Because I Said So

Hallaleujah, it’s a miracle! The Apostle is a (more or less) mainstream Hollywood film that neither patronizes nor trivializes nor demonizes religion. Written and directed by and starring Robert Duvall, the picture is a tour de force for Mr Duvall, who has given himself a wonderfully juicy part as the itinerant evangelist Sonny Dewey, a.k.a….

Good Will Hunting by Gus Van Sant is, like Kicked in the Head, an illustration of what happens when you hand beardless boys $20 million dollars or so and say, “Go make a movie, kid.” Good Will is better than Kicked, but then anything this side of Flubber is better than Kicked. The boys in…

The Franco-German director Dominik Moll’s new film is called Harry, Un Ami Qui Vous Veut du Bien, which means, “Harry, a friend who only wants the best for you.” For its American release it has been given the slightly misleading English title of With A Friend Like Harry. . ., but in other English-speaking countries…

A very funny if very unreliable version of the Abscam scandal of 1980 with a distinctive, David O. Russell touch

Follow your bliss, middle-aged America! Quit your job, speak your mind, buy that muscle car you’ve always wanted. Start smoking pot again. Buff up and start an affair with a teenage girl. You may die for it, but you will die happy. Where have we heard this before? Periodically, the popular culture becomes receptive to…

Passion of Mind is the first film in English of Alain Berliner, the director of the charmingly disturbing or, disturbingly charming, Belgian film Ma Vie en Rose. Perhaps it was decided that for his American debut he needed to find his audience with the help of a star of the stature of Demi Moore. Similar…