This is the sixteenth year I’ve written an annual Top 10 list, which means I’ve been compiling them for over half my life. While the exercise in some way feels more arbitrary than ever, in that I’m now able to look back on those initial lists from more than a decade ago and recognize how […]
Danny Baldwin’s Top 10 Films of 2017 Read More »
Neil Jordan’s “Byzantium,” the filmmaker’s first return to vampires since 1994’s massive Cruise-Pitt success “Interview with the Vampire,” is the best kind of genre film, which is to say the kind of genre film that makes you forget it’s a genre film. Yes, we’ve encountered variations of this story onscreen dozens of times before, but
Review: “Byzantium” Read More »
Peter Weir’s 2010 film “The Way Back” is a magnificent true story that just so happens not to be true. Based on “The Long Walk” by Gulag survivor Slawomir Rawicz, the film concerns a group of Soviet prisoners in 1939 who make a run for freedom. Problem is, they start in the middle of Siberia, trekking south towards hopeful freedom. By the time the surviving escapees reach safety, they’ve walked over 4,000 miles.
Rawicz’s book was apparently inspiring enough to sell over half a million copies upon publication in 1956, though recent records have indicated that the author did not escape from the Gulag, but was released in 1942. So the film was at least inspired by, if not directly based, on the tale of a liar, one who might have found that merely surviving the Gulag wasn’t itself an interesting enough story. We’re commonly moved by entirely fictional stories, but does a lie accepted as truth deserve the same respect?
Streaming Pick: “The Way Back” (2010) Read More »
