In the Nick of Time: Films of this moment and others

After a 40+ year career as professor teaching English and Film, Jonathan Price began publishing film reviews for a blog. This book collects these reviews and others written over the last six years, analyzing the value and effect and milieu of films as disparate as "Dunkirk," "Le Week-end," and "Life of Pi." A reader who is an occasional viewer may learn of intriguing, unusual, and little-known films like "The Rover" she may have missed, but may also discover, by reading, new beauties as well as blemishes in films with which she thinks she was familiar. She can learn about adultery as well as viager, the different film versions of "The Great Gatsby" . . . and a neglected film from many years past, "Return of the Secaucus 7"; the book defends a film such as "Maudie," adjudged by another critic as the worst of the year. The author makes a serious attempt to comment on various films genres, such as war films and dystopian epics. But he also discusses a variety of motifs of interest to the casual film viewer as well as the aficionado, such as what value there might be in comparing a film to the book from which it may have emerged. Though this collection is brief rather than exhaustive or comprehensive, it is meant to be provocative, intriguing, informative, and memorable. Have you seen and thought about these films? Go study, then go re-view the films in whatever format they may be available.