Philadelphia Story, The

In Les Misérables, directed by Bille August, it is the film itself which turns out to be misérable: thin and poor and wretched and in need of feeding up. The one thing you don’t want to skimp on when you are filming an epic is the epic proportions. August, a fine director of intense and…

An updating of a classic film of the 1940s goes badly astray in a now-familiar way — by turning its heroes into victims

Well, it’s a good subject and a great star. The Venus Beauty Institute is a French film written and directed by Tonie Marshall which explores the female fear of commitment. Everybody knows about the male fear of same, but the female version is much more interesting. Nor to her film’s credit does Ms Marshall’s feminist…

The first crime of Father Amaro, it seems, was in his ever allowing himself to get mixed up with that gang of mobsters known as the Roman Catholic Church

Another cartoon hero of the silver screen appeals to adults who no longer feel any shame about enjoying kids’ movies — and so comes closer to making kids’ movies the only kind there are

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, directed by Jim Jarmusch, is quirky, witty, fun, intelligent, without ever quite being a great movie. It lacks the urgency of great films, films that create their own forms by the power of what they have to say. Jarmusch is really as interested in his little post-modernist bag…