Black Hawk Down (2001)

Beloved, from the novel by Toni Morrison and directed by Jonathan Demme, exploits the sufferings of black people under slavery on behalf of a radical feminism that is merely parasitical upon them. Blacks in general and black men in particular ought to resent having their own history hijacked in this way, and used in the…

Playing God, directed by Andy Wilson and written by Mark Haskell Smith is yet another example of the work of the Taranteenies, those hip young filmmakers who have dominated creative thinking in Hollywood for the past three or four years, in the wake of Quentin Tarantino’s success with Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. You’d think…

A very slow-moving, atmospheric appreciation of the 19^th century outlaw — or at least of his celebrity, which it seems a shame his assassin did not inherit

Did you know that gossip can be vicious and destructive—especially when false rumors are deliberately planted by idle and amoral youths just to see what happens? No? Then Gossip, directed by Davis Guggenheim and written by Gregory Poirier, is definitely the movie for you. Even if you did know these things but have a glossy-magazine…

Steven Spielberg’s watchable but naïve and incoherent account of the revenge by Israel for the murder of its Olympic athletes in Munich in 1972

Only a child of the 1960s could have thought of the idea of trying to make Bob Crane into a tragic hero — or come as close as Paul Schrader does to succeeding.