Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others)

Bring It On, directed by Peyton Reed, offers the movie connoisseur plenty of shots of high school girls in their underwear and some terrific choreography of synchronized cheering routines which seem to have little if anything to do with cheerleading in the traditional sense but which are apparently true to life. If so, they are…

Its heart is in the right place, but the inspirational uplift looks just a bit artificial

The Parent Trap, directed by Nancy Meyers, is an intermittently charming remake of the Disney classic of 1961 which starred Hayley Mills as twin 13-year-olds, separated since birth, who meet by chance at a summer camp and then plot to reunite their divorced parents. In this version the twins, played by Lindsay Lohan, are presented…

There are several things to like in Armageddon, directed by Michael Bay. One is that the sympathetic main character, Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis), is a wildcat oil-driller who is introduced to us as he harasses a Greenpeace ship which has been sent to harass his offshore drilling platform by hitting golf balls at it. The…

Carl Franklin’s — and Denzel Washington’s — best movie since Devil in a Blue Dress is a thriller that really thrills

Here I make my declaration of faith: the single most important element in film is plot. This is because film is an inescapably realistic medium. You can’t make it look not like life, though, God knows, an awful lot of people have tried. But it is life in motion, which means that it cries out…