Matter of Life and Death, A (Stairway to Heaven)

[See discussion under “My Diary” for July 3, 2013] Discover more from James Bowman Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email. Type your email… Subscribe

The now familiar practice of making machines into the heroes of our favorite technological romances has taken another leap forward.

The Big One is Michael Moore’s return to the merry prankster movie—like his breakout hit Roger and Me—after a detour through a feeble attempt at comedy-drama in Canadian Bacon. He is once again playing a kind of political Allen Funt who brings his cameras into various corporate headquarters—or, in one instance, the Wisconsin state capital—and…

Perhaps the most telling moment in Disney’s Hercules (directed by John Musker and Ron Clements) the latest in that company’s long succession of dreadful, vulgar and philistine cartoon movies, comes near the beginning with a musical recapitulation of Greek mythology (most of it garbled or deliberately altered to suit the use that Disney wants to…

[See discussion under “My diary” entry for July 6, 2011] Discover more from James Bowman Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email. Type your email… Subscribe

In Les Misérables, directed by Bille August, it is the film itself which turns out to be misérable: thin and poor and wretched and in need of feeding up. The one thing you don’t want to skimp on when you are filming an epic is the epic proportions. August, a fine director of intense and…