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 Robert De Niro as a former slave trader new to the religious fold, politics—a treaty…
Category: Films
What Happens in Italy Stays in Italy
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 trip where their assignment is to write about food, or friendship, or friendship through food…
Roughing It in the Galapagos Islands
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 Iceland, or owning an antiques shop in Hamilton, N.Y. When I take the Youthful Adventurer…
Iceland at Night: Iceland Bright and Dark
Facing long evenings in Iceland in the winter, the Bashful Adventurer contemplates Iceland at night
Paris, Incidentally
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 might be going. So I marvel at a frothy spy movie starring Kevin Costner—3 Days…
Film Glimpse of Moscow and a Famous Defector
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 a bad guy named Viktor. Enjoy a few glimpses of Moscow (although much of the…
Paris as Protagonist
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) as more annoying characters. The wife seems not to care for the easygoing complacency of…
Katharine Hepburn’s Summertime Romance
Get ready for a trip to Venice by watching the Katharine Hepburn film Summertime.
How We Want Woodstock
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 it happens to be full. I wonder whether I’d be as uptight as Catherine Keener…
Saving Lily Bart in San Francisco?
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 and desperately needs to do so again to save herself after her husband, played by…