Breaking Away (1979)

Occasionally I go to see a film by a young independent director in the hopes of seeing some signs of life beyond the stuffed and mounted product of Hollywood—and hence in the hope of an escape from the moral smugness of the Hollywood ethos. But, judging by Crossing Fields, written and directed by a young…

Orphans, written and directed by Peter Mullan — the actor who played the title role in Ken Loach’s My Name is Joe — is a bit of a bore, at least insofar as its purpose is to teach a moral lesson that our times are not exactly desperately in need of. Avoid a rigid and…

Science fiction is the parent genre of all post-modernism. If, as Hemingway said, all subsequent American fiction arises out of Huckleberry Finn, all post-modern movies arise out of Plan Nine from Outer Space and other B-grade schlock sci-fi movies of the 1950s — movies which have been enjoyed ever since by the cognoscenti more for…

Say what you like about the French, they’re better than we are at making neurosis interesting

It is fascinating how, although Hollywood has implicitly believed in every crackpot conspiracy theory for decades and has been willing to attribute to the democratically elected government of the United States any and all perfidies, it retains a sentimental attachment to the idea of the presidency. The image of the good king dies hard in…

Weird but not nearly weird enough to escape from being really boring and self-indulgent.