Bonnie and Clyde

Pi, directed by Darren Aronofsky, is another chapter in the popular culture’s love affair with flashy intelligence—or at least the image of it. A gritty, black-and-white, low-budget version of Good Will Hunting, it does no better a job, however, at making such intelligence look real. For in addition to the usual mathematical parlor-tricks, this particular…

A serious man maybe, but not a serious movie

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…

Readers will divide in their reactions to the very funny Australian film, The Castle, directed by Rob Sitch, according as they are disposed to see its presentation of the Australian equivalent of trailer-trash as patronizing or not. As I have rather a high tolerance for ridicule—of others if not of myself—I am inclined to find…

An enjoyable comedy like the earlier films of Nicole Holofcener but one which ultimately denies its own pretensions to seriousness

The Beach by Danny Boyle (Trainspotting) is obviously le dernier cri in hip, but it is a mess of a movie—sort of Lord of the Flies meets Blue Lagoon. In short, it doesn’t know where it’s going. On the one hand it very much likes the idea of the hippie colony on an almost inaccessible…