Bullitt (1968)

As he did in Elizabeth, Shekhar Kapur tries to make his historical characters less like themselves and more like us. Why the self-congratulation?

You knew that Mulan, the latest extrusion from the Satanic Mills of the Disney animation shop, had reached its intended audience when you saw the headline of Janet Maslin’s review in the New York Times: “A Warrior, She Takes on Huns and Stereotypes.” Someone ought to do a study on what it is that makes…

Almost a pastiche of a Truffaut-like coming of age picture, but without Truffaut’s magic touch

An animated comic-book about the American airmen of the First World War may appeal to young kids, but the brightest of them will be able to spot the phoniness

One star for Ron Howard’s attempt to bring back an old-fashioned, unhip hero who seems to have come from the moon rather than New Jersey

The 13th Warrior, directed by John McTiernan, is a Hollywoodification of Michael Crichton’s attempt to re- imagine Beowulf in his novel, Eaters of the Dead, with the help of a 10th century Arabic account of adventures in Central Asia. It was Kipling who pioneered this sort of thing in his brilliant story, “The Knife and…