Breach

It is unfortunate for Stephen Frears’s The Van, based on the novel by Roddy Doyle, that it is coming out at a time when the economies not only of most of the countries where it will be seen but even that of perennially down-on- its-luck Ireland, where the film is set, are booming. The careful…

Sensitive writers rendered dysfunctional by their dysfunctional families — hm, where have we heard something like that before?

Do old people still fall in love? For sure. But does anybody really want to watch them doing it?

Occasionally I go to see a film by a young independent director in the hopes of seeing some signs of life beyond the stuffed and mounted product of Hollywood—and hence in the hope of an escape from the moral smugness of the Hollywood ethos. But, judging by Crossing Fields, written and directed by a young…

For just a moment, about half way through, Hollow Reed by Angela Pope looks as if it is going to face a difficult problem honestly. Talk about suspense! But just as, when it looks as if the hero of a movie like Con Air is done for, you know he can’t be, so here you…

A charmless, tedious and unfunny movie that cultivates an image of — of all things — intelligence