Contemplating Colonialism, Missionaries, Politics, Priests Fresh from a trip to Peru, I watch The Mission, a 1986 film about missionaries in South America and their efforts to convert indigenous people to Christianity. Starring Jeremy Irons as a nonviolent priest and…
A Mid-Life Road Trip Everyone Wants to Take Looking for escape on a chilly mid-winter day, one might reach for a copy of The Trip to Italy (2014), starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon playing themselves on a high-end road…
Relocating Isn’t Quite the Same as Vacationing No matter where I go, I always try to picture myself living in that place, like by Hemingway’s pool in Key West, Fla., or with a little apartment by the Blue Lagoon in…
Facing long evenings in Iceland in the winter, the Bashful Adventurer contemplates Iceland at night
I prepare for a trip the way I get ready for everything else: by reading, talking about it, watching movies. I don’t always need the intensity of historical accounts; something light sometimes suffices. I just like to see where I…
For a quick escape, watch Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014) featuring Chris Pine (Captain Kirk in the new Star Trek) as the lead character, Keira Knightley as the love interest, Kevin Costner as the fatherly mentor, and Kenneth Branagh as…
The City of Light plays a leading role in the 2013 film, Le Week-End, about a long-married British couple celebrating—or, at least, observing—an anniversary. It’s sort of a Before Midnight with a slightly older couple (Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan)…
Watching Peace, Love & Misunderstanding (2012), I remember how I’d like my ideal life to be, full of Jane Fonda as a hip grandmother, happily cluttered houses fostering free-range chickens, and women with whom to howl at the moon whenever…
Watching Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine on DVD, I am once again, and surprisingly so, drawn to San Francisco. An unlikely tourism vehicle, the film focuses on a selfish and largely unlikeable society woman played by Cate Blanchett who married up…
