Browse Authors

ride up through the pass, with the obligatory bodyguard, is almost an anticlimax. Though the writing, as throughout the book, carries the moment: "I stood there looking out over the...

Art: (June 1990)

PIGMENTS OF THE IMAGINATION 'FACING HISTORY' IN BROOKLYN Facing History: the Black Image in American Art, 1710-1940" is an exciting exhibit for several reasons. The show, now at the Brooklyn...

Killing the Spirit (April 1990)

REVIVING THE SPIRIT KILLING THE SPIRIT Higher Education in America Page Smith Viking, $19.95, 315 pp. Tom O'Brien Ironically, the diatribes of William Bennett, Allan Bloom (or Charles Sykes, in...

Screen (March 1990)

SCREEN LOVE STORIES 'DAISY,' 'ENEMIES' & BEST OF '89 Once you get the set-up, Driving Miss Daisy is unsurprising: it's a mixed-sex, mixed-race, gerontocratic version of "odd couple" and "buddy"...

Screen (February 1990)

SCREEN HEROISM WITHOUT GLAMOUR 'HENRY V' & 'MUSIC BOX' Will there always be an England? Maybe not, but there will always be English acting. Witness Kenneth Branagh's Henry V. It almost...

Screen: (February 1990)

SCREEN AT WAR WITH OURSELVES 'GLORY' & 'FOURTH OF JULY' The story of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers has already been told in one of our great American poems, Robert Lowell's "For the Union...

Screen (January 1990)

SCREEN DEVILISH DUOS 'SHE-DEVIL,"ROSES' & 'BLAZE' She-Devil starts poorly. Roseanne Barr and Meryl Streep are both involved with the same man (Ed Begley, Jr.), but rarely with each other....

Screen (January 1990)

PLAYING FOR TINE IN THE MIDDLE EAST SHAMIR WANTS TO WAIT SOME MORE J.J. GOLDBERG edieval Jewish legend tells of a magical river, somewhere far away, known as Sambatyon. On its shores the Ten Lost...

Screen (December 1989)

SCREEN TOOTH & CLAW 'CRIMES' & 'THE BEAR' In Crimes and Misdemeanors, Woody Allen tries to be profound; often he succeeds. This is due largely to his writing and directing and to Martin Landau's...

Screen: (December 1989)

BLAND & BETTER THAN BLAND 'IMMEDIATE FAMILY' & 'VALMONT' Immediate Family is a perfect example of the blanding of America. There's nothing very wrong with this film; it even addresses a serious...

Screen: (November 1989)

SCREEN BOYS WILL BE BOYS 'FATMAN' & 'BAKER BOYS' Fatman and Little Boy was meant as a compelling update of the Faust story. Despite a strong conclusion, it is, on balance, a great disappointment....

Screen: (November 1989)

DOWNHILL JOURNEYS QUEEN OF HEARTS' & 'IN COUNTRY' In my time as film critic at Commonweal, I have often wanted to invent a new prize: overrated foreign film of the season. My current candidate is...

Screen: (August 1989)

THE MINERS OF CUMBRIA WARD'S 'NAVIGATOR' he Navigator: An Odyssey Across Time, winner of six Australian Oscars, is surely the strangest film released in years. An odd but moving blend of fantasy...

Screen: (July 1989)

FACTS OF (GHETTO) LIFE 'RIGHT THING' & 'LAST CRUSADE' Spike Lee is now America's leading black filmmaker-perhaps the only one with a firm foothold in Hollywood. In previous films such as She's...

Screen: (June 1989)

GENES, LOST & FOUND 'SCANDAL' & 'POETS SOCIETY' Scandal tells the story of the Profumo case, but from a limited point of view. For its original English audience, telling the story may have been...

Screen: (June 1989)

SCREEN CATCHING FIRE 'RAINBOW,"RIGHT,' & 'MS. CRACKER' Blen Russell never saw a waterfall he didn't like; at least in his films he can't resist its allure as a symbol. For decades, the English...

Screen: (May 1986)

SCREEN SOAPS & DREAMS 'IN THE MORNING' & 'FIELD' See You in the Morning is called a "romantic comedy," but it is really offkey soap, notable only for the acting of Alice Krige (Chariots of Fire,...

