Body Heat

The re-release of Jules Dassin’s Rififi (French title: Du Rififi Chez les Hommes) of 1954 comes opportunely to remind the Hollywood epigoni known to these pages as the Taranteenies of what film noir really was. The chief difference between it and that which too often, and too erroneously, goes under the same name today, is…

Bean—without the Mr. usually appended to his name in the series of delightful comedy shorts featuring the character created by Rowan Atkinson—has now been stretched out to feature length in a version directed by Mel Smith, Atkinson’s former colleague on the BBC’s hit satirical revue of the early ’80s, “Not the Nine O’Clock News.” He…

Out of Sight by Steven Soderbergh.is a film reminiscent of so many of the brilliant products of the Coen brothers in that it is an excellent bit of movie-making with absolutely nothing to say. It plays around with time sequence like Pulp Fiction (only not so boldly) and fantasy and provides us with a real…

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

That icky little left-wing prole, Robert Altman, amuses himself by satirizing his social betters. Does that make you feel better about yourself?

The problem with the super-hero is how unsuper everybody else has to be to make him one