Magnificent Ambersons, The (1942)

Cradle Will Rock is a huge disappointment—nothing but a vanity project for Tim Robbins, who wrote and directed it. It’s a great shame, not only because Robbins showed that he was capable of something much better in Dead Man Walking a few years ago, but also because it has an all-star cast (including Vanessa Redgrave,…

Firestorm is the kind of picture which it would be nice to be able to encourage with a sympathetic review. It is the story of heroic men—in this case the legendary “smoke jumpers” who parachute into forest fires to help put them out—fighting against both nature and bad guys and prevailing against both. Nor is…

A patriotic-spirited account of the US hockey team’s victory over the Russians in 1980 is marred by the gloomy backdrop of Jimmy Carter’s “malaise”

Pay it Forward by Mimi Leder is meant to be another in what I take to be a new series of heart-tugging, inspirational tales like Music of the Heart or American Beauty (which also starred Kevin Spacey) that derive their oomph from the assumption that life in America is pretty grim and miserable but that…

Swept from the Sea by Beeban Kidron is a ludicrously overblown adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s short story, “Amy Foster.” Now the first and absolutely essential thing for you to know about Conrad’s Amy is that she was — how shall we say? — of the canine kind with regard to feminine pulchritude. Also stupid. Conrad…

Boy! I thought this kind of crude, anti-American propaganda went out with the 1970s. A combination of Michael Moore and Bush-hatred appears to have brought it back