Screen (May 1989)

SCREEN CAMERAS ON THE SLY 'CHARLIE MOPIC & 'LA LECTRICE' Patrick Duncan's 84 Charlie Mopic breathes invigorating and scary life into the Vietnam war film genre. It rivals Platoon in power, but...

Screen (April 1989)

SCREEN SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS AVILDSEN'S 'LEAN ON ME' Lean on Me is loud, simplistic, overly optimistic, and dramatically repetitive, but it is also valuable and inspiring. The story is based on...

Screen: (April 1989)

SCREEN TRUTH BY DROLLERY 'HIGH HOPES' & 'NEW YORK STORIES' In Victoria's Britain, Disraeli once termed the rich and poor "two nations." In Margaret Thatcher's Britain, a new English film makes...

Screen (March 1989)

BLAND ISN'T BEAUTIFUL SCHUMACHER'S 'COUSINS' Cousins will strike different audiences in differ-ent ways, depending on whether or not they've seen its original, the French Cousin, Cousine, which I...

Screen: (March 1989)

SEDUCTION WITH VENGEANCE FREARS'S 'DANGEROUS LIAISONS' Dangerous Liaisons is a colorfully costumed, beautifully designed production. It features another strong acting performance by Glenn Close as...

Screen (February 1989)

SCREEN OUT ON A LIMB RECAP & 'ACCIDENTAL TOURIST' What were the best films of 1988? No single work had the force of last year's The Last Emperor or the year before's Platoon. But there were some...

Screen (January 1989)

UNLIKELY SAVANTS 'WORKING GIRL' & 'RAIN MAN' Tess McGill is a Working Girl, the easiest movie hero to root for since the runners in Chariots of Fire. Tess is played by Melanie Griffith, mainly a...

Screen (January 1989)

SCREEN IN THE LINE OF FIRE 'MISSISSIPPI' & TALK RADIO' Mississippi Burning starts With a spooky, terrifying sequence: three young civil rights workers disappear one summer night in 1964. The...

Screen: (December 1988)

SCREEN ICE & FIRE 'PELLE' & 'WOMEN ON THE VERGE' Pelle the Conqueror, winner of the 1988 Cannes Festival Palme D'Or, is an old-fashioned, classically made film that risks boredom for the sake of...

Screen: (December 1988)

SCREEN GRAY GHOSTS 'ALL AMERICAN' & 'A CRY IN THE DARK' Everybody's Ail-American, with Jessica Lange and Dennis Quaid, is an uneven but interesting mix of sports, comedy, romance, and social...

Screen (November 1988)

SCREEN THE BUTCHER OF LYON OPHULS'S 'HOTEL TERMINUS' Marcel Ophuls's Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie is-like many other films about Nazi atrocities-long and sometimes tedious,...

Screen: (November 1988)

SIX WOMEN 'GORILLAS, "PIZZA' & 'THE ACCUSED' Gorillas in the Mist tells the story of Dian Fossey, student and champion of the mountain gorilla. The film presents gruesome scenes of poachers...

Screen: (October 1988)

SCREEN MELANCHOLY BEBOP 'BIRD' & 'PATTY' Bird is a labor of love from Clint Eastwood, marked by an intelligence and sensitivity that, I admit, surprised me. Eastwood has produced and directed...

Screen: (October 1988)

SCREEN A TRIPLEHEADER 'EIGHT MEN OUT,' 'SUMMER,' & 'SHAME' Eight Men Out takes up where Bull Durham left off: here is not just a better than usual baseball film, but a sadder and wiser one. John...

Screen: (September 1988)

SCREEN RERELEASED & REASSESSED 'THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE' The Manchurian Candidate has made a remarkable reappearance. A critical success but box office failure in 1962, the film has been...

Screen: (September 1988)

SCREEN JESUS AS HAMLET THE LAST TEMPTATION' The Last Temptation of Christ has been labeled "blasphemy" by some religious groups, and "morally offensive" by the Communications Department of the...

Screen: (August 1988)

SCREEN MYTH AMERICA 'TUCKER' & 'BULL DURHAM' Tucker's strengths and faults are inseparable. The film is unique-the product of the fertile inventiveness of Francis Ford Coppola at his best and...

Screen: (July 1988)

SCREEN WOMEN & CHILDREN FIRST 'BIG,' 'BIG BUSINESS,' & 'A WORLD APART Business and Big prove the timeless appeal of Plautus' comic formula, "trading places." His technique of transposing...

