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

Chinese Box by Wayne Wang stars Jeremy Irons as John, a journalist living in Hong Kong in the months leading up to the handover of the colony by the British to the Chinese. He learns that he’s got leukemia and has approximately as long to live as the British presence in the territory will last….

Perhaps the emblematic scene of Iain Softley’s adaptation (written by Hossein Amini) of Henry James’s Wings of the Dove comes as Millie Theale (Alison Elliott) and Kate Croy (Helena Bonham Carter) meet Merton Densher (Linus Roache) in an exhibition of the erotic art of Egon Schiele (by coincidence, such an exhibition is being shown at…

Mad City, directed by Costa-Gavras, has a good subject, but it can’t seem to stay focused on it. The director, known for such anti-American films as Z and Salvador, here ostensibly changes his subject to the media. Now I yield to no one in my dislike of the media, and especially of television newsmen, but…

This film by Peter Hedges tries hard to be both charming and uplifting but doesn’t quite succeed in being either

Though message-laden and inclined to a facile view of international politics, this is a fresh and funny look at the travails of family life

It’s a lucky thing for me that Whit Stillman, who is an old friend of the American Spectator, makes such good movies. If he made bad ones, I should have to be diplomatic, but that is a necessity which has yet to arise. I thought his first film, Metropolitan (1990) was funny, clever and charming….