Shop Around the Corner, The

Welcome to Sarajevo, directed by Michael Winterbottom and written by Frank Cottrell Boyce, is based on the true story told in the book Natasha’s Story by the British television journalist Michael Nicholson. The movie fictionalizes it, calling the journalist Henderson (Stephen Dillane) and the little Bosnian girl he rescues from the carnage of 1992-3 and…

An often funny but ultimately pretty trivial movie about the pain of adolescents with absent fathers

James Cameron has a lot to answer for. By making the top grossing film of all time a three hour plus extravaganza he has convinced the money men that it’s OK to break the two hour barrier so long as you’ve got a picture that’s going to pull the teeny-boppers, with plenty of spending money…

Happy, Texas, directed by Mark Illsley, is an intermittently funny tale of two escaped convicts who steal a recreational vehicle and find themselves forced to maintain their cover by impersonating a couple of gay organizers of little-girl beauty pageants. Jeremy Northam, an excellent British actor with a very good American accent, and Steve Zahn are…

Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet is a good example of Shakespeare killed by terminal hipness. It is remarkably clever, and even has some good dramatic ideas. Having Juliet (Claire Danes) wake up just before Romeo (Leonardo DiCaprio) drinks the poison and simply cutting Friar Lawrence (Pete Postlethwaite) out of it is an interesting notion and…

Night Falls on Manhattan is that rare thing, a film that is bursting with talent—written and directed by Sidney Lumet it features fine performances from Andy Garcia, Ian Holm and James Gandolfini and even such cinematic palookas as Richard Dreyfuss and Lena Olin are punching above their weight—which is, nevertheless, a complete failure. It is…