Public Enemy, The

In Donnie Brasco, based, as it is at pains to remind you, on a true story, Mike Newell and his screenwriter, Paul Attanasio, set up a highly interesting conflict with a great deal of skill and then simply slither out of it at the end, leaving the issues they raise unresolved. The excuse for this…

[See discussion under “My diary” entry for July 26, 2012] Discover more from James Bowman Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email. Type your email… Subscribe

Every so often a reader writes asking me to lighten up, to stop looking so closely at the movies I review and just relax and enjoy them. I always wonder why people would bother reading a critic who did that. Could they not relax and enjoy a movie themselves unless they could reassure themselves that…

A movie better avoided by anyone with any taste is nevertheless extremely funny — and it has something serious to say

Beloved, from the novel by Toni Morrison and directed by Jonathan Demme, exploits the sufferings of black people under slavery on behalf of a radical feminism that is merely parasitical upon them. Blacks in general and black men in particular ought to resent having their own history hijacked in this way, and used in the…

Errol Morris’s fascinating documentary, Mr Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A Leuchter, Jr. is another chapter in the long and tragic history of the great American autodidact. Like so many of those immensely likeable and distinctively American “characters” who believe that they can reinvent the world, Fred is ultimately swallowed up by the…