Stairway to Heaven (A Matter of Life and Death)

The Perfect Storm, though exciting as spectacle is disappointing as drama. Its director, Wolfgang Petersen here favors rather the style of Air Force One, his best known film, than Das Boot, his second best-known. Perhaps it was only the relatively small budget of the latter film which forced him to pay the attention he does…

You’ve got to be thinking: isn’t one inspirational, sensitive, meaningful, caring, profound movie starring Robin Williams enough for one year? At least, could we keep it down to twice a year? At present we’re getting them at a clip of one every other month and it does seem a tear too much. It was only…

The Parent Trap, directed by Nancy Meyers, is an intermittently charming remake of the Disney classic of 1961 which starred Hayley Mills as twin 13-year-olds, separated since birth, who meet by chance at a summer camp and then plot to reunite their divorced parents. In this version the twins, played by Lindsay Lohan, are presented…

If John Woo thinks, as the publicity material claims, that Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai is “the closest thing to a perfect movie that I have ever seen” I wonder why he does not make movies like it himself? In fact, Le Samourai, made in 1967 but only seen in this country before in the wake…

Hav Plenty by Christopher Cherot is a young man’s film about love and success in the black middle class and as such, I suppose, is to be applauded merely for existing. At least it is a welcome break from those tiresome boyz in the hood and other forms of playing up to black stereotypes. But…

Baz Luhrmann, director of Strictly Ballroom and Romeo+ Juliet seems with each film to be trying to outdo the absurdity and outrageousness of the last. If so, he’s going to have a hard time topping Moulin Rouge, which seems to me to go about as far as you can go with self-parody. He is reported…