Double Indemnity

Volker Schlöndorff’s film, The Legend of Rita has many virtues, not the least of them being a wonderfully watchable leading lady in Bibiana Beglau. She is a sort of Communist version of Betjeman’s wonderful tennis girls of suburban England: beautiful, strong-limbed, confident and somehow both terrifying and lovable at the same time. She plays the…

The title of the latest movie to come out of the Evil Empire is Disney’s “The Kid”, possibly because the filmmakers were afraid that people might confuse it with the Charlie Chaplin classic of 1921—though more likely because Disney’s appalling hubris just can’t bear not to have its loathsome name on everything it produces. The…

Firelight, written and directed by William Nicholson (Shadowlands, Nell), is a contemporary chick-flick, one of those costume drama romances that attempts to marry traditional girlish fantasies to a mild strain of feminism so as to make its mainly female consumers feel comfortable, even virtuous, about watching what would otherwise be embarrassingly retrograde material. A poor…

[See “How Hollywood Lost Its Romantic Groove,” The Wall Street Journal of February 9th, 2007, under “Articles”] Discover more from James Bowman Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email. Type your email… Subscribe

[See “Entry from July 23, 2008” under “My Diary”] Discover more from James Bowman Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email. Type your email… Subscribe

The safe and comfortable heroine of Anne Nelson’s play and Jim Simpson’s film manages to find a way to turn the focus of our attention from the tragedy of 9/11 to her reaction to it