Fistful of Dollars

Those who remember fondly Francis Veber’s The Dinner Game from the summer before last may be a bit disappointed in Le Placard (The Closet)—which has a lot of the earlier film’s comic invention but also, to those of us who are accustomed to Hollywood-style propaganda, enough of an ideological edge to give it an unbalancing…

A movie about forgiveness is itself a bit hard to forgive

[See “Entry from July 23, 2008” under “My Diary”] Discover more from James Bowman Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email. Type your email… Subscribe

Readers will divide in their reactions to the very funny Australian film, The Castle, directed by Rob Sitch, according as they are disposed to see its presentation of the Australian equivalent of trailer-trash as patronizing or not. As I have rather a high tolerance for ridicule—of others if not of myself—I am inclined to find…

A movie that seems to have been made more for the critics and the film-makers themselves than for general audiences

Whatever It Takes, directed by David Raynr and written by Mark Schwahn is yet another in the seemingly endless stream of movies which attempt to translate classic literature into American High School stories. This fad began in 1995 with what is still the best of its kind, Amy Heckerling’s adaptation of Emma, by Jane Austen,…