Screen: (June 1988)

SCREEN NATURAL MEN, II/III 'CROCODILE' & 'RAMBO' Will someone please explain to me the one charming idiosyncracy marking our national affliction of pictures-bythe-numbers? Why are some...

Screen: (June 1988)

SCREEN TWO HEROES 'CRY OF REASON' & 'DELIVER' With Cry Freedom gone, and censorship the rule in South Africa, apartheid may become for some "out of sight, out of mind."Helpful in counteracting...

An interview with Godfrey Reggio (May 1988)

An interview with the director GSHl odtrey Reggio may be the only film director whose conversation ranges from the Hopi to Thonuis Aquinas, from papal encyclicals (especially those of John XXIII)...

Screen (May 1988)

SCREEN MAGNIFICENT 'POWAQQATSI' A MIXTURE OF REGGIO & GLASS Powaqqatsi is the Hopi word for "the sorcerer who steals from life,'' and the first sign of this film's unusual significance....

Screen: (May 1988)

SCREEN UNMASKING SECRETS 'SORCERESS' & 'A TAXING WOMAN' Sorceress is film's best trip to the Middle Ages since that 1983 gem, The Return of Martin Guerre. Like Guerre, it evolved from the work of...

Screen: (April 1988)

SCREEN TWO SNORTS 'MILAGRO' & 'CHANNELS' The Milagro Beanfield War marks Robert Red-ford's return to directing; it is his first film since the far superior Ordinary People (1981). Hopes were high...

Screen: (April 1988)

SCREEN THE LIFE & DEATH OF IT NEW SPRING FILMS Some recent movies live by understatement, but some die too. Frantic, for example, belies its title. It's a tired thriller from Roman Polanski, who...

Screen: (March 1988)

SCREEN YESTERDAY'S CHILDREN MALLE'S 'ENFANTS' & HUBERT'S 'HIGHWAY' Ever since Frangois Truffaut made his two gems that gently deromanticized youth (the autobiographical 400 Blows and the historical...

Screen: (March 1988)

SCREEN ALLEN WRENCHING FLOUNDERING IN 'SEPTEMBER' Why did September, Woody Allen's latest film, die so quickly? Perhaps because it has only one redeeming feature and only one redeeming scene: the...

Screen: (February 1988)

SCREEN THE YEAR THAT WAS SEVEN WORTH THE PRICE Five hundred and eleven films were released in 1987; the year's box office earnings added up to $4.2 billion. These record numbers reflect two...

Screen: (February 1988)

SCREEN STONED ON GREED DOUGLAS & SHEEN ON WALL STREET Wall Street is mediocre by one standard, good by another. Compared to director/ writer Oliver Stone's previous films, Salvador and Platoon,...

Screen (January 1988)

SCREEN HALLS OF MIRRORS 'NEWS,"VIETNAM,' & 'WALKER' Broadcast News and Good Morning Vietnam both mirror our media mania. The latter con-cerns a radio disc jockey (Robin Williams) who gains...

Screen (January 1988)

SCREEN GO EAST, YOUNG MAN 'EMPIRE OF THE SUN' Steven Spielberg, who directed and co-produced Empire of the Sun, doesn't want to grow up. In some artists, this refusal can be a fruitful source of...

Screen (December 1987)

ETHNIC COLORINGS 'EMPEROR,' 'THE DEAD,' & 'WANNSEE' he Last Emperor is sprawling, untidy, sometimes confusing, and often superb. A successful attempt by Bernardo Bertolucci to recoup some of...

Screen (December 1987)

OBSESSION & MEMORY 'HOUSE OF GAMES' & 'HOPE & GLORY' D avid Mamet and Lindsay Crouse aren't the best known of entertainment couples; they may be the brightest. Mamet made his name with...

Screen (November 1987)

SCREEN FILMING DANGEROUSLY ATTENBOROUGH'S 'CRY FREEDOM' Cry Freedom is noble, well-intentioned, and flat. Producer/director Sir Richard Attenborough, maker of Gandhi, here applies his epic...

Screen (November 1987)

SCREEN VEINS THAT RUN DEEP SAYLES'S 'MATEWAN' Matewan is close to being a great film. The word should be (and has been, in this col umn) used rarely; but in style and content this work...

