Invasion of the Body Snatchers

The Devil’s Own by Alan J. Pakula is a dishonest film in the way that we have come to expect Hollywood films to be dishonest when they deal with politics. Here we see noble IRA terrorists fighting only against heavily armed (and comically incompetent) British soldiers instead of blowing up innocent civilians, which is what…

Krippendorf’s Tribe, directed by Todd Holland, is almost as unfunny a comedy as An Alan Smithee Film. Richard Dreyfuss plays James Krippendorf, a professor of anthropology with three children whose wife has recently died. Prostrated by grief he has shut himself up in the house and lived on his research grant until, one day, a…

A funny and well-observed chick-flick that, nevertheless, never quite gets us beyond the recognition that it’s hell being a woman.

Like its predecessor, Toy Story 2 is a triumph of technology — the relatively new technology of computer animation — if not of moviemaking. In fact, as a kind of technological marvel it is naturally impervious to criticism on any merely airy-fairy, aesthetic grounds. Like the Bond films with which it might otherwise be thought…

Andrew Dominik’s Chopper, which tells the story—more or less—of a true-life Australian criminal-hero called Mark “Chopper” Read (Eric Bana), attempts to make its mark, and to a considerable extent does so, as a fascinating study of raw masculinity. Chopper got his nickname by cutting his own ears off while in prison in order to get…

[See discussion under “My Diary” for June 21, 2012] Discover more from James Bowman Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email. Type your email… Subscribe