Poor Oscar Wilde! In death as in life he has been defined by his sexuality. To his contemporaries, all that mattered about him was his passion for a stupid and ungrateful youth, Lord Alfred, “Bosie” Douglas (here played by Jude Law), and the scandal of his prosecution for indecency. Then he was a sexual villain;…
A Friend of the Deceased (Un Ami du Défunt), a Franco-Ukrainian film directed by Vyacheslav Krishtofovich and written—in Russian—by Andrei Kourkov, has a very attractive premiss. Tolia (Alexandre Lazarev), a translator living in Kiev and living a hand-to-mouth, hustling sort of existence not untypical of life in the former Soviet Union, finds that his rather…
It used to be that Warner Brothers cartoons were an antidote to the unbearable sugary fakery of Disney and his horrible Mickey Mouse. No longer. The Disney monster is reaching out its tentacles to take over everything, apparently. Or so we might think to watch Warner’s clone of a Disney feature cartoon in The Quest…
In Les Misérables, directed by Bille August, it is the film itself which turns out to be misérable: thin and poor and wretched and in need of feeding up. The one thing you don’t want to skimp on when you are filming an epic is the epic proportions. August, a fine director of intense and…
The most entertaining bit of Godzilla, which is rather short on entertaining bits, comes as the misunderstood scientist, Nick Tatopoulos (Matthew Broderick) is finally able to get through the remarkably thick skulls of the government and the military just what is at stake if they don’t make destroying the monster’s spawn their top priority, as…
Deep Impact, directed by Mimi Leder from a script by Bruce Joel Rubin and Michael Tolkin, is one of what I take to be a new breed of Hollywood disaster flicks. Modeled on Independence Day, these are apocalyptic in scale, overburdened with special effects and pitched to a younger teen audience, but they are still…
24 7: Twenty Four Seven, directed by Shane Meadows, is a strange sort of 90s version of the old-fashioned boxing flick where the tough street kid fights his way out of poverty and hardship to success (even though it is often a problematical kind of success) by learning courage and self-discipline in the ring. The…
The Horse Whisperer, directed by and starring Robert Redford, should come with a disclaimer: “Includes no actual whispering.” Or rather, there is one moment near the end when the alleged whisperer, Tom Booker (Mr Redford) does whisper to the horse: “There’s something you have to do, tomorrow, boy,” but it seems a long time to…
Hope Floats directed by Forrest Whitaker to a screenplay by Steven Rodgers is a feel-good movie selling a relatively innocuous version of the Hollywood dream—i.e. that all the world’s problems come from people, especially parents and children, not hugging each other enough and giving tongue to their feelings of love for each other. The other…
Normally, I make it a rule never to go to basketball movies (especially if they star basketball players) or those whose titles are in ebonics. But Spike Lee is a talented director about whose work it is still possible to be hopeful, in spite of a string of disappointments. He Got Game turns out to…
Hav Plenty by Christopher Cherot is a young man’s film about love and success in the black middle class and as such, I suppose, is to be applauded merely for existing. At least it is a welcome break from those tiresome boyz in the hood and other forms of playing up to black stereotypes. But…
Capitaine Conan by Bertrand Tavernier has endured the sort of distribution hell which is the fate of most foreign films, even the best, in this country—which is why I have only just got round to seeing it. But if you are lucky enough to be near where it is playing, do go and see it….
