Letters from Iwo Jima

Hard Rain by Mikael Salomon could have been and almost is a really competently managed thriller. Half-way through it I was weighing up whether it deserved one or two stars and delighting in what I took to be an unexpected throwback to the old days in Hollywood when the stories the movies told were tough…

A paean to the sunshine and easy living of Provence inspired by Peter Mayle which stumbles in the attempt to turn itself into a romantic comedy

[See discussion under “My Diary” for July 17, 2013] Discover more from James Bowman Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email. Type your email… Subscribe

Magnolia, written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, is like David O. Russell’s Three Kings in being an impressive display of moviemaking talent without ever quite becoming an impressive movie. In both cases, I think, the problem is that the talented writer-directors are overreaching themselves and trying to do too much. In the case of…

Santa would a-wooing go and naturally gets himself quite a present to unwrap on Christmas morning. Hollywood, as usual, brings us every adult’s Christmas fantasy.

Surprisingly, U-Turn by Oliver Stone is actually a rather enjoyable evening in the cinema, or it would be if it weren’t marred by the patented Stone phantasmagoric style. Dealing with a whimsical script like this one (by John Ridley, adapted from his book “Stray Dogs”) is something Stone should never allow himself to do, because…