On Moonlight Bay (1951)

In Love and War is a New Line release of a Richard Attenborough film, based on Henry Villard’s book, Hemingway in Love and War. It is co-written by Villard’s son, Dimitri. Villard Sr. was in Italy with Hemingway and Agnes von Kurowsky, the (American) nurse on whom Catherine Barkley in A Farewell to Arms is…

Yet another example of gore, black humor and special effects that only has contempt for the non-special but desirable effect of explaining what is going on

Le Mépris, or Contempt, based on a novel by Alberto Moravia, was directed by Jean-Luc Godard in 1963, but has just been re-released in a newly refurbished print. Michel Piccoli stars as Paul, a Communist playwright being wooed by a dumb American millionaire called Jerry Prokosch (Jack Palance) to re-write a script for a film…

Ya Ya? Oh No! It’s yet another chapter in the continuing soap opera of Strong Southern Women and their heroic dysfunctions.

Simon Birch, written and directed by Mark Steven Johnson with a “suggested by” credit to John Irving for A Prayer for Owen Meany, is one of those self-consciously uplifting films, like The Spitfire Grill or Fried Green Tomatoes, that leave one feeling manipulated and disgusted. Like them it has been conceived and designed and put…

An inspirational tribute to European unity from a director who is clearly capable of better things