Springfield Rifle

Besieged, like so many other films by its director, Bernardo Bertolucci, is dramatically simple and visually complex. More than any other director working today, Bertolucci is a story-teller in pictures, which makes for striking and memorable images that are forever bursting out of their contexts and becoming saucily incoherent, at least in any kind of…

There is more than a hint of political correctness about this film’s self-discoveries, which the audience will have figured out long before the characters do

A gross and vulgar movie without even the excuse of being very funny

True, it’s not as bad as American Beauty, Sam Mendes’s earlier film, but it’s still quite bad enough.

When the Cat’s Away (not a very adequate translation of the French Chacun Cherche Son Chat or “Everyone’s looking for his cat”), by Cédric Klapisch, is a charmingly old-fashioned kind of film, in spite of its depiction of very contemporary social realities. It offers a marvelously undimmed romanticism about Paris, and about the glamour of…

[See “Entry from August 25, 2007” under “My Diary”] Discover more from James Bowman Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email. Type your email… Subscribe