Even if you don’t know en passant from castling, I highly recommend Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit, about a young woman with difficult circumstances striving to become the best chess player in the world. I know the rules of chess, but don’t know the fine points–i have no idea what moves constitute the Sicilian Defense–but though […]

The first James Bond movie I saw was Diamonds Are Forever. I was ten, and I was over the moon about it. I saw it twice. I was inspired to try to write my own spy novel, borrowing my dad’s typewriter. I wrote one page.Looking back, Diamonds Are Forever is somewhere in the middle of the quality of […]

I’ve been waiting for this film for a long time. It’s been gestating for years–at one time Steven Spielberg was going to do it. But it ended up in good hands–Aaron Sorkin, who wrote another trial film, A Few Good Men, and can stitch together dialogue like nobody’s business. This is his second directorial effort, […]

One of the enjoyable aspects of cinema isn’t just watching new films or revisiting old favourites but revisiting films every few years and taking new things from each viewing. James Bridges’ 1979 topical thriller ‘The China Syndrome’ is a film that I’ve enjoyed regularly over the years for its intelligence and genuine tension it provided. […]

Although set in the 1960s, specifically election night in 1968, Shampoo is a prime example of ’70s movie making, the era when the director and writer had more control than the studio, which allowed for fresh takes on society, rather than canned studio products. Written by Warren Beatty and Robert Towne, and directed by Hal Ashby, Shampoo was released in 1975, just […]

This week marks the 25th anniversary of Seven (stylized as Se7en, a film that has been celebrated, especially by young film geeks. It was David Fincher’s second film, after Alien 3, and the cinematography by Darius Khondji is extremely dark, in dimly-lit rooms, at night, and rain. Ironically, the last scene, which has a devastating twist, is in […]

If I thought Christopher Nolan’s films Inception and Interstellar were confusing, they are Mother Goose compared to his latest, Tenet. I had little idea what this film was about. It was like watching a foreign film without subtitles. That being said, the film can still be enjoyed for its action sequences and some excellent performances, particularly by Kenneth Branagh as […]

There’s a long history of Hollywood films about Hollywood, and they often evoke the dark side of the film business, from William Wellman’s A Star Is Born to Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard. But I don’t know of any film as lacerating about the movie business, but also as funny, as Robert Altman’s 1992 film, The […]