Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others)

[See “Entry from August 4, 2010” under “My Diary”] Discover more from James Bowman Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email. Type your email… Subscribe

The People vs. Larry Flynt is one of Hollywood’s more typical propaganda films—which is to say one which makes it too easy on itself. Unlike, say, Dead Man Walking, which was a very untypical propaganda film, it does not play straight with us. It stacks the deck in favor of its hero, Larry Flynt (Woody…

An interesting and authentic-looking account of men in combat in Afghanistan but one with a depressingly familiar anti-war subtext

Bad jokes are like rotten apples: it only takes a few of them to spoil the whole barrel. Company Man, a co-written, co-directed effort by Douglas McGrath and Peter Askin, starts off very promisingly. Its jokes are crisp and tart and juicy. But not long into it we take our first bite of the rotten…

A moving portrayal of a little-known passage of recent history which even manages to make us forget why it was, until now, little known

The new nukes-on-the-loose action thriller, The Peacemaker, tells us in its opening credits that it was directed by Mimi Leder, but as the first and presumably showcase cinematic product of the Spielberg-Katzenberg-Geffen “Dreamworks” studio, it has all the earmarks of a Spielbergian extravaganza. There are advantages and disadvantages to the fact. Or, really, one advantage…