Queen, The

Pearl Harbor, written by Randall Wallace and directed by Michael Bay, begins with a visual pun, which is also a leitmotif throughout the film: the impossibly big and gorgeous image of the setting sun. Remember who used to run something called the empire of the rising sun? The movie’s patriotism is almost shocking. Along with…

The movies can’t help themselves: they chase the chimera of the “real man” within the great man as great men themselves once chased military glory

Is it possible to make a movie about reality TV that’s more cheesy than reality TV? Amazingly enough, it is.

Hippie heaven in the California mountains as seen through the telescope of nearly 40 eventful years — but almost entirely without perspective

Smilla’s Sense of Snow, based on the novel by Peter Hoeg and directed by Bille August from a screenplay by Ann Biderman, is another film in which far too much is going on. At its most basic, it is about the search by the beautiful young Smilla (Julia Ormond) for the murderer of a six…

Having once lived in the area served by Channel 6 (Harrisburg, York, Lancaster, Lebanon), where Russ Richards (John Travolta) works as celebrity weather man in Nora Ephron’s amusing Lucky Numbers, I can assure you that not everybody in Central Pennsylvania is a moron. Nor would anyone but a supercilious Hollywood type suppose that “Harrisburg’s most…