Screen (October 1987)

SCREEN TERMS OF COMMITMENT 'DARK EYES' & 'BABY BOOM' Dark Eyes features a remarkable performance by Marcello Mastroianni as Romano, an aging Italian Don Juan; it earned a Best Actor award...

Screen (October 1987)

or canable) could get so fixated or vengeful. As acted, Close's .absorbing because ofthe fiercewild anger she ; of htt'-glamotous but wfcchTike looks; and flicker of a smile at cruel moments'....

Cultural Literacy (September 1987)

GUARDING THE GUARDS OF TRADITION CDLTDRAL LITERACY WHAT EVERY AMERICAN NEEDS TO KNOW E. D. Hlrsch Houghton Mifflin, $16.95, 251 pp. Tom O'Brien very teacher will have a horror story to back...

Screen (September 1987)

SCREEN THREE WOMEN 'MERMAIDS,' 'WISH,' & 'NADINE' I've Heard the Mermaids Singing sings superbly on a shoestring budget. Its young Canadian director, Pa-tricia Rozema, won the Prix de la Jeunesse...

Screen (August 1987)

very important had been illumined. And I was very grateful to such a sturdy and robust atheist as Mencken for having come up with the sentence: "The Latin church, which I find myself admiring...

Screen (July 1987)

SCREEN SLOW & BURNING 'MY LIFE,' TLORETTE,' & 'WITCHES' My Life, as a Dog is an amusing Swedish coming-of-age story. It suffers slightly from an ironic sentimentality familiar from recent...

Screen (June 1987)

SCREEN DECENT EXPOSURE 'DEVIL' & 'ROXANNE' D evil in the Flesh and Jean de Florette are two of the most stylish summer movie imports. Both boast long pedigrees in literary and film history....

Natural Acts (June 1987)

CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 338) tion asserts that it takes its criteria for what can be done not only from its notion of man and woman's nature but also from its notion of their...

Screen (June 1987)

SCREEN OH, SO MUCH VIOLENCE 'THE UNTOUCHABLES' An evil film, The Untouchables. A red car pet of earnest advance hoopla has been rolled out for it by the hip devotees who still...

Screen (May 1987)

318: SCREEN LOST OPPORTUNITIES 'SECRET,1 'LULU,' & 'GARDENS' According to a friend (actually my wife), every once and a while it is refreshing to see a movie that flat out insults your...

Screen (April 1987)

SCREEN YOUNG & TENDER 'ARIZONA' & 'FACING SOUTHEAST Raising Arizona fulfills a friend's prediction that, sooner or later, Hollywood would catch up to the baby boomers' baby boom — the large...

Screen (March 1987)

SCREEN__________ LAUGHS & DISAPPOINTMENT 'FORTUNE,' 'KANGAROO,' 'THERAPY' Outrageous Fortune is female slapstick en-livened by sharp writing and fine acting. The writing is by newcomer Leslie...

Screen (March 1987)

SCREEN OSCAR STEPS OUT STUDIOS VS. THE INDEPENDENTS In his recent collection of essays. Writing in Restaurants, playwright David Mamet declares that America retains only two genuine national...

Screen (February 1987)

SCREEN WOODY GOES WIRELESS RADIO DAYS' Radio Days will challenge all those for whom Woody Allen can do no wrong. The film is dismal, worth seeing perhaps only for the sets that recreate the...

Screen (February 1987)

SCREEN HEROIC & MOCK-HEROIC 'VILLAGE,1 'MOTHER TERESA,' & 'DUET The setting of My Sweet Little Village is a Czechoslovakian small town on the cusp of modernization. Jiri Menzel (who...

Screen (January 1987)

SCREEN TASTE & AFTERTASTE 'CRIMES,' 'MORNING AFTER,' 'LJTTLE SHOP' Crimes of the Heart survives its Southern Gothic mannerisms to qualify as the best among the many current film adaptations of...

Screen (January 1987)

SCREEN REEL POLITICS 'MISS MARY ' 'WEEPING,' & 'PLATOON' M iss Mary workS wen as a personal story but not as the political metaphor intended by Argentine director Maria Luisa Bemberg. To be...

Screen (December 1986)

In a nation of illiterate citizens, radio is the chief means of doctor, and a true Daughter of Wisdom. public communication. Operating on an annual budget of Sister Marie...

