Boy A

Great films can change your life. They can expand your world and enhance your appreciation for the scope, depth, and nuance of art. Unfortunately, there's a downside to seeing great films too: they provide a measure against which ordinary films come up short. Steven Soderbergh's adaptation of Solaris is fine on its own, but if you've seen Andrei Tarkvosky's adaptation you can't help but regard it as second rate. Similarly, Walter Hill's Last Man Standing might be tolerable so long as you've never seen Sergio Leone's Fistful of Dollars or Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo. Unfortunately, this phenomenon isn't limited to remakes. Scenes of couples quarreling in public inevitably invite comparison to Mike Nichols' Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and all chamber dramas risk being measured against those of Carl Th. Dreyer or Ingmar... [read full story]