Black Hawk Down (2001)

A thrilling adaptation of the work of a popular historical novelist almost succeeds in taking us back to the days of Hollywood’s innocence

I didn’t bother going to see Fight Club when it came out in October because, having seen Seven and The Game, the earlier films by its director, David Fincher, I thought I knew what to expect: namely, bargain basement nihilism and pseudo-profundities got up into an “edgy” package with “edgy” music and featuring big stars…

The full length version of my review of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now Redux which appeared in a shortened form in the September-October American Spectator

A movie that is a very good example of its kind, even though its kind is not to this critic’s taste

Tumbleweeds, in spite of a superficial similarity to Anywhere But Here and a virtuoso performance by Janet McTeer in the principal role, is a much more propagandistic and (therefore) much less interesting film than the Susan Sarandon/Natalie Portman two-hander. It is true that Ms McTeer, who became an instant celebrity three years ago when she…

A funny but also depressing take on the lives of women of the Upper West Side