Full Metal Jacket (1987)
[See discussion under “My Diary” for July 10, 2013]
[See discussion under “My Diary” for July 10, 2013]
Holy Smoke by Jane Campion is a movie whose most basic assumptions—arising out of a weirdly anachronistic, 1970s-vintage view of bourgeois life—makes it rather difficult to like. From the first glimpse she gives us of “Sans Souci, Sydney,” an overhead shot of acres of tiled-roof bungalows that bespeaks “suburbia,” we know that Miss Campion’s sympathies…
Most Wanted, directed by David Glenn Hogan, is not without signs of talent, and it has one or two finely managed scenes. I especially liked the one where Keenen Ivory Wayans in the role of James Dunn, a stock innocent con on the lam (and boy is he innocent! he only got put in jail…
Tea With Mussolini is, like so many other works by its director and co- writer (with John Mortimer) Franco Zeffirelli, for movie-goers with rather more of a sweet-tooth than I generally find I have. Adapted from Zeffirelli’s autobiography, it tells the story of a small Italian boy called Luca (played as a child by Charlie…
What, I wonder, is the point of remaking a film you’ve already made if you’re just going to make the same mistakes over again? In fact, in Just Visiting Jean-Marie Gaubert makes the same mistakes he made in Les Visiteurs (1993) only more so—perhaps because he took on John Hughes to help him tart the…
A feel-good celebration of the gay agenda and in particular the fundamental principle that no obligation must be allowed to take precedence over the free expression of one’s sexual nature
Jack Nicholson gives the performance of his career and Alexander Payne delivers on the promise of Citizen Ruth and Election