Queen, The

Like the unsuccessfully arty Deceiver, the unashamedly popular Desperate Measures by Barbet Schroeder is a film which begins by telling us the IQ—“over 150”—of its criminal protagonist, Peter McCabe (Michael Keaton). Oh dear. Once again we are in the presence of one of those criminal geniuses who are so seldom to be met with in…

A charming, unpretentious little movie from Mexico that gradually reveals to us hidden depths and a surprising emotional power

Lovers of the Arctic Circle is a handsomely constructed fable of love and destiny, written and directed by Julio Medem. Those with a taste for magic realism or the sunny po-mo fables of Jaco Van Dormael (Toto the Hero, The Eighth Day) may well enjoy it, though to my taste its weird Spanish romanticism and…

A charming Australian coming-of-age tale in which Brenda Blethyn gets to polish up and make more sympathetic her now-familiar screen persona as a loud, vulgar woman of the lower classes

Artistic innovation tends to follow a pattern, which begins with the reaction of the young rebels against the prevailing style, after its tricks become too familiar. So Wordsworth and Coleridge’s manifesto in the preface to the 1798 edition of Lyrical Ballads drew attention to the tired “poetic diction” of the time and called for a…

A well made Spanish film about a couple of prostitutes that flirts a little too blatantly with sentimentalism