Film Review

Alain Corneau is a minor filmmaker if only because it is difficult to find any thematic consistency in his oeuvre.

Somewhere Harry Potter has lost his zing. He flies, but there is no fire in the speed. He waves his wand, but there is not enough magic in the swing. He romances a beauty, but the passion is passive. He talks but listlessly. Clearly the boy wizard seems tired of Hogwarts and all the hoopla that pervades the rather eerie school of witchcraft and wizardry. Warner Brothers' sixth edition, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince", adapted from J.K. Rowling's immensely popular seven-book series, appears jaded in concept and execution, the film's choice of words over action contributing to my dismay.....

Steven Soderbergh's new independent feature ‘˜The Girlfriend Experience' is better than most of his films. In fact, I can even hazard this: it reminded me of the Soderbergh of ‘˜sex, lies and videotape' fame- an almost lost entity now. ‘˜The Girlfriend Experience' shows us days in the life of a high-end prostitute who offers the aforementioned experience, i.e, one that involves not just sex but also emotional intimacy, in the run-up to the Obama-McCain Presidential elections..

One thing, amongst many others, that I liked about Duplicity was the way it rolled out the story. It flashes back and forth between the present and the past, bring up the flashbacks at opportune moments. Every peek into the past helps explain the present, which otherwise would confound you. I do not even want to give you a synopsis of what the movie is about. I'll leave that for you to discover....

Many have seen the film and considered it to be yet another tale on the US Border Patrol actions ensuring that economically deprived Mexicans do not cross over into US territory illegally. Some US viewers have taken to a knee-jerk dislike for the movie because it shows the US law enforcers in a poor light with touches of racism. It was probably this undercurrent of emotions that