Third Man, The

[See “Entry from August 5, 2009” under “My Diary”] Discover more from James Bowman Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email. Type your email… Subscribe

A great fan of Taste of Cherry, the last film by the Iranian director, Abbas Kiarostami, I went to his newest, The Wind Will Carry Us with high hopes. I was not disappointed. It is an even better, more engaging and interesting, work than the other, but is recognizably by the same man. In particular,…

How on earth did Ron Howard hope to succeed where Peter Weir failed? Hubris, I suppose. Ron Howard’s done a guest shot on “The Simpsons” (along with those other giants of the silver screen, Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger) and Peter Weir hasn’t. But for those of us not giddy with success, however, the idea…

A Map of the World, adapted by Peter Hedges and Polly Platt from the novel by Jane Hamilton and directed by Scott Elliott, is essentially an Oprah movie that rises above the level we might expect of such a thing—at least until the end when it tries to tidy things up with far too neat…

Wild America by William Dear is an engaging kiddie movie, supposedly based on the true story of a family of prominent naturalist-filmmakers, which will provide some wholesome thrills with its peeks at life and wildlife through the eyes of three boys growing up in Arkansas in the late 1960s. Unfortunately, Dear is not content to…

A somewhat ponderously philosophical movie is redeemed by several outstandingly good performances.