Big Sleep, The

Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil, made in1957 and now restored according to a memo of protest Welles wrote to Universal after they butchered the movie on release, may be the best B-picture ever made. Watching it today, you have to wonder if he knew what he was doing — which was anticipating the postmodern film…

A farrago of fake blood, movie pastiche and historical nonsense whose rapturous critical reception tells you all you need to know about the state of the culture

An enjoyable and well-made film from British director Mike Leigh which, nevertheless, doesn’t quite satisfy

A remarkably watchable Anglo-Indian lesson in moral realities without any moralizing

Starship Troopers directed by Paul Verhoeven and based on the book by Robert Heinlein is a custom-made vehicle for the expression of what I take to be the Hollywood worldview. In the fanciful future utopia it conjures up for us, the fearsome tide of poor, dirty, low class, and superstitious people, with skins both swarthy…

Rough Magic written and directed by Clare Peploe has got to be a contender for worst movie of the year. It’s a real stinker. The worst thing about it is its preposterous plot, full of what is obviously meant to look like bits of “magic realism” but coming across instead as a sort of cartoon…