In Which We Serve (1942)

Great performances and a skillful evocation of provincial England in the 1960s, but a mean-spirited movie all the same

Edward Burns’s young career as a director has gone from promising (The Brothers McMullin) to flabby (She’s the One) to utterly self-indulgent and silly in his latest and, I hope, last film, No Looking Back. The big idea here is to take that over-familiar and by now thoroughly boring conceit of the 1950s (most recently…

It’s sad to see a talented filmmaker like Steven Soderbergh descend to the quasi-propaganda and pure schlock of Erin Brockovich. Julia Roberts plays the eponymous Erin, a nasty, unpleasant foul-mouthed harridan meant to be both attractive and admirable to us because, I guess, she is Julia Roberts and doing feisty. Be feisty, Julia. And Julia…

Going All the Way, directed by Mark Pellington, to a screenplay adapted by Dan Wakefield from his own novel is yet another among the plethora of recent cinematic evocations of the 1950s—and one which, I would have thought, might have elicited one or two protests from women because of the way that it treats them…

[See discussion under “My Diary” for July 10, 2013] Discover more from James Bowman Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email. Type your email… Subscribe

A well made Spanish film about a couple of prostitutes that flirts a little too blatantly with sentimentalism