Napoleon was a flawed character – a political and military genius who tended to confuse his personal ambition with the overall interests of France. His was a glorious rise to power and achievement followed by a downfall due to his inability to know his own limitations. Scott’s Napoleon flattens this grand trajectory. But if you don’t give us the highs, you miss the drama and the tragedy of the lows. Napoleon should have been a more moving and thrilling movie than it was.
Category: Film Reviews
Asteroid City breaks the third wall, the fourth wall – every wall that’s ever been thought up by human showfolk to enable comprehension and clarity. It breaks down the barriers of performance and drowns the lot in an incoherent soup of stylish surrealism and quirkiness for its own sake.
How can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer’s deadly toy? I’ve had this line from Sting’s song […]
As with advertising, so with politics. You sell your message better when you leave out the sermonising and make the people laugh. Barbie should have stuck to making jokes.
Fans of detective noir and ‘thirties design will love this atmospheric cinematic homage to Raymond Chandler.
‘The critics loved After Sun. So did a friend who has a difficult relationship with her father. As for me, I began to wish I’d blundered into a mindless action movie instead.’
As a story about a man facing death it is tone-perfect, not saccharine, not depressing, not self-consciously arty and in the end – well, you know, the Brits do this kind of thing so much better than anyone else.
What constitutes a happy love story ending in a modern multicultural context? ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It’ is a good question, and you’ll enjoy Jemima Khan’s crack at answering it.
I settled in for what promised to be an enjoyably sharp satire on the excesses of foodie culture – the fads, the follies, the ridiculously pretentious lingo, the vanity and egotism of its stars. An over-the-top – but only just – black comedy inspired by places like Noma in Copenhagen or El Bulli in Spain.
‘There are many things to like about Banshees. As well as being a good relationships drama, it’s a tone-perfect capture of pre-modern Irish idiom and culture, with characters to match, and actors more than up to the job of fleshing them out.’