Amazing Grace

A well-made film that teaches an obnoxious lesson

I think I shall have to develop a shorthand designation for pictures like A Walk on the Moon, directed by Tony Goldwyn. We may call them tales of the Spiritual Adulterer. These started coming out in the mid- to late-1960s and have continued in uninterrupted spate since then. Their purpose is to sell us on…

I tried very hard to like A Simple Plan, written by Scott B.Smith and directed by Sam (Evil Dead) Raimi, but I was only partly successful. The movie seems to have been heavily influenced by Fargo, right down to the vast and snowy prairie landscapes and the unexpectedly satisfying moralism of the ending, and, insofar…

Nights of Cabiria by Federico Fellini, recently re-released in a restored version, stars the great director’s wife, Giulietta Massina as the Roman prostitute, Cabiria, whose fortunes and misfortunes in the mid-1950s, must now seem to us to come from a world as long gone as Dante’s or Manzoni’s. All is now changed, changed utterly, since…

Kevin Spacey, sensitivity snob, is in his element in this laughably inept tribute to teen angst.

An amusing fairy tale that sometimes flirts with over-seriousness