Act of Valor

Diane Lane has cornered the market in respectable middle-aged women suddenly awakened to erotic life by younger men — so why are her personae not remotely believable?

[See “Entry from June 20, 2007” under “My Diary”] Discover more from James Bowman Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email. Type your email… Subscribe

The Iron Giant, directed by Brad Bird, is an animated adaptation of Ted Hughes’s fable which recruits it for a role in Hollywood’s continuing attempts to re-mythologize the 1950s according to “progressive” notions. The old mythology, now long discredited so far as Hollywood and the media are concerned, was that during that period God-fearing Americans…

La Promesse by Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne stars Jérémie Renier as Igor, a Belgian boy of about 16 working to help his father, Roger (Olivier Gourmet), who is a shady dealer in the import and export of illegal immigrants in Liège. He also works as an apprentice mechanic at a service station and seems genuinely…

Blue Streak, directed by Les Mayfield, reminded me a little of the extremely disturbing Austrian film, Funny Games, reviewed here last year, in that it leads us up the garden path of cinematic convention, then whirls around and cries: “Only kidding!” Nothing is what we thought it was. But where Michael Haneke, the sadist responsible…

In case you hadn’t heard, Hollywood hates and fears religion and wants to make sure that we know all the cool people are unbelievers