George Packer:

The Clinton-Obama battle reveals two very different ideas of the Presidency.

From the recent archive, here's Manohla Dargis:

Americans consume a lot of garbage, but that may be because they don’t have real choices: 16 of the top box-office earners last weekend — some good, almost all from big studios — monopolized 33,353 of the country’s 38,415 screens. The remaining 78 releases duked it out on the leftover screens.

I doubt that most moviegoers would prefer the relentlessly honest “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” which involves a young woman seeking an illegal abortion, over “Juno,” an ingratiating comedy about a teenager who carries her pregnancy to term. But I wish they had the choice.

Here is Anthony Lane, this week:

He is a terminator, expert in the ending of advanced pregnancies, and you should be warned that “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” flinches neither from the procedures nor the outcome of his trade. There is plenty here to fuel both sides of the abortion debate: the grim and possibly fatal results of driving the practice underground will strengthen the hand of the pro-choice lobby, but, equally, when Otilia kneels on the bathroom floor, surveying the remnant of lost humanity, half wrapped in a towel, the look of dark and wondering pity in her eyes is enough to convince us that here is a deed of unutterable gravity.

Yet this is not an issue movie. We are not being forced to vote, and the characters are defined less by any stated beliefs than by the moral texture of their actions. Look carefully at Bebe as he unpacks his briefcase of crude tools: he is made faceless, filmed from chest to thigh, and that suits his status as a predatory machine. And, once he has departed, having exacted a terrible payment for his services, look at Otilia: She leaves Gabita to rest and goes, as promised, to her boyfriend’s parents’ house for a birthday dinner. There she sits at a table, surrounded by gleaming food and idle chatter, her thoughts miles away and fathoms deep. Again, hands reach in from the side, this time for pickles and wine, but the camera holds steady, minute upon minute, and we gaze at her, face to face. How can people feast when she has just come from the pits of degradation, and must shortly return to dispose of an unwanted fetus? Disposal, incidentally, is recommended via the garbage chute of a high-rise apartment building; try going from this film to “Sweeney Todd,” with its corpses dumped for comic effect, and see how long you last.

The Choice