Hurt Locker, The (2008)

The now familiar practice of making machines into the heroes of our favorite technological romances has taken another leap forward.

In Les Misérables, directed by Bille August, it is the film itself which turns out to be misérable: thin and poor and wretched and in need of feeding up. The one thing you don’t want to skimp on when you are filming an epic is the epic proportions. August, a fine director of intense and…

Making her movie comeback on Friday the 13th as part of a double-act with half of the cursed and talent-deprived Bennifer duo? What could Jane Fonda have been thinking?

Scream by Wes Craven seems already to have become a cult hit, presumably because Wes is as knowing about the fright-film genre as his jaded audience and likes to play with their expectations. At one memorable moment while a crowd of teenagers are gathered to watch yet another horror film they have all seen before,…

What Dreams May Come, directed by Vincent Ward from a screenplay by Ron Bass and based on the novel by Richard Matheson, is the Orpheus myth translated into Californian — with visuals by Caspar David Friedrich. I don’t know about you, but that’s pretty close to being my idea of hell. Not that hell as…

This might have been a striking parable of the plight of young people today, if only the film-makers could have seen a little further beyond its absurdities