LET’S MOVIE: Gaslight (1944)

Old movies have always been a part of my life. Ever since I was a little kid, I have been watching them. My parents let me see Rear Window  and North by Northwest before I was five. I watched them over and over and over. And I still watch White Christmas any time of the year. The acting,…

ACCENT: THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN by Paula Hawkins

Comparisons to Gone Girl are inevitable so let me start there. Yes, this is a suburban suspense, with a (perhaps) unreliable narrator at the heart of it. She views her old home from the commuter train everyday. My head leaning against the carriage window, I watch these houses roll past me like a tracking shot in…

ACCENT: BURIAL RITES by Hannah Kent

I’ve never read anything quite like this debut novel from the young author Hannah Kent. Set in early Victorian-era Iceland, it features a convicted murderess and the family assigned to house her until her execution. I couldn’t help but be reminded of the original 3:10 to Yuma.  A citizen us entrusted with keeping and safely transporting…

REVIEW: THERE WAS AN OLD WOMAN by Hallie Ephron

  Perhaps what makes this novel so frightening is that it could happen to anyone.  The devious plan is so deceptively simple that it barely registers as out of place. The narrative alternates between two feisty heroines — Mina, an elderly resident of the quiet Higgs Point neighborhood in the Bronx and Evie, a young,…

REVIEW: GLORIOUS 39 (2011)

Glorious indeed.  This is a wholly original, impeccable new film from writer/director Stephen Poliakoff.  A stunning cast illuminates a finite moment in English history — the summer of 1939, on the eve of the unthinkable.   The story centers on the Keyes family, and is told from the point of view of the eldest daughter,…