Body Heat

Artistic innovation tends to follow a pattern, which begins with the reaction of the young rebels against the prevailing style, after its tricks become too familiar. So Wordsworth and Coleridge’s manifesto in the preface to the 1798 edition of Lyrical Ballads drew attention to the tired “poetic diction” of the time and called for a…

Naturally, I had hoped to be able to avoid going to see Lasse Hallström’s sickly-sweet Chocolat. After The Cider House Rules, indeed, I hoped never to have to see another movie by Hallström. But when Chocolat was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar I resigned myself to the necessity of having to waste two hours…

How on earth did Ron Howard hope to succeed where Peter Weir failed? Hubris, I suppose. Ron Howard’s done a guest shot on “The Simpsons” (along with those other giants of the silver screen, Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger) and Peter Weir hasn’t. But for those of us not giddy with success, however, the idea…

My Giant directed by Michael Lehmann is yet another depressingly heart-warming tale from Billy Crystal, who is second in the heart-warming league only to his friend and co-star in the relentlessly heartwarming Father’s Day, Robin Williams. Someone once said that all comedy is cruel, but Billy Crystal is living proof that this is not true….

M by Fritz Lang, first made in 1931, has now been reissued in a new and refurbished print and is a film which movie buffs all ought to rush out to see. The use of the camera and the visual imagery and composition in this story of what we should nowadays call a serial killer,…

Small Time Crooks has, like all Woody Allen’s films some excellent jokes. The best of them, however, are stupid-jokes (very popular in Hollywood lately) which, it always seems to me, is the comedic equivalent of dynamiting fish. It used to be drunks, now it’s idiots. Woody Allen himself plays Ray Winkler, a petty thief whose…