theresa russell

Straight Time

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Max, fresh out of jail

1978’s Straight Time would be a properly great film if it just stuck to being one story – about a felon trying to go straight. But instead it decides about halfway through that more juice can be squeezed by telling another story after the first one. The felon goes back to his old ways. Some exciting holdups and car chases and so on are the result, but a great film goes down the pan, to be replaced by one that’s merely OK. Massive pity. They’d be two great films, in fact. But the first is where the real meat is, in the performance of Dustin Hoffman as the habitual thief who gets out … Read more

Insignificance

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Michael Emil and Theresa Russell in Insignificance

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 14 March Albert Einstein born, 1879 On this day in 1879, Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany, to Hermann and Pauline Einstein. His father was an engineer who founded his own company selling electrical products which ran on DC current, and would eventually go bust when alternating current won the so-called “current wars”. The son, too, was interested in invisible motive forces, the first of his 300 scientific papers being titled On the Investigation of the Ether in a Magnetic Field, aged 15. At 17 he was a student of mathematics and physics in Zurich, after which he struggled to … Read more