Liars and Saints

Five things to think about right now: (5) Jack Nicholson. Will he really make a return? It's rumored that he will do Lena Dunham's adaptation of "Toni Erdmann." He insists he does not have memory loss. I have sometimes wondered if his retreat from the spotlight also has to do with MeToo. Famously, he leered at Jennifer Lawrence in the middle of an Oscars interview. And didn't he once impregnate a young woman while still maintaining that he was officially committed to Anjelica Huston? Isn't it likely there are skeletons in Mr. Nicholson's closet? Maybe it's illegal or not-nice to type these things. And I could be wrong. (4) "The Problem with Apu." Mike Reiss, in his recent history of "The Simpsons," defended the creative decisions behind Apu. His argument is this: "The Simpsons" is a show that makes fun of everyone. In the many bizarre plots, the writers frequently make fun of themselves. They also make fun of gay peopl...

Everyone loves this theater. It is among my favorite spots in New York City--maybe second only to the Bronx Zoo. Returning to Film Forum today, on a breezy late-summer afternoon, in the heart of the greatest city of the world, I felt a bit sentimental. Film Forum was my boyfriend for several years. I exited a long, exhausting relationship with an actor who claimed to dislike movies. (An actor who disliked movies. See if you can figure that one out!) Suddenly overwhelmed with free time, I found myself going to Film Forum again and again and again. It is like the best kind of museum; the attention paid to movies, to old trailers, to old promotional posters ... feels scholarly. Unlike other museums, it allows you to sit down while you "consider the goods," and its subject is narrative art, the art of storytelling, which is maybe the only real art in my book. The movie I saw today was "Chinatown," and one of the many treats of my trip to Film Forum was seeing the or...