Email Author Jessica Winter

2004 Stories by Jessica Winter

• Pound of flash: Pacino master class can't save Merchant

  published December 21, 2004

  In adapting the Shakespeare play most often filed under Problematic, director Michael Radford may resist the usual lure to contemporize the Bard,... More >>

• Touch Of Evil

  published December 14, 2004

  No topic can summon a torch-bearing mob quite so swiftly as pedophilia, but Nicole Kassell's ambitious debut feature absorbs a subject that... More >>

• Money Shot

  published December 7, 2004

  Every novelist must hunt his great white whale before he can dock at the doorstep of the canon, and the Australian writer Elliot Perlman has... More >>

• Film

  published November 30, 2004

  A photojournalist who came to Calcutta in the late '90s to document its red-light district, Zana Briski eventually befriended many of the... More >>

• Love Is A Battlefield

  published November 16, 2004

  The title and the personnel may seem to threaten another kandy-kolored panorama of retro-Parisian romantic whimsy, but the inevitable cinematic... More >>

• Final Fantasy

  published November 2, 2004

  To raise fact-checking quibbles with a film that declares itself "inspired by true events" may seem overly pedantic, but one has to wonder what... More >>

• Spills and Thrills: Rom-Com Heroine Falls in Love, on Face

  published November 2, 2004

  In Bridget Jones's Diary (2001), the gaffe-prone protagonist negotiated an obstacle course of minor humiliations before she could scramble... More >>

• Film

  published November 2, 2004

  Almost 40 years after Michael Caine sauntered across screens as the devil-may-care Cockney cad, the new Alfie gears for the U.S. market,... More >>

• Letter From Munrovia

  published November 2, 2004

  The archetypal Alice Munro protagonist is the smart restless girl from a poor small burg where nobody goes to college—or that girl grown up,... More >>

• Full Metal Racket

  published October 26, 2004

  Where have you gone, Mr. Incredible? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you—your brains, brawn, and sonorous vox so indispensible in crisis,... More >>

• Sex, Actually

  published October 26, 2004

  "I don't know what attracts me to biopics because I don't like them that much," says Bill Condon, who has followed Gods and Monsters, his... More >>

• Birth Control

  published October 26, 2004

  A willowy princess of the old-money Upper East Side must confront a 10-year-old boy who claims to be her dead husband in Birth, which... More >>

• Dark Comedy Flails as Its Reindeer Games Go Horribly Awry

  published October 12, 2004

  This ghastly comedy emits the subliminal whine of a sucking chest wound as shallow ad exec Ben Affleck, freshly dumped by his shouty girlfriend... More >>

• More, Now, Again: J-Horror Remake Keeps J, Forgets Horror

  published October 12, 2004

  Just as Gore Verbinski's The Ring did two years back, The Grudge seeks to cash in on a profitable J-horror franchise—this time... More >>

• Girl Power Challenges Gender-Bending Restoration Actors

  published September 28, 2004

  The screen adaptation of Jeffrey Hatcher's play Compleat Female Stage Beauty takes many a historical liberty in yoking together the... More >>

• Intensive Care

  published September 28, 2004

  LONDON—Matter-of-fact and heartbreaking, Vera Drake provides a stoic account of good intentions gone awry through the ordeal of... More >>

• Film

  published September 28, 2004

  Faced with Tim Story's dire buddy comedy, which pairs rogue NYC cab driver Queen Latifah and abrasively inept cop Jimmy Fallon, the mind... More >>

• Sympathy for the Rebel

  published September 28, 2004

  TORONTO—Given his sympathetic, finely nuanced portrayal of the young Che Guevara in Walter Salles's The Motorcycle Diaries (in... More >>

• Child of the Revolution

  published September 14, 2004

  Do legends die a second death once Madonna has played dress-up with their image? Marilyn Monroe and Che Guevara may want to know. Both did some... More >>

• Double Fault: Aged 30-15, Two Mismatched Pros Can't Hit It

  published September 7, 2004

  In his autobiography, You Cannot Be Serious, John McEnroe pauses a moment to acknowledge Rod Frawley, the Australian tennis player who, at... More >>

• Luddite Lovers Only Disconnect in Coincidence-Choked Thriller

  published August 24, 2004

  Despite its noxious intrusions into every corner of the public realm, the cell phone in the last decade has undoubtedly provided a boon to (among... More >>

• Only Connect . . . and Connect . . .

  published August 10, 2004

  "As an experienced editor," proclaims down-at-heel London literary agent Timothy Cavendish, "I disapprove of flashbacks, foreshadowings, and... More >>

• Bel Canto

  published July 27, 2004

  Summertime has arrived in Maureen Howard's tetralogy of seasonal novels, now three-quarters complete, but the blue skies and warm winds here... More >>

• Suicidal Librarian, Chain-Smoking Slob Discover Life's Elusive Symmetries

  published July 27, 2004

  Life or death—which one has the nastier sense of humor? A couple of the characters in Pen-ek Ratanaruang's Last Life in the Universe... More >>

• Old Pros Lend Credibility to Young Lovebirds' Magical Hysteria Tour

  published June 15, 2004

  Big-lunged lovers Allie (Rachel McAdams) and Noah (Ryan Gosling)—pampered Southern debutante and rough-earth mill worker,... More >>