Land An American Romance Jonathan Raban Pantheon, $25,324 pp. Rand Richards Cooper By 1909, when the U.S. Con-gress passed the Enlarged Homestead Act, doubling the...

Same Places, Same Things by Tint Gautreaux (November 1996)

LOCAL COLOR Same Places, Same Things Tim Gautreaux St. Martin's Press, $20.95, 211 pp. Rand Richards Cooper Ho judge by Tim Gautreaux's fiction, Thoreau's famous dictum had it half wrong: true, the...

THE DIGNITY OF HELPLESSNESS From the handicapped children of Nairobi to his grandmother's deathbed, our author discovers something precious in human frailty and even suffering (October 1996)

THE DIGNITY OF HELPLESSNESS What sort of society would euthanasia create? Rand Richards Cooper I'm looking for an argument with Jack Kevorkian; or rather, for one against him. Life for Kevorkian...

Brazil John Updike (April 1994)

BUNGLE IN THE JUNGLE BRAZIL John Updike Knopf, $23, 260 pp Rand Richards Cooper Quick Guess which well known American novelist has set his current book in South America, taking us ...

Body & Soul: (November 1993)

A LONG-AWAITED ENCORE BODY &SOUL Soul, a sprawling bildungsroman tak- Frank Conroy ing up the youthful...

It isn't Weimar all over again (May 1993)

IT'S NOT WEIMAR RAND RICHARDS COOPER ALL OVER AGAIN THE STRENGTHS OF GERMAN DEMOCRACY ...

BOOKS A Complicated War (December 1992)

The horror, the horror In 1975, Portugal granted independence to the colony of Mozambique, in Southern Africa on the Indian Ocean. The transition was a hasty, bitter one, following...

Billie Dyer and Other Stories (May 1992)

THE VIEW AFTER SEVENTY BILLIE DYER AND OTHER STORIES William Maxwell Alfred A. Knopf, $18, 117 pp. imagination, to inform himself; like Maxwell's magical novel, So Long, See You Tomorrow (1980),...

Rabbit loses the race (May 1991)

RABBIT LOSES THE RACE JOHN UPDIKE'S 'SMALL ANSWER OF A TEXTURE' / RAND RICHARDS COOPER I n everything he writes, John Updike creates sentences that carry the feeling of having been cared for,...

Picturing Will (May 1990)

BOOKS Ann Beattie: less than minimal Last November, Harper's Magazine published a lengthy essay by Tom Wolfe, "Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast," in the which the New Journalist-cum-Newer...

Cooper, Rands Richards

Cooper, Richards

Cooper, William B.

Cooper-Clark, Diana

Cooperman, Robert

Copeland, M. Shawn

Copeland, Roger

Copley, Frank B.

Copp, Jay

Coppola, Jo

Coray, Anne

CORBETT, EDWARD M.