Act of Valor

The Sixth Day, directed by Roger Spottiswoode, is a movie about cloning that is itself a clone — a genetic duplicate of every other Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle of the last 15 or 20 years. Actually, it is a clone of a clone of a clone, since the Schwarzenegger movie is itself a clone of a…

Well, it’s a good subject and a great star. The Venus Beauty Institute is a French film written and directed by Tonie Marshall which explores the female fear of commitment. Everybody knows about the male fear of same, but the female version is much more interesting. Nor to her film’s credit does Ms Marshall’s feminist…

The safe and comfortable heroine of Anne Nelson’s play and Jim Simpson’s film manages to find a way to turn the focus of our attention from the tragedy of 9/11 to her reaction to it

I’m not quite sure how it does it, but the Australian film, The Dish, directed by Rob Sitch, gives the best cinematic account known to me of the American space program. On the surface, it is only tangentially about the Apollo 11 moonshot in July, 1969. Instead it concentrates on the true story of the…

Who, I wonder, is the intended audience for movies like Thirteen Days? Of course we know who it is that makes them. Kevin Costner, in spite of a string of self-indulgent flops is still a big enough star to be allowed to indulge himself a bit further. And of course when two or three are…

Re-make fever strikes again, and with even more lamentable results than usual. Will someone please stop Kenneth Branagh before he directs again?