Black Hawk Down (2001)

An enjoyable comedy like the earlier films of Nicole Holofcener but one which ultimately denies its own pretensions to seriousness

Neil LaBute’s attempt at a real romance goes — perhaps unsurprisingly — horribly wrong.

[See “Entry from June 17, 2009” under “My Diary”] Discover more from James Bowman Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email. Type your email… Subscribe

Devil’s Advocate, directed by Taylor Hackford to a script by Jonathan Lemkin and Tony Gilroy, is like Playing God in being a Hollywood version of the Faust legend. It is a more theologically sophisticated one, if ultimately no more successful. Al Pacino plays the devil under the name of “John Milton”—perhaps because this film comes…

20 Dates by Myles Berkowitz is a charming little pseudo-documentary about what happened when the author, an impecunious independent filmmaker, unexpectedly got $60,000 to produce a film “combining my two biggest failures, my personal life and my professional life.” His gimmick is to be his own star and to go out on 20 dates, recording…

Paul Thomas Anderson shows why style, however brilliant, cannot make up for basic flaws in content.