Public Enemy, The

Like its predecessor, Toy Story 2 is a triumph of technology — the relatively new technology of computer animation — if not of moviemaking. In fact, as a kind of technological marvel it is naturally impervious to criticism on any merely airy-fairy, aesthetic grounds. Like the Bond films with which it might otherwise be thought…

The Dogme 95 movement produces another winner — a feel-good movie whose effects are not cheap. Or not very cheap.

You can see why the novel The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacqueline Mitchard made such a hit as the first selection of the Oprah book club and why its film version, directed by Ulu Grosbard from a script by Stephen Schiff, will doubtless be the chick flick of the season. There’s a child…

[See “Entry from June 30, 2010” under “My Diary”] Discover more from James Bowman Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email. Type your email… Subscribe

John Herzfeld’s 15 Minutes makes the typical mistake of movies that attempt to satirize the celebrity-obsessed media culture of which, inevitably, they themselves are a part. In fact, so reliably do movies like Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers or Costa Gavras’s Mad City get it wrong that the suspicious-minded might be tempted to think that…

In The Pledge Sean Penn (director) and Jack Nicholson (star) have teamed up to give us a portrait of the hero as “a drunk and a clown” — which has a certain appropriateness, I suppose. There’s even a part for Mickey Rourke here — to say nothing of cameo roles for such actors as Tom…