- Winter Sleep
With the Oscar-nominated WinterSleep, Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan performs the rare feat ofproducing a visually interesting film that achieves novelistic complexity withoutbogging down. The increasingly harassed protagonist is a middle-aged actor whoretired to write and supervise the family properties in rural Anatolia. Winter Sleep is Chekhovian in itssympathy for personal, moral and aesthetic issues, and set in a bleak, rocky,mountainous terrain whose buildings seem carved from the landscape.
- Hating Obama
When a rabid Republican shouted “Liar!” at Barack Obamaduring the State of the Union address, many wandered whether this wassymptomatic of declining civility or a manifestation of racism. Hating Obama shows that the level ofvituperative abuse hurled at the president results more from his complexionthan his policies. Witness footage of the maniacal Ted Nugent calling Obama a“Communist subhuman mongrel” and America’s wealthiest dunce, Donald Trump,blathering on about birth certificates.
- “Sgt. Bilko/ThePhil Silvers Show: The Second Season”
In the midst of the Cold War and McCarthyism, “Sgt. Bilko”(1955-1959) was a weekly dose of subversion served with a smile. Comedian PhilSilvers was brilliant in the title role, playing an army non-com running afloating craps game out of his barracks. Bilko never obeyed a regulation ifgiven a choice and mocked patriotic pieties. Unlike some sitcoms from the1950s, much of “Sgt. Bilko’s” humor is still funny several lifetimes later.
- The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry
Exiled German-Jewish director Robert Siodmak reached anartistic peak by the time of The StrangeAffair of Uncle Harry (1945). George Sanders stars as an aging bachelor of impoverishedNew England gentry who falls in love with a beautiful, sophisticated youngerwoman. A possessive sister thwarts his chance for happiness. Despite atacked-on Hollywood ending, Uncle Harry,out on Blu-ray, explores the psychological dynamic of love as suffocation andfamily as a hothouse of resentment.