MOVIE REVIEWS
Read reviews for “The Rhythm Section,” “Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words” and “Gretel & Hansel”
`The Rhythm Section'
R 1:49
`The Rhythm Section” opens, more or less, on a gun (and silencer) pointed, somewhat shakily, at a man's head.
After the familiar appearance of the on-screen title “8 months earlier,” we meet the owner of that itchy trigger finger: Stephanie Patrick, a once-promising student at Oxford now supporting a drug habit through prostitution in a sordid London flat. Stephanie — played by Blake Lively, gamely giving the sordidness her all — is entertaining a client (Raza Jaffrey) who just wants to talk, in this case about the fact that the plane crash that killed Stephanie's family was because of not mechanical failure but a terrorist bomb.
The client is actually a freelance journalist, and he soon welcomes Stephanie into his apartment, which is decorated like the lair of a serial killer, with walls filled with newspaper clippings and photos of the other dead passengers.
So why has he chosen Stephanie, who seems the least reliable person with whom to share this kind of information?
That is an excellent question. And the simple answer, if you manage to sit through the cheesy, predictable thriller is that there would otherwise be no story to tell.
— Michael O'Sullivan The Washington Post
`Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words'
PG-13 1:56
A new Clarence Thomas documentary opens with a clip from the Supreme Court Justice's contentious 1991 Senate confirmation hearing, in which we hear Sen. Howell Heflin, D-Alabama, refer to Thomas, with understatement, as “somewhat of an enigma.”
In the intervening years, Thomas has done little to make himself less of one.
He rarely grants interviews, and on the court, he is known for going years without asking a single question during oral arguments.
By that measure, it is welcome to have “Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words,” for which Thomas and his wife, Virginia, sat with filmmaker Michael Pack for more than 30 hours of interviews.
One throughline is Thomas' political evolution, beginning with an abortive stint as a Catholic seminarian — the lone black student — that ended when he withdrew after hearing a racist remark.
That was followed by his self-described leftward radicalization, subsequently abandoned, along with his anger, when he became what he calls a “lazy libertarian” at Yale Law School, then a left-leaning registered Democrat and, years later, a reliable member of the conservative wing of the Supreme Court. As common as such transitions may be in the life of any 71-year-old, “Created Equal” doesn't offer many insights, at least not in a deeply satisfying way, as to how and why he has changed.
As it inevitably must, the film eventually works its way back to the confirmation hearings, during which sometimes lurid allegations of sexual harassment were made by attorney Anita Hill, who once worked with Thomas. And Thomas again refers to the proceedings as a “high-tech lynching,” orchestrated because he was the “wrong kind of black guy,” as he characterizes his opponents' views.
This part of the film is the most interesting segment. But “Created Equal” is, by design, a lopsided affair, with Pack — a conservative filmmaker and former president of the right-leaning think tank the Claremont Institute — clearly sympathetic to Thomas' self-characterizations. Pack makes no attempt, for example, to present arguments that might counterbalance the claim of a lynching, however metaphorical.
There is no mention, for instance, of other women who might have corroborated Hill's claims.
But “Created Equal” isn't that kind of documentary. Rather, it's meant as an opportunity for Thomas to have his full say, without challenge.
— Michael O'Sullivan The Washington Post
`Gretel & Hansel'
PG-13, 1:27, review not available.