King’s Row (1942)

A great film and a heartening demonstration that romance on the grand scale, as Hollywood used to do it, is still possible

Another unsuccessful attempt at the movie that tried to identify Death with Fate and got tangled up in its own metaphysics. But several accidental demises are very cool.

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…

Mrs Dalloway is directed by Marleen Gorris, the Dutch director of the unrelentingly feminist Antonia’s Line, from a screenplay by Eileen Atkins. The screenplay, so far as I can tell, is very faithful to Virginia Woolf’s novel, so fans of Mrs Woolf may enjoy it. The rest of us may take it as Ms Gorris…

A movie for people who spend their lives in front of computer screens

At one point in Space Cowboys, William “Hawk” Hawkins (Tommy Lee Jones) says to Frank Corvin (Clint Eastwood): “Old Age just brings out more of the Frank in you, Frank” The same could be said of Eastwood himself. Like pretty much all of the films he has been unwise enough to try directing, this one…