Bullitt (1968)

Requiem for a Dream, directed by Darren Aronofsky (Pi) from a script he wrote with Hubert Selby, Jr. (Last Exit to Brooklyn) and based on the latter’s novel, has a promising beginning. We see Harry Goldfarb (Jared Leto) stealing his own mother’s television set in order to pawn it for drug money. His mother, Sara…

Jesus’ Son [sic] adapted from a stories by Denis Johnson and directed by Alison Maclean represents a revivification of a kind of pretentiousness that had its heyday in the 1960s and was associated with that era’s conceit that hippies, drug-users and drop-outs of all descriptions were a higher order of spiritual being—more like Jesus himself,…

The Big One is Michael Moore’s return to the merry prankster movie—like his breakout hit Roger and Me—after a detour through a feeble attempt at comedy-drama in Canadian Bacon. He is once again playing a kind of political Allen Funt who brings his cameras into various corporate headquarters—or, in one instance, the Wisconsin state capital—and…

Its heart is in the right place, but the inspirational uplift looks just a bit artificial

The animated film Shrek, based on a story by William Steig and directed by Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson, is a deconstruction of the fairy tale. It is so literally, in the sense that what drives the eponymous ogre out of his homey swamp and into his parody of a fairy tale quest is an…

[See “Entry from July 20, 2011” under “My Diary”] Discover more from James Bowman Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email. Type your email… Subscribe