Fistful of Dollars

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…

A charming French romantic comedy that is also something of a throwback

Le Mépris, or Contempt, based on a novel by Alberto Moravia, was directed by Jean-Luc Godard in 1963, but has just been re-released in a newly refurbished print. Michel Piccoli stars as Paul, a Communist playwright being wooed by a dumb American millionaire called Jerry Prokosch (Jack Palance) to re-write a script for a film…

A strange cinematic fable by Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda that might have gone over my head

[See “Entry from June 27, 2007” under “My Diary”]   Discover more from James Bowman Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email. Type your email… Subscribe

A curious, fly-on-the-wall documentary about some Kansan conservatives mixed with a subdued polemic from Thomas Frank that answers the question of its title only for the cognoscenti