Annie Hall

The Fifth Element by Luc Besson is what every crappy Hollywood postmodern extravaganza would be if it had the wit and the boldness of the author of La Femme Nikita and The Professional—together with a Hollywood blockbuster-sized budget of $100 million. With it, postmodernism has entered into its rococo phase. Some day, if anyone ever…

An adaptation which brings out the worst in Philip Roth’s novel

A weird and often amusing philosophical movie by the screenwriter of Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, only not quite so good as those movies

Tomorrow Never Dies, directed by Roger Spottiswoode is the latest in the seemingly endless chain of James Bond films. It is a disappointment. One of the few pleasures that conservatives could take in the Hollywood product of the late Cold War — that is watching an unashamed cold warrior fighting the commies for the good…

Le Mépris, or Contempt, based on a novel by Alberto Moravia, was directed by Jean-Luc Godard in 1963, but has just been re-released in a newly refurbished print. Michel Piccoli stars as Paul, a Communist playwright being wooed by a dumb American millionaire called Jerry Prokosch (Jack Palance) to re-write a script for a film…

A husband and wife are driving home after an evening out. The wife asks the husband why it should be that they put braces on girls just at the moment when they are most self-conscious about their appearance. The husband, looking tired and fed-up, says he doesn’t know and lapses into silence. Suddenly there are…