Johann Koehler

It’s October again, which means that we’re kicking off another month of horror-themed movies here at RBC! The first in the series is a new interpretation on the alien femme fatale story, in Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin. The action begins with a motorcyclist bringing a lifeless woman to the back of his van. There, […]

Next year, election season will bring with it a painful reminder of the last time someone named Bush made us pay close attention to Florida. This weekend’s movie recommendation, HBO’s Recount, dramatizes the crisis of political legitimacy occasioned by hanging, lingering, and downright stubborn chads up to and including Bush v. Gore. The film was produced […]

This week’s movie recommendation continues last week’s theme of court-related drama. As the credits are still rolling, we watch a deeply distressed young woman named Sarah Tobias exit a roadside bar in an urgent search for help. Tobias has just been raped in full view of the bar’s patrons, and in this week’s movie recommendation, […]

The courtroom drama can be a pretty tired plot vehicle for many, perhaps justifiably so. It sometimes seems that the clichés are so well rehearsed that even the counter-clichés appear just as threadbare: people redeeming themselves through the law (e.g., see here and here) are about as compelling as people damning themselves because of it […]

Martin and John Michael McDonagh have earned an estimable reputation for themselves in Hollywood with their offbeat character studies that traverse action, comedy, and drama. Although I have already praised The Guard at RBC, most will be familiar with the work of the younger brother, Martin McDonagh, for In Bruges. This week’s film recommendation is Martin’s most […]

The most remarkable thing about Tina Fey’s SNL skit about Sarah Palin’s notorious Couric interview wasn’t the accuracy of her impersonation. It was the fact that the joke spoke for itself so plainly in the verbatim repetition of Palin’s words. If there’s a joke in this week’s film recommendation, it’s of a similar form. Julianne […]

While the opening credits roll, we watch the latest batch of first-year law students find their seats in the classroom at Harvard Law School. Rather than beginning the first lecture with some cliché about how only one person is ‘cut out’ to graduate from law school among the one in your seat and the two […]

Originally trained as a visual designer, Satyajit Ray is regarded in Indian cinema history as one of its greatest directors, and as the auteur responsible for creating the first domestic film to acquire success abroad. That film, which is the first of both Ray’s career and of a trilogy named after its protagonist “Apu,” is […]

You probably never gave it a moment’s thought. But all great films, without exception, contain an important element of ‘no reason.’ You know why? Because life itself is made up of tons of ‘no reason.’ As a car slowly drives toward the camera, it knocks over a dozen chairs placed in its path before it […]

Fred Zinnemann adapts Frederick Forsyth’s thriller The Day of the Jackal (1973) in the weekend film recommendation that closes this month’s series of conspiracy-themed movies. The story opens with a re-telling of the failed attempt to assassinate Charles de Gaulle by the OAS, a far-right group angered by Algerian independence. In frustration and desperation, the […]