The Problem of the Coma in “The Big Sick”

As a cinema host and as a fan of the romantic comedy genre, I’d been looking forward to The Big Sick for months.  The star and co-writer (with Emily V. Gordon) of the film, Kumail Nanjiani, has frequently remarked on his fondness for Hugh Grant’s romantic comedies.  I hoped that Nanjiani’s clear passion for such…

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Tuesday Talkback: Gifted

Whenever I introduce my undergraduate students to the classic maternal melodrama, Stella Dallas, I always feel a little sad that they don’t like the protagonist as much as I do. Stella, played by the brilliant Barbara Stanwyck, is a young, working-class woman, who marries a much wealthier man named Stephen after some practical, strategic wooing….

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Tuesday Talkback: The Zookeeper’s Wife

In the most recent Tuesday Talkback, the SteelStacks audience and I considered Niki Caro’s 2017 Holocaust film, The Zookeeper’s Wife.  Based on real events, this movie tells the story of a Polish woman and her husband (Antonina and Jan Zabinski), who run a Warsaw zoo at the dawn of World War II.  When the Nazis…

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