Adventures in Words

                         Mads Mikkelsen in "Another Round." Photo via IMDB In the name of science, four male high school teachers hitting their 40s embark on an experiment. One of them has read a study saying humans function better with a constant blood alcohol level of .05 percent. They're also reminded of Ernest Hemingway who apparently drank daily to write, but then stopped at 8 p.m. so he'd be fresh to write again in the morning. So they decide to try it out. Drinking every day before teaching their classes. What could go wrong? Even though you think you know the answer to that question, the premise was intriguing enough for me to renew my Hulu subscription, at least long enough to check out “Another Round,” Denmark's contender for a foreign-language Academy Award that also won a best-director nomination for Thomas Vinterberg. Mads Mikkelsen anchors the film with magnetic charisma that is brooding in one moment, achingly vulnerable in the next. But his three c

Carey Mulligan in “Promising Young Woman”  Focus Features photo via IMDB It's no accident that relations between men and women have been described through the ages in terms of war. The war between the sexes, the never-ending battle. Martial and marital are practically the same word, easily confused with a few careless keystrokes. Songwriters pen love songs, not lust songs, trying to put a wholesome, cheery face on what in reality is a hopelessly tangled hairball of emotions. When things go wrong, as they often do, it can result in what's called a broken heart. That's another euphemism; the real consequences range from stink-eye divorce settlements to tabloid headlines and political upheavals. (Et tu, Andrew?) In a recent release from Lion's Roar – a Buddhist website that has me on its email list – a Burmese meditation master calls sex, “gross, base and disgusting.” I think it was Larry McMurtry who ventured that people without a sense of humor probably shouldn't eve

  Helena Zengel and Tom Hanks in “News of the World” Universal Studios photo via IMDB Tom Hanks has described the character he plays in “News of the World” as the Old West's answer to Twitter. His Civil War veteran, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd,  travels across Texas in the 1870s, reciting newspaper stories from faraway places to inform the inhabitants of the dusty frontier towns of goings-on in places they can only imagine. War heroism notwithstanding, Captain Kidd is cut from Mark Twain cloth, part storyteller, part entertainer, part wry observer of the human condition. In his travels, he crosses paths with a 10-year-old girl (Helena Zengel), orphaned after the Kiowas murdered her parents and then raised her. She doesn't speak English and isn't keen about being rescued by Captain Kidd.  He's not all that enthused either about having to deliver her to relatives across the state. Their journey, told with the sweep and grandeur of great bygone Hollywood Westerns, provides