Dan Conley’s Writing Projects

The brothers are outside sizing up the security issues of their father’s flat, conceiving of bizarre ways people could enter via the balcony and break into the premises. So they think of elaborate new security measure to keep them out. Then it occurs to Jerzy — he’s really enjoying

Before I begin, I want to check back in on that foreign exchange rate that I mentioned in the last essay. The zloty of 1988 was extraordinarily weak — from my research today, I figure that 1000 zloty could buy you an ice cream. So if 1000 zloty is roughly $5,

So the brothers have some expenses — and there is clear interest in this stamp collection. But they aren’t sure exactly what they have their hands on. But they want to preserve at least part of the collection, so Artur suggests that Jerzy give his son a series of three

We arrive now at the end, the final episode of the Dekalog, my last week of writing about this one-of-a-kind piece of cinema. When I began this series, I had a sense that the Dekalog began to trail off after episode 6, that the series was heavily front loaded. But

So much of the Dekalog circles around the issues of death and sex. The first episode is about the death of Pawel. Episode two features two possible deaths and the sexual relationship that occupies space between them. In episode three, Ewa contrives to relive an affair while letting chance decide

The new Paul Thomas Anderson film “One Battle After Another” opened to rave reviews and is being talked about as an Oscar frontrunner. A story in Variety today hailed it as the rare movie that might break into the national cultural and political conversation, mostly for the way it “exposes