In the Mood for Love by Wong Kar-wai is a beautiful film. In fact, it is a film that the word “beautiful,” as applied to the movies, could have been invented to describe. It helps, of course, that the two principal players are Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung, both extraordinarily good-looking people, and that the…
Panic, written and directed by Henry Bromell, does a fine job of setting up the classic therapeutic paradigm so beloved of the theorists of what they call “patriarchy.” This it does, I take it, for political reasons, since the very existence of “patriarchy” depends on an explicitly political assumption, namely that there is some realizable…
The new Hannibal, directed by Ridley Scott (in place of Jonathan Demme) and starring Julianne Moore in the Jodie Foster role of Clarice Starling, FBI agent, has only Anthony Hopkins as the monster left from Silence of the Lambs—a movie which, readers with long memories will know, was not a favorite of mine. The vogue…
Liv Ullmann’s direction of the screenplay of her former director, “mentor” and lover, Ingmar Bergman in Faithless (Trolösa), is remarkably competent—remarkably Bergmanian—in all kind of technical ways, but I wonder if she was fully alive to the subtleties built into this story of a broken marriage? For that matter, I wonder if Bergman himself is?…
Liv Ullmann’s direction of the screenplay of her former director, “mentor” and lover, Ingmar Bergman in Faithless (Trolösa), is remarkably competent—remarkably Bergmanian—in all kind of technical ways, but I wonder if she was fully alive to the subtleties built into this story of a broken marriage? For that matter, I wonder if Bergman himself is?…
Volker Schlöndorff’s film, The Legend of Rita has many virtues, not the least of them being a wonderfully watchable leading lady in Bibiana Beglau. She is a sort of Communist version of Betjeman’s wonderful tennis girls of suburban England: beautiful, strong-limbed, confident and somehow both terrifying and lovable at the same time. She plays the…
Naturally, I had hoped to be able to avoid going to see Lasse Hallström’s sickly-sweet Chocolat. After The Cider House Rules, indeed, I hoped never to have to see another movie by Hallström. But when Chocolat was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar I resigned myself to the necessity of having to waste two hours…
Volker Schlöndorff’s film, The Legend of Rita has many virtues, not the least of them being a wonderfully watchable leading lady in Bibiana Beglau. She is a sort of Communist version of Betjeman’s wonderful tennis girls of suburban England: beautiful, strong-limbed, confident and somehow both terrifying and lovable at the same time. She plays the…
Down to Earth, Chris Rock’s remake (directed by Chris and Paul Weitz) of Heaven Can Wait (1978)—itself a remake of Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941)—is a disappointment. Though there are some very funny things in it, its glib message about being oneself turns out to be a cover for being self-indulgent, in the style (I’m…
Earlier this year, in a review of Panic by Henry Bromell, I observed that it was possible to appreciate a film which is an impressive bit of propaganda for a political position with which you profoundly disagree. Just think of Leni Riefenstahl’s The Triumph of the Will. Nowadays, the most assiduous ideologues among film-makers are…
Earlier this year, in a review of Panic by Henry Bromell, I observed that it was possible to appreciate a film which is an impressive bit of propaganda for a political position with which you profoundly disagree. Just think of Leni Riefenstahl’s The Triumph of the Will. Nowadays, the most assiduous ideologues among film-makers are…
True, there may not be much to be said for Head Over Heels, but one thing it can claim is that, with the scene of Freddy Prinze Jr. defecating while a gaggle of supermodels huddle together, hidden behind the shower-curtain of his bathtub, it has broken new ground for the ever-poopular gross-out flick. Perhaps in…
