Public Enemy, The

Tea With Mussolini is, like so many other works by its director and co- writer (with John Mortimer) Franco Zeffirelli, for movie-goers with rather more of a sweet-tooth than I generally find I have. Adapted from Zeffirelli’s autobiography, it tells the story of a small Italian boy called Luca (played as a child by Charlie…

[See discussion under “My Diary” for July 10, 2013] Discover more from James Bowman Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email. Type your email… Subscribe

It is fascinating how, although Hollywood has implicitly believed in every crackpot conspiracy theory for decades and has been willing to attribute to the democratically elected government of the United States any and all perfidies, it retains a sentimental attachment to the idea of the presidency. The image of the good king dies hard in…

Poets who die young are themselves a highly poetical subject, as Chatterton, Byron, Shelley and Keats could attest — but perhaps they’re less interesting in the movies

Scream by Wes Craven seems already to have become a cult hit, presumably because Wes is as knowing about the fright-film genre as his jaded audience and likes to play with their expectations. At one memorable moment while a crowd of teenagers are gathered to watch yet another horror film they have all seen before,…

There is scarcely a cliché of the 1990s Hollywood thriller that is not to be found in Switchback, written and directed by Jeb Stuart. By now, the figure of the serial killer — so rare in nature, so common in the movies — has become such a familiar one that a filmmaker like Stuart will…