Apartment, The

[See “Entry from August 25, 2007” under “My Diary”] Discover more from James Bowman Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email. Type your email… Subscribe

A charming and funny moral tale which rises above its lightness and slightness to entertain as the movies used to entertain

Felicia’s Journey ought to have all the ingredients of a terrific movie. The novel by William Trevor on which it is based is first rate, a haunting study of the banality of evil that sticks in the mind long after it is read. The director, Atom Egoyan, did a fine job with Russell Banks’s The…

Robert Altman’s new picture, Cookie’s Fortune, is like all his films in having in it a lot of good things pushed to—and usually way beyond—their limit. Here the relentless folksiness of the sleepy Mississippi town, Holly Springs, is truly charming most of the time, but on occasion it becomes almost enough to give Andy Griffith…

[See “Entry from July 16, 2008” under “My Diary”] Discover more from James Bowman Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email. Type your email… Subscribe

Everything that is important in Girl, Interrupted, directed by James Mangold and based on the memoir by Suzanna Kaysen, can be condensed into one comment by the mental institution attendant, Valerie (Whoopi Goldberg) as she attempts to give the reluctant Suzanna (Winona Ryder) a bath. “This place is a f****** fascist torture chamber,” says the…