To Rome with Love

Written & Directed by: Woody Allen
Full credits at IMDb

Whether it was deliberate, it makes sense that Woody Allen would follow his greatest commercial success since 1986's Hannah and Her Sisters with something similar. Like the $56 million-grossing Midnight in Paris, his latest, To Rome with Love, is a romantic portrait of a great old European capital that acknowledges both its yesterdays and today. Rome isn't about nostalgia like Paris, but the city's past is present in every frame, conspicuous on every street and in every facade, serving as the backdrop for the uniquely modern misadventures of a diverse group of contemporary Romans: natives and transplants, both Italian and international.

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The Tortured

Directed by: Robert Lieberman
Written by: Marek Posival
Full credits at IMDb

There are two major arguments against the death penalty: that it's inherently wrong for the state to kill its own people, and that it's possible to kill an innocent man. The former is philosophical; the latter, scientific, a matter of evidence. As such, I think the latter makes for duller, more superficial art. Others disagree. Take The Tortured, a thinking man's movie for dummies, which isn't about the death penalty but vigilantism and torture, though its makers are faced with a similar choice: to attack the issue from a purely moral perspective, or to look at possible if unlikely problems in practice. Guess which way it goes?

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Dark Horse

Written & Directed by: Todd Solondz
Full credits at IMDb

America loves a winner, but Todd Solondz loves a loser. His films—from Welcome to the Dollhouse to Life During Wartime—have been dedicated to the country's creeps and weirdoes, perhaps none more so than his latest, which even takes its name from that most idealized hero—the long shot, the nobody. The essential question here is to whom the title really refers. I don't think it's the protagonist.

That's Abe (Jordan Gelber), a sum of super-loser signifiers: he's overweight and balding; he collects action figures, holds a shitty office job, and lives with his parents (Mia Farrow and Christopher Walken, who're often seen watching Seinfeld reruns, a funhouse reflection of their subdued suburban dysfunction). Saddest of all, he listens to nothing but optimistic contemporary bubblegum pop. At a wedding, Abe meets not-cute a morose woman, Miranda (Selma Blair), whom he asks posthaste to marry him. "I want to want you," she tells him tearfully; "That's good enough for me," he replies.

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