Manchurian Candidate, The (1962)

Martin Scorsese’s reverent Kundun proves the occasion for reminding us of a curious fact about Hollywood—namely that Buddhism is the only religion which Tinseltown treats with respect, let alone reverence. If I were a Buddhist, this would worry me. What is it that is wrong with this religion that a bunch of shallow, ignorant, self-important…

I went out of curiosity to the interesting documentary double billing of Chile, Obstinate Memory and The Battle of Chile Part Two: The Coup d’Etat by Patricio Guzman. The second was the 90-minute central episode extracted from Guzman’s three-part Marxist epic of 1978 and shown first; the first, shown second, was the hour long postscript…

An enjoyable and well-made film from British director Mike Leigh which, nevertheless, doesn’t quite satisfy

Kicked in the Head directed by Matthew Harrison and co-written by him and the film’s star, Kevin Corrigan, is another of those slacker movies whose makers got far too much money far too early in their careers. This is a movie so immature in its conception, its writing and its execution that even in spite…

Here is the story of Message in a Bottle, directed by Luis Madoki. A desperately sad widower and boat-builder, the strikingly handsome Garret Blake (Kevin Costner), puts letters to his dead wife in bottles and throws the bottles into the sea. They are found by a beautiful young, unattached single mother called Theresa (Robin Wright…

A new Forrest Gump meets Memento, though this is worse than either. Of course it is festooned with Academy Award nominations