Heaven Can Wait

A respectful period romance which, however, doesn’t give us as much of the period as it does of the romance

A festival of unashamed Hollywood fakery by a director who ought to know better

What is it that has lately induced the makers of romantic movie comedies think of Jane Austen as the Everest of their ambition? Now we can add Bridget Jones’s Diary, directed by Sharon Maguire to the spate of Jane films in the last decade, since its self-conscious updating of Pride and Prejudice confirms its homage…

The hallmark of what is becoming the M. Night Shyamalan franchise is a movie starring Bruce Willis and a remarkable boy, set in Philadelphia with supernatural overtones and a surprise ending. The Sixth Sense (1999) may have sold more tickets on the strength of the mystery of its ending than any film since Psycho. So,…

The Perfect Storm, though exciting as spectacle is disappointing as drama. Its director, Wolfgang Petersen here favors rather the style of Air Force One, his best known film, than Das Boot, his second best-known. Perhaps it was only the relatively small budget of the latter film which forced him to pay the attention he does…

Deconstructing Harry by Woody Allen is like every other Woody Allen movie: a succession of more or less good jokes bound together by an essentially puerile fantasy. Or, in this case, a succession of interlocking fantasies. Harry Block (Mr Allen) is a novelist who is forever mining his chaotic private life for material for his…