Breaking Away (1979)

The title of the latest movie to come out of the Evil Empire is Disney’s “The Kid”, possibly because the filmmakers were afraid that people might confuse it with the Charlie Chaplin classic of 1921—though more likely because Disney’s appalling hubris just can’t bear not to have its loathsome name on everything it produces. The…

The best that can be said about a movie that should never have been made is that it’s not so bad as might have been expected

A beautiful, funny, heart-breaking story of Kurdish refugee children in Iraq on the eve of the American invasion

A charming statement of the rationalist case against honor and glory and big men and big ideas. If only it were true!

Live Flesh by Pedro Almodovar begins with a scene, set on a lonely night in 1970, in which a baby is born on a bus on the way to the hospital. There is a comic bus driver and a comic older woman helping the baby be born. “If idiots like us didn’t give birth,” she…

Blood and Wine is another of those collaborations between Bob Rafelson (director) and Jack Nicholson (star) which promises to be on the cutting edge of hip—just as Five Easy Pieces, The King of Marvin Gardens and The Postman Always Rings Twice were in their day. Another way of putting it might be that the film…