Success in small things (December 1986)

keeps postponing it, granting Ford a measure of success as a American character is the most American of all. genuine visionary. Ford buys a "town" ( in fact a downtrod- Ford's...

Screen (December 1986)

director of the Boston Symphony, who, at Messiaen's own tion. A warming example is a published comment on a move- invitation, had directed the original performances at the Paris ment...

Screen: (November 1986)

olutionary religious songs fortissimo, and before the final new film, Newman attempts to make a comeback by shaping a blessing came around I looked at the congregation again. ...

Screen (November 1986)

sition - Rome would not look any more favorably on the festival and has been held back from release until now, when, Lutheran ordination of women (to be followed soon by...

Screen: (October 1986)

certain sectors of the Vatican, for this theology and the new to search the catacomb-like passages of the abbey (surrounded model of church emerging under its inspiration. While the by...

Screen (October 1986)

The panelists themselves are professionals with a personal sues his doctor. Later still, we find ourselves considering Joe stake in the field under consideration. Each is called upon to Jr....

Screen: (September 1986)

Baptist in Amarillo] challenged the right-wing candidate for York - strangely enough, I mingle and make friends with the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention. He was the people...

Screen: (September 1986)

ant practical consequence at the present time concerns the ...

Screen (August 1986)

tragic self-inflicted death of Yuri Soloviev during this period further depleted the ranks of the principal dancers. Screen Withal, the Kirov is still a major company because of...

Screen (July 1986)

reputed bag of defense' attorney's tricks. The concept is worthy...

Screen (June 1986)

of their rooms. (I agreed with Orwell that one must get inside range for a mock assassination of one of its Mafia informers. the whale. There one has some control over what...

Screen (June 1986)

himself. The first half-hour bores us with flat arguments be-...

Screen (May 1986)

But she noted that even when the planters were prosperous, people, while the others - the vast majority - are excluded they did not share their fortunes with the workers. from...

Screen (May 1986)

registers just how much, beneath his benign domestic inten- Screen ...

Screen (April 1986)

Bahamas including free round trip ticket for 2 STOP Five days/4 Nights accommodations for 2 in Freeport. CONGRATULATIONS MRS BELL..." The Law of Inertia was being sorely tested by the Gift...

Screen (March 1986)

Benefactors may not be as fascinating or as serious as Aunt Dan and Lemon, but it is an interesting play impressively performed. It is worth the price of admission to see Mary Beth Hurt moving...

Screen (March 1986)

them into being to lessen a mother's grief, be a reminder of a dead spouse, or bring a dream to fulfillment? Ultimately, the moral response to these questions involves discerning in what wisdom...

Screen (February 1986)

Morris found himself attracted to the technical aspects of the simplicity and his sinister ambiguity. presentation but totally unsatisfied by the lack of emotional "I Love You Dearly,"...

Screen (February 1986)

Hastings, arrayed in a gorgeous Oriental dress, looked radiant. As she introduced me to her friends, she beamed. They all asked, "Are you one of the performers?" and I nodded modestly, enjoying...

Screen (January 1986)

outside of her visible structure." That almost certainly implies, in the not distant future, truly ecumenical -- and increasingly canonically authoritative -convocations or councils in which...

Screen (January 1986)

struggles for "peace and justice in Central America," whatever one's position on liberation theology, also touches many students on a cfimpus with a large Catholic population. It would take a lot...

'SHOAH' RECALLS THE HOLOCAUST (December 1985)

Screen IMPOSSIBLE TASK 'SHOAH' RECALLS THE HOLOCAUST Coleridge claimed in the Biographia Literaria, that the hardest truths to get people to feel deeply are the ones universally acknowledged....

THE OFFICIAL (& UNOFFICIAL) STORY (November 1985)

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IN INDIA Recaste-ing a fated past LUCY KOMISAR Affirmative action, which has caused great controversy in the United States, has this year provoked riots and violence in...

MORE IMAGES OF WOMEN (November 1985)

Screen FOUR DIMENSIONS MORE IMAGES OF WOMEN FALL MOVIES continue to feature strong roles for women The least successful is Jagged Edge, despite the fact that it features a woman m a...

HEROINES & VICTIMS (November 1985)

Screen ART OF THE ACTRESS HEROINES & VICTIMS A COMMON complaint about films in recent years has been the lack of good roles for women. This fall makes up for that. Whatever their defects as...

BAD & PLENTY (October 1985)

Screen BAD & PLENTY ELEGANT HYSTERIA THE ENDING of Plenty is the film's most brilliant touch. A young English agent (Meryl Strccp) who worked with the French Resistance stands breathing in...

AGNES OF GOD (October 1985)

Commonweal: 530 Screen AGNES OF GOD RUMORS OF REVELATIONS Agnes OF GOD is the fall's first Serious Film. It will no doubt be praised, if only for being a welcome relief from the summer's glut of...

Screen (September 1985)

Screen SAVING HUMORS THE AFTERTASTE OF SUMMER Two FINAL NOTES on summer .movies: The best was not a studio feature but the space documentary, The Dream is Alive [ Commonweal, August 9] made...

Sea of Slaughter (September 1985)

Chronicle of extinction SEA 0F SLAUGHTER Farley Mowat Atlantic Monthly Press, $24.95, 438 pp. Tom O'Brien ANIMALS have always become extinct: only now they do so more rapidly. Such is the...

SUMMER ENCOUNTERS (August 1985)

Screen SUMMER ENCOUNTERS FROM HERE TO ETERNITY To review all adventure movie releases this summer, a critic would need the energy of Indiana Jones, the ruthlessness of Conan the Barbarian, the...

THE IMPULSE TO KILL (July 1985)

Screen THE IMPULSE TO KILL 'SYLVIA' & 'PRIZZTS HONOR' Sylvia documents the efforts of Sylvia Ashton-Warner, the New Zealand (and eventually British) educational reformer and artist whose...

BIRTH OF LEGENDS (June 1985)

Screen BIRTH OF LEGENDS UNCHAINING LOSS & HISTORY According to Santayana, "those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it." The question these days is,"Which history?" Use of the...

REEL CHILDREN (May 1985)

Screen REEL CHILDREN STREETWISE & SCREENWISE THE DOCUMENTARY, George Stevens: A Filmmaker's Biography, concerns not just film, but American history; it examines not just one American...

UNTENDER MERCIES (May 1985)

Screen UNTENDER MERCIES KING DAVID FROM THE OUTBACK AUSTRALIAN Director Bruce Beresford has made two fine films: Breaker Morant (1980) and Tender Mercies (1983). As a result, it's difficult to...

TWO HAMS ON WRY (April 1985)

Screen TWO HAMS ON WRY WOODY ALLEN & MICHAEL PALIN WOODY ALLEN has often seemed too narrow for my taste. His sole subjects, he once said in Sleeper, were sex and death. He modified this to Love...

PRIVATE SPIES (April 1985)

Screen PRIVATE SPIES 'FALCON' & 'BLOOD SIMPLE' THE falcon and the snowman is mediocre in the exact sense of the term: excellent in some ways, inadequate in others, it both intrigues and annoys....

'WITNESS' & 'MEAN SEASON' (March 1985)

Screen hit & miss WITNESS1 & 'MEAN SEASON' Between Christmas and the February holiday period, several crime melodramas — some by directors of distinction and others by near amateurs — were...

MRS. SOFFEL & THE ARTIST (March 1986)

Screen DIFFERENT SUNDAYS MRS. SOFFEL & THE ARTIST MRS. SOFFEL should be seen, but not heard. Although based on a true story, the film's plot seems incredible — or at least incredibly naive in its...

ORWELL THAT ENDS WELL (February 1985)

Screen ANOTHER '84 ORWELL THAT ENDS WELL REMEMBER 1984? No, I mean, remember 7984? Remember last January and February, when the year and book seemed so fused (or confused), and a media blitz...

A PAINLESS PASSAGE (February 1985)

Screen LEAN PICKINGS A PAINLESS PASSAGE DAVID LEAN is, in one precise way, a great filmmaker; A Passage to India is not a great film. Fine, yes, but currently it's riding a wave of excessive...

SEASON OF DISAPPOINTMENTS (January 1985)

Screen BIRDY FLIES SEASON OF DISAPPOINTMENTS WHERE ARE the films of yesteryear? I don't mean the 1930s or 1940s, or even the first wave of European films to seize a wide American audience twenty...

THEY CAME UPON A MIDNIGHT CLEAR (January 1985)

Screen SPACED OUT THEY CAME UPON A MIDNIGHT CLEAR IF YOU'VE BEEN watching the televised sky shows lately, you would think the space shuttle designers had copied 2001. Real astronauts tether out...

Screen (December 1984)

Screen IN COLD BLOODBATH "THE KILLING FIELDS" ET AL. A CCORDING TO Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse 5, "there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre." But The Killing Fields comes close....

Screen (November 1984)

United States today.) He told me how Western colonizers introduced few traditional African foods in the formal food market. He gave trees as an example. The immigrants had not been used to eating...

Screen (October 1984)

with his struggles? In my years at Gethsemani his health problems were pretty much in the background; except toward 1966 and 1967, during his hermit period. He was fifty-three years old the last...

Screen (October 1984)

now. They experience this reality in prayer, in worship, in word and sacrament, in reflecting on the New Testament narrations of that life, death and resurrection, and in every genuine attempt to...

Screen (September 1984)

of young professionals with beautiful large homes and well- kept neighborhoods. Another method of handling small schools which do not seem economically viable to develop by themselves is to build...

Screen (June 1984)

be sure; the first time at bat, Hobbs literally knocks the cover off the ball. But the plot is pure "waste land," transplanted to the outfield, though perhaps too neatly. Based on Bernard...

Screen (June 1984)

majorities shown by successive surveys in favor of legalizing divorce or further liberalizing the sale of contraceptives are not to be wondered at. However, they point to a particular challenge...

Screen (May 1984)

Screen I I SIMPLE FUN MOVIES THAT JUST FALL SHORT R OMANCING THE STONE is a big box-office winner that could have been so much better - - one of those films commonly described, but too often...

Screen (May 1984)

be sold to another company. In the second act, we listen as Shelly Levene, the fallen star -- beautifully played by Robert Prosky (but then the performances are uniformly fine) -- traps himself...

Screen (April 1984)

Benavot sees this trend as fostered by a worldwide acceptance of an educational ideology of "individualism," i.e., education ought to meet the multi-faceted and evolving needs of the...

Screen (April 1984)

If Amen Corner was based on a standard maturation play, maturity in several other musicals was encased in an even more familiar plot -- parent gets child, parent loses child, parent gets child....

Screen (March 1984)

Screen UNCERTAIN VERDICT 'SILKWOOD' S ILKWOOD has fine performances hampered by an uneven screenplay. One key to both is Cher, Meryl Streep's supporting actress in the film, who almost steals...

Screen: (February 1984)

quently conscious of. When I talk with my students about the decade of the 1890s and the imposition throughout the South by state legislation of an institutionalized system of Jim Crow, I think...

From HAL to WOPR: (September 1983)

'WAR GAMES' & OUR COMPUTER CULTURE From HAL to WOPR TOM O'BRIEN LIKE THE STOCK MARKET, the media has reached a stage of computer saturation. Last year a film called TRON took place inside a...

Direct from the Vatican: (March 1983)

THE ART OF THE POPES GOES ON TOUR Direct from the Vatican TOM O'BRIEN DESPITE THE HOOPLA that has greeted the Vatican exhibit beginning its American tour at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, you...

A Midnight Clear: (March 1983)

Potent only as allegory A MIDNIGHT CLEAR William Wharton Knopf, $12.95, 242 pp. Tom O'Brien WILLIAM WHARTON - a pseudonym for an American living in a houseboat on the Seine - is one of the...

There's no place like home (October 1982)

FAMILY BREAKUPS ON FILM There's no place like home TOM O'BRIEN WHY DO movies about marital breakup need villains? Although this need was only subtly evident in earlier versions of the breakup...

Very high sci-fi (August 1982)

STEVEN SPIELBERG'S SUBURBAN ANIMISM Very high sci-fi TOM O'BRIEN THE summers CROP of science fiction movies proves two things. First, the price of special effects may have risen from a dime a...

A song of innocence (April 1982)

The Academy Awards A SONG OF INNOCENCE BLAKE & 'CHARIOTS OF FIRE' THERE IS SELDOM wide agreement that the "Best Picture of the Year'' is really the one so designated at the annual Academy Awards....

O'Brien, William James

O'Brien, William V.

O'Byrne, Cathal

O'Callaghan, John P.

O'Cara, James

O'Collins, Gerald

O'Connell, Adelyn

O'Connell, Daniel M.

O'Connell, David

O'Connell, Frank

O'Connell, Jerry

O'Connell, John C.