Kingdom of Heaven
A historical travesty will pass unnoticed if it contains a “message” reassuring to the liberal and progressive consensus
Unparalleled Propaganda
A season of films in New York by a great British wartime director — From The New York Sun of May 6, 2005
Responding Unkind
What if they gave a culture war and nobody came? — From The New Criterion of April, 2005
American Propaganda
The more political propaganda Hollywood produces the harder it becomes for Hollywood to produce anything else — From The American Spectator, April, 2005
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The
The long-awaited film version of the s-f classic from the 1970s proves a disappointment — mainly because the 1970s are just so over
The Real African Queen
An improbable hero of the First World War gets an improbable literary resurrection thanks to the movies — From The Washington Post of April 27, 2005
Entry from April 26, 2005
The left is at it again. In The New Republic of yesterday’s date, I learn that someone has invented a new word for an ordinary feature of life on earth which, so far as anyone knows, we have never been without — namely the tendency of human beings to come into conflict and to make…
Entry from April 15, 2005
As usual in her play on behalf of the Zeitgeist, Tina Brown turns up trumps. The very, very latest trend spotted by this inveterate trend-spotter in her column in the New York Sun (“It Shines for All”) is the attractiveness of women of a certain age — of, say, her own age — which has…
Torremolinos 73
A somewhat slight but funny and insightful look at the aftermath of two revolutions: that of Francisco Franco and that of the 1960s
Winter Solstice
A movie that just goes to show you that the virtues of understatement can be overstated
Comme Une Image (Look at Me)
Agnès Jaoui’s terrrific new movie, Look at Me, begins in a taxicab as the passenger (Marilou Berry), attempts to get the surly driver (Jean-Pierre Lazzerini) to turn down the radio so that she can hear what someone is saying to her on her mobile phone. When her father (Jean-Pierre Bacri) gets into the cab, he…
Look at Me (Comme Une Image)
Can any of us be sure that it’s not mere self-interest which determines who we love and whom we are loved by?