Manchurian Candidate, The (1962)

Who’d have thought it? It seems that somewhere in Hollywood’s parallel universe the Sharks and the Jets are still rumbling.

It would take too long to catalogue all the excellences of Agnieszka Holland’s adaptation of Henry James’s Washington Square, but chief among them must be the performances of the actors in the four principal roles. Albert Finney plays rich Dr. Sloper, Ben Chaplin plays the handsome bounder, Morris Townsend, who comes to court his plain…

Gridlock’d is yet another attitude film, this one by Vondie Curtis Hall and starring the late Tupac Shakur and Tim Roth. They play a couple of junkie musicians in Detroit vaguely trying to “kick” (i.e. the habit) after Tupac’s girlfriend, played by Thandie Newton, overdoses one New Year’s Eve. They take the girl, Cookie, to…

Oliver Stone’s capacity for distorting and trivializing history, always considerable, reaches new heights

Sensationalism that somehow manages to be almost without sensation. Who watches such stuff? Oh, wait. Nobody!

There is a scene in October Sky, directed by Joe Johnston, when the four “Rocket Boys” from Coalwood, West Virginia., inspired by the sight of Sputnik streaking through the night sky, are setting off one of their rockets. On a sylvan road beside the launch site there appears an original, 1958 Corvette convertible in red…