The Searchers is about some people searching. The Missing, which has ostensibly the same plot, is not really about the missing people at all. Its about The Searchers. In both senses.
The Missing articulates acutely how difficult it is in 2004 to make[…]

Do You Hear? I just found on [file-sharing network] the BBC’s Lord Of The Rings dramatisation, first broadcast when I was 8 or 9 and unheard (by me) since. Much though I like the films this is my LOTR, and the opening theme still makes me quive[…]

Can something be smug and heartfelt? After seeing three or four elderly dying person movies in the last few weeks, I am wary of how heartfelt any of them have been. Instead the dying relative is a universal way of ticking the viewers emotional boxes,[…]

wive$watch
In his tremendous memoir, Times Square Red Times Square Blue, Samuel R. Delany spends a few pages discusses acting in porno movies during the 70s and early 80s: he was a gay man in the cinemas because they were also (mainly, in fact) male-[…]

The chapter device used in Dogville is astute, considering the majority of people going in to see it would be well aware that the whole affair rocks in just under three hours and probably won’t be a bundle of laughs. In giving us a bill of fare[…]

But, I’ll post my review anyway, if that’s okay?
My “it’s got Ben Stiller in it so it must be good” theory has been somewhat exposed by his latest effort “Along Came Polly”. It’s not a terrible film, bu[…]

Is there something about the 4:3 aspect ratio that makes Elephant more intimate? Probably not in a cinema like the UGC Shaftesbury Avenue, which without framing blinds presents everything on its big white wide screens with acres of white spaces on th[…]

The problem with most romantic comedies is that they generally try too hard on the comedy front, leaving a relationship which can barely be called romantic. The farcical shenanigans of how to shuffle two people who hate each other into the same room […]

Here’s my vote for Lost in Translation as the A Hard Day’s Night for a younger generation. (Whether Bill Murray’s generation or Scarlett Johanssen’s generation is still up in the air.) Impressionistic, nearly plotless, both tr[…]

What would the people in Location! Location! Location! say of the House Of Sand And Fog. Well I think there would be some consternation regarding the rather dingy interior, and whether they would advocate the installation of a frankly out of place su[…]