Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others)

Everything that is important in Girl, Interrupted, directed by James Mangold and based on the memoir by Suzanna Kaysen, can be condensed into one comment by the mental institution attendant, Valerie (Whoopi Goldberg) as she attempts to give the reluctant Suzanna (Winona Ryder) a bath. “This place is a f****** fascist torture chamber,” says the…

Liar Liar is another high-concept movie, this one directed by Tom Shadyac, who also directed Jim Carrey’s breakthrough film, Ace Ventura, Pet Detective. Here Carrey appears as Fletcher Reede, a shyster lawyer whose five year old son, Max (Justin Cooper) makes a birthday wish that, just for one day, his father cannot tell a lie….

Yet another exercise in Bush-bashing from the Hollywood propaganda machine

A tedious, nasty and disgusting bit of self-indulgence, and no Choke

A movie that tries harder than we might have expected to create a plausible dramatic framework for its story of Dark Age love and death but which can’t get over its psycho-therapeutic sappiness

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…