Christopher Orr
Christopher Orr is The New Republic's online film critic. He's also written on film for L.A. Weekly, Salon, The Atlantic Monthly, and The New York Sun. He came to TNR as Executive Editor in 2000, and has worked as an editor at The Washington Post, The Atlantic Monthly, U.S. News and World Report, and Mother Jones.
Post date 10 21, 07
Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally) is living the American dream. He went to NYU, found well-paying work as a chemical engineer, married his gorgeous college sweetheart, Isabella Fields (Reese Witherspoon), moved to the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 /><st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Chicago</st1:City></st1:place> suburbs, and has one poster-worthy child with another on the way. There are just two problems: First, though he’s lived in the States for 20 years, Anwar was born in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Egypt</st1:country-region></st1:place>; second, his cell phone has evidently been called on more than one occasion by a terrorist named Rashid. And so, returning home from a conference in <st1:country-region w:st="on">South Africa</st1:country-region>, Anwar is approached by polite security officers at <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Reagan</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">National</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">Airport</st1:PlaceType></st1:place>, who lead him through a doorway off the concourse where considerably less polite men in black face masks throw a sack over his head. He’s shackled and interrogated briefly by a government bureaucrat (J.K. Simmons) before being tossed on a plane to North Africa and a dungeon-like detention facility where he is stripped, beaten, waterboarded, and electrocuted by a thuggish local security chief (Yigal Naor). |
Post date 10 21, 07
Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally) is living the American dream. He went to NYU, found well-paying work as a chemical engineer, married his gorgeous college sweetheart, Isabella Fields (Reese Witherspoon), moved to the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 /><st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Chicago</st1:City></st1:place> suburbs, and has one poster-worthy child with another on the way. There are just two problems: First, though he’s lived in the States for 20 years, Anwar was born in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Egypt</st1:country-region></st1:place>; second, his cell phone has evidently been called on more than one occasion by a terrorist named Rashid. And so, returning home from a conference in <st1:country-region w:st="on">South Africa</st1:country-region>, Anwar is approached by polite security officers at <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Reagan</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">National</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">Airport</st1:PlaceType></st1:place>, who lead him through a doorway off the concourse where considerably less polite men in black face masks throw a sack over his head. He’s shackled and interrogated briefly by a government bureaucrat (J.K. Simmons) before being tossed on a plane to North Africa and a dungeon-like detention facility where he is stripped, beaten, waterboarded, and electrocuted by a thuggish local security chief (Yigal Naor). |
Post date 10 19, 07
<EM>Gone Baby Gone</EM> begins, simply--if horribly--enough with the taking of a little girl. Four-year-old Amanda McCready is plucked from her bed in Boston's working-class Dorchester neighborhood one night while her mother, Helene (Amy Ryan), is apparently at a neighbor's house watching television. The police undertake a massive hunt for Amanda, but their efforts are not enough for the little girl's aunt (Amy Madigan), who seeks out private eyes Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) to help with the investigation. "Do you know people in the neighborhood who don't talk to the police?" she asks Kenzie. "Yeah, one or two," he answers. |
Post date 10 14, 07
We learn a great many things in the opening minutes of Elizabeth: The Golden Age, the sequel to 1998's Elizabeth. The year is 1585. Elizabeth I (Cate Blanchett) is still queen of England, and a Protestant (which, in the film's lexicon, roughly translates to tolerant, open-minded agnostic). |
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