Fifteen years ago, James Cameron turned a tragic maritime disaster into a romantic disaster epic cum box-office-shattering pop-culture phenomenon. “Titanic” was the first film ever to gross over a billion dollars worldwide and scooped up 11 Oscars. It confirmed Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet as rising A-list stars and even made Billy Zane briefly relevant, a feat that I think might be even more impressive than the film’s revolutionary special effects.
Simin and Nader are married. Simin and Nader want a divorce. There is a simple solution to this problem, yes? Get a divorce. Huzzah, we’re done! Boy, that was a short movie.
“Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor —
Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief.”
There is something sinister beneath the superficial innocence of this traditional British counting rhyme. Or perhaps the very fact that I think so speaks to the influence of author John le Carré and his classic 1974 spy thriller, “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.”
In its very first shot, Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo” sucks you into a magical, wonderful new world and refuses to let you go. The camera pans over the 1930’s Parisian skyline, but this is not the “real” Paris; it is the enchanted city of lights and love that Americans have been so fond of imagining for decades now (we saw it most recently in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris”).
