Sergeant York

A bit of magical realism that is too heavy on the magic and too light on the realism

Oliver Stone’s latest, Any Given Sunday, is not for those, like me, who are put off by the Oliver Stone’s style of moviemaking. Leaving aside for the moment the fact that what he has to say is often historically inaccurate, irresponsibly speculative or politically tendentious, the worst thing about a Stone movie is the attempt…

The Spanish title of Only Human by Dominic Harari and Teresa Pelegri is Seres queridos, or “loved ones” and suggests one of those happy-clappy, boosterish Euro-junk films, like Cédric Klapisch’s Auberge Espanole, in which everybody is part of one big happy European family living in a tolerantly multicultural spirit stronger than any differences between them….

For Love of the Game, starring Kevin Costner as Billy Chapel, an aging pitcher for the Detroit Tigers who hopes to end his career with a perfect game, turns out to be yet another Costnerian marathon of mawkishness and self indulgence. Oddly for a film that is ostensibly about a guy who has to learn…

Shall We Dance? by Masayuki Suo is a Japanese film with all the charm and delicacy of the best French movies. It surprises and delights with the subtlety of its observation and the skill of its construction, and it moved me deeply at several points. Koji Yakusyo stars as Mr Sugiyama, a rumpled and tired-…

If Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman can’t tell the difference between politics and economics, why should Charles Ferguson be able to do so?