Magnificent Ambersons, The (1942)

When J.M. Synge’s Playboy of the Western World had its premiere in Dublin in 1907 there were riots in the streets because the play was thought to be a vicious slander on the Irish people. Synge had seemed to suggest that it was characteristic of the Irish blarney, at least among the rural folk that…

Jay Roach mops up whatever laughs are left in this franchise, but I’m already sick of these Fockers

Rough Magic written and directed by Clare Peploe has got to be a contender for worst movie of the year. It’s a real stinker. The worst thing about it is its preposterous plot, full of what is obviously meant to look like bits of “magic realism” but coming across instead as a sort of cartoon…

Movie illnesses used to be the kind of thing that beautiful young women contracted. The silent killer was sure in its work, but it always left them looking in the pink when they finally breathed their last. They were still beautiful, but now also charged with pathos. Looking on them you might says, as Romeo…

A weird and often amusing philosophical movie by the screenwriter of Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, only not quite so good as those movies

America may be a nation of greedy moral relativists, only waiting for a good opportunity to turn criminal, but it’s not so bad as France!