Christmas in July

Kicked in the Head directed by Matthew Harrison and co-written by him and the film’s star, Kevin Corrigan, is another of those slacker movies whose makers got far too much money far too early in their careers. This is a movie so immature in its conception, its writing and its execution that even in spite…

In The Hurricane, Norman Jewison is going through the motions. His film takes an ostensibly true story which also conforms to a classic movie situation—a man condemned for a crime he did not commit—and allows our expectations to do all the work. Rubin “Hurricane” Carter (Denzel Washington) was a top middleweight contender in the mid-1960s…

A Place Called Chiapas, directed by the Canadian Nettie Wild, is a documentary about what the New York Times has rightly called “the world’s first post-modern revolution.” It begins with military vehicles emerging from darkness and a voiceover talking about the Zapatista movement of the Chiapan campesinos, led by Subcomandante Marcos, as having been “born…

[See “Entry from June 23, 2010” under “My Diary”] Discover more from James Bowman Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email. Type your email… Subscribe

James Cameron has a lot to answer for. By making the top grossing film of all time a three hour plus extravaganza he has convinced the money men that it’s OK to break the two hour barrier so long as you’ve got a picture that’s going to pull the teeny-boppers, with plenty of spending money…

Nurse Betty, the new film by Neil LaBute (In the Company of Men, Your Friends and Neighbors), is wonderfully enjoyable all the way through until its last ten minutes when suddenly the wild and thrilling ride it has offered us comes to a dead end. The story concerns Betty (Renée Zellweger), a small-town waitress from…