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Jean Oppenheimer

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The Look of Hate

Arthur Miller fixes his Focus on prejudice in 1940s Brooklyn.

By Jean Oppenheimer
Nov 8, 2001

It is difficult to imagine a more timely film than Focus; its message about intolerance resonates in a post-September 11 world in ways the filmmakers never anticipated. Adapted from Arthur Miller's little-known 1945 novel of the same title, Focus looks at what happens to a society when basically decent people...
Left Behind

A Home Alone for the grown-up set, Italian style.

By Jean Oppenheimer
Sep 6, 2001

The Italian film Bread and Tulips is a first cousin once removed of the American comedy Home Alone. A tremendous hit in Italy (it won nine Donatello awards last year, the Italian equivalent of the Oscars), it concerns a woman who, on a bus holiday with her family, accidentally gets...
Dirty Work

A tale of prison gardeners is this summer's sweetest feel-good comedy.

By Jean Oppenheimer
Aug 30, 2001

Only committed horticulturists and compulsive readers of the New York Times obituaries (this writer falls into the latter category) likely noticed the recent passing of Rosemary Verey, an aristocratic Englishwoman whose sophisticated but egalitarian approach to gardening took some of the stuffiness out of what previously had been a rather...
The Blue Bluegrass of Home

In Songcatcher, the music of Appalachia comes alive.

By Jean Oppenheimer
Jun 28, 2001

Even more than the recent Depression-era comedy O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the turn-of-the-century drama Songcatcher is an absolute treasure trove of old-timey, traditional folk music. Set in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Appalachia in the year 1907, the film follows city-bred musicologist Dr. Lily Penleric (Janet McTeer) as she...
Road Warriors

Amores Perros sears its characters (dogs included) to a crisp as it leads them to a kind of redemption.

By Jean Oppenheimer
Apr 12, 2001

One doesn't watch Amores Perros (Love's a Bitch) so much as absorb it -- like a body blow. "I wanted to make a movie that smelled of filth," Alejandro González Inárritu has said about his feature directorial debut. He has succeeded beyond perhaps even his wildest dreams. One of this...
Lifting the Veil

From Iran, a film about women has little dialogue but a lot to say.

By Jean Oppenheimer
Apr 5, 2001

On the day she turns nine years old, an Iranian girl must bid childhood farewell. Male playmates are banished; girlish dresses are exchanged for a loose-fitting chador to hide the curves the wearer will develop as her body matures, and a rigid segregation of the sexes is suddenly enforced. Increasingly,...
Misguided Passions

The ostensibly comedic Malena is slaphappy and sour.

By Jean Oppenheimer
Feb 1, 2001

Watching Malena is like watching a donkey being beaten for ninety minutes, so egregiously is the title character treated and so powerless does she appear against her offenders. That the abuse is treated in a comedic fashion for a good part of the film makes it even more unacceptable. Perhaps...