When there is no choice, when there are no exits from despair, how does one react? Is one even aware? In impoverished Memphis, the “dirty south”, a pimp who has no other alternative to his life but sitting in a car and exchanging flesh for $20, the answer is to seize a set of good circumstances.   How often in life do such opportunities arise? Curiously, the answer is that....

One must be certain to assess the message in itself, and not provide one’s judgment based on a grander context of the artist’s anti-Americanism. Yes, Platoon is anti-American, versus the more anti-war horror portrayed more magnificently in Apocalypse Now. But arriving at this point cannot use the shortcut of Oliver Stone’s extracurricular.   What exactly makes this film....

Are the turns of a simple life crucially important to tell? The Cider House Rules answers in the affirmative, yet we are left scratching our heads as to what is meant by the display, other than the eponymous “heart-felt”. In other words, this is female cat-nip in the same vein as Steel Magnolias.   The main critique with “heart-felt” drama is that it ends where it begins;....