Pawel Pawilkowski’s stark black-and-white Polish film, Cold War, charts the course of a tempestuous romance between two people temperamentally at odds — Wiktor (Tomasz Kot), a serious-minded musician who strives for artistic freedom, and Zula (Joanna Kulig), a flighty dancer and singer who’s content with the status quo. The lovers are loosely modelled after Pawilkowski’s late […]
A lavish period piece set in early 18th century Britain, The Favourite brims with intrigue, personality clashes, power struggles and secret sexual liaisons. At the center of it all are Queen Anne (Olivia Colman), the last Stuart monarch; Sarah, the Duchess of Marlborough (Rachel Weisz), her childhood friend and closest advisor, and Abigail Hill (Emma Stone), […]
The emergence of right-wing populist fringe groups in Europe today could well owe its origins to one man — Benito Mussolini, who ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943. Some have dismissed him as a buffoon, but this would be a false and misleading appraisal of the architect of fascism, which plunged continental Europe into darkness. A […]
Steve King, a nine-term Republican congressman from Iowa, should have known better than to conflate Western civilization with white supremacy. In a recent interview with The New York Times, he put his foot in his mouth when he said, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?” His subsequent observation concerning the […]
Derek Black, the great white hope of the neo-Nazi movement in the United States, disavowed his beliefs in 2013, transformed himself and disappeared from view. Eli Saslow, a Washington Post reporter who wondered what had happened, tracked him down and interviewed Black and his family and friends. Saslow’s compelling book, Rising Out of Hatred: The […]
It’s the highest mountain peak in Switzerland accessible by train. At 3,454 metres above sea level, Jungfraujoch, commonly referred to as the Top of Europe, towers majestically over the alpine village of Grindelwald in the Bernese Alps. Peaks of this dizzying height normally can only be reached by expert climbers. But Jungfraujoch can be accessed […]
Less than a month after President Donald Trump abruptly announced the withdrawal of 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria within 30 days, the United States has adjusted its Syrian policy, much to Israel’s relief. Trump’s announcement on December 19 alarmed Israel, which feared that a precipitous U.S. pullout would leave a dangerous vacuum in Syria that Iran, Israel’s fiercest […]
A low-key but vibrant film about quiet desperation and survival, Marielle Heller’s Can You Ever Forgive Me? is never less than absorbing. The chief protagonist, New York-based author Lee Israel, finds herself in dire straits in the early 1990s. Israel’s last book about cosmetics mogul Estee Lauder has bombed and, cruelly enough, publishers are shunning her. Unable to earn […]
Bjorn Runge’s film, The Wife, is a complex, compelling and nuanced portrait of Joe and Joan Castleman, an elderly couple whose marriage is sorely tested by an unexpected telephone call in the dead of night and a glittering awards ceremony thousands of kilometres away from their home. It’s 1992 and Joe (Jonathan Pryce), an acclaimed […]
When Israelis head to the polls on April 9 for the second time in four years to cast their ballots in a general election, they’ll be confronted by an array of political, social and economic issues. This time around, they’ll have to factor one more consideration into their calculations: the criminal charges of corruption and […]