It Happened One Night

Yet another pretend “documentary” that’s really just anti-war propaganda

Out of Sight by Steven Soderbergh.is a film reminiscent of so many of the brilliant products of the Coen brothers in that it is an excellent bit of movie-making with absolutely nothing to say. It plays around with time sequence like Pulp Fiction (only not so boldly) and fantasy and provides us with a real…

Class struggle in the French cinema of today

Breakdown by Jonathan Mostow is a superior sort of thriller that is a step in the right direction after recent Hollywood examples of the genre—that is, in the direction of the things that ordinary, reasonable people really do fear. Which is to say not unbelievably big Amazonian snakes or volcanos erupting in downtown Los Angeles…

A highly watchable but somewhat dubious lesson in how not to be a victim — or at least not a victim of fate

The Perfect Storm, though exciting as spectacle is disappointing as drama. Its director, Wolfgang Petersen here favors rather the style of Air Force One, his best known film, than Das Boot, his second best-known. Perhaps it was only the relatively small budget of the latter film which forced him to pay the attention he does…