Apartment, The

The Beach by Danny Boyle (Trainspotting) is obviously le dernier cri in hip, but it is a mess of a movie—sort of Lord of the Flies meets Blue Lagoon. In short, it doesn’t know where it’s going. On the one hand it very much likes the idea of the hippie colony on an almost inaccessible…

A gently comic and poignant film about the hope of youth and the disappointments of age set against the backdrop of Arab-Israeli relations

Well, here goes. The following, I know, is an invitation to hate-mail, but I have to say that Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace, written and directed by George Lucas, demonstrates a remarkable paucity of imagination. The thought first came to me in the scene where Senator Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) explains to Queen Amidala…

[See “Entry from July 9, 2008” under “My Diary”] Discover more from James Bowman Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email. Type your email… Subscribe

The Man Who Knew Too Little, directed by Jon Amiel, is for fans of the comedic style of Bill Murray who—as he does in such mediocre movies as Kingpin and What About Bob?—manages to wring what genuine comedy there is out comic situations so outlandish that they would bring a blush of shame to the…

How Stella Got Her Groove Back, directed by Kevin Rodney Sullivan from a screenplay by Terry McMillan and Ron Bass from Miss McMillan’s novel, is a middle-aged woman’s wish-fulfilment fantasy and, unfortunately, little else. I thought at least it might be amusingly bad, but it doesn’t even reach as high as that. Angela Bassett stars…