Fistful of Dollars

Tumbleweeds, in spite of a superficial similarity to Anywhere But Here and a virtuoso performance by Janet McTeer in the principal role, is a much more propagandistic and (therefore) much less interesting film than the Susan Sarandon/Natalie Portman two-hander. It is true that Ms McTeer, who became an instant celebrity three years ago when she…

A moving portrayal of a little-known passage of recent history which even manages to make us forget why it was, until now, little known

This might have been a striking parable of the plight of young people today, if only the film-makers could have seen a little further beyond its absurdities

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

A beautiful and profound meditation on the claims of a very little, very fragile human life upon eternity

Near the end of Black Orpheus (Orfeu Negro), Marcel Camus’s masterpiece of 1959, there comes what can only be described as an authorial disclaimer that strikes the film’s one seriously false note. “The happiness of the poor is the great illusion of Carnival,” we are told, more or less out of the blue. Up until…