La Vita è Bella or Life is Beautiful was directed and co-written by Roberto Benigni, who stars as Guido Orefice, a Jewish waiter in Arezzo before the war. He woos and wins his wife, Dora (Nicoletta Braschi), whom he calls la principessa — the princess — in memorably comic and romantic style and manages to…
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…
Jerry Springer in ‘Ringmaster,’ directed by Neil Abramson and written by Jon Bernstein, stars Jerry Springer as the host of a daytime talk show very much like “The Jerry Springer Show”—only a disclaimer at the end informs us that this Jerry and that Jerry have nothing to do with one another. It is the downmarket…
James Cameron has a lot to answer for. By making the top grossing film of all time a three hour plus extravaganza he has convinced the money men that it’s OK to break the two hour barrier so long as you’ve got a picture that’s going to pull the teeny-boppers, with plenty of spending money…
Very Bad Things, written and directed by Peter Berg, aspires to be a black comedy but it forgets to be comic. The title is a true enough description of what is to be found inside, but as none of the bad things are also funny, the movie itself is merely. . .a bad thing. Jon…
I expected Enemy of the State, directed by Tony Scott, to be one more document in the tedious succession of conspiracy-theory movies that has pretty much dominated Hollywood’s view of politics since the 1970s. It is that, certainly. Once again, a rogue official of the government controls a vast army of sinister intent and apparently…
The thesis of Elizabeth, written by Michael Hirst and directed by Shekhar Kapur, is very simple— like the people that the thesis is ultimately about. These are the credulous peasants of the middle ages who are supposed to have worshiped the Virgin Mary. By the 16th century, the Catholic Church as headed by Sir John…
La Vita è Bella or Life is Beautiful was directed and co-written by Roberto Benigni, who stars as Guido Orefice, a Jewish waiter in Arezzo before the war. He woos and wins his wife, Dora (Nicoletta Braschi), whom he calls la principessa — the princess — in memorably comic and romantic style and manages to…
Dancing at Lughnasa, written by Frank McGuinness from play by Brian Friel and directed by Pat O’Connor, stars Marvelous Meryl Streep doing a vowel-perfect Irish accent as Kate Mundy, a severe old maid and schoolmistress who is trying to hold together her little family in Ireland in the 1930s. The family consists of her four…
The Celebration is a film directed and co-written by Thomas Vinterberg, a Danish director who has teamed up with Lars Von Trier, a fellow Dane, to issue a manifesto called Dogma 95. Everybody, including Mr Vinterberg himself, seems to agree that this is little more than a publicity stunt, and Vinterberg claims that in the…
Waking Ned Devine, written and directed by Kirk Jones, is a delightfully funny and touching film that, I’m afraid, would not win the approval of Bill Bennett. It is about a crime — a fraud perpetrated on the Irish government by an entire Irish village which thus doubtless reveals its collective lack of character and…
Love is the Devil written and directed by John Maybury, stars Derek Jacobi as Francis Bacon, the pioneer of the skull-beneath-the-skin school of British art. Because he was forbidden by keepers of the Bacon artistic estate to show actual Bacon canvases on screen, Maybury, who is himself a painter, has had to confine himself to…
