Bullitt (1968)

[See discussion under “My diary” entry for July 26, 2012] Discover more from James Bowman Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email. Type your email… Subscribe

Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the creative force behind A Very Long Engagement (Un long dimanche de fiançailles), has always been a quirky director. In fact, “quirky” is putting it mildly. His early films, Delicatessen (1991) and City of Lost Children (1995) often seem like illustrations for the definition of “post-modern” proposed by Moe Sislak of “The Simpsons,”…

Here are the good things about The Legend of Bagger Vance, written by Jeremy Leven from the novel by Steven Pressfield and directed by Robert Redford. It tells a story set in Savannah, Georgia, in about 1930 and never once mentions Jim Crow or Southern white racism. So familiar by now is the iconography of…

The Dreamlife of Angels (in French La Vie Revée des Anges) by Érick Zonca is by far the best picture I have seen this year and one of the best I have ever seen. I can’t remember the last time I came staggering out of a movie, as I did out of this one, literally…

Paul Thomas Anderson shows why style, however brilliant, cannot make up for basic flaws in content.

An immensely moving account of goodness, holiness and Christian martyrdom — remember that? — amid a political landscape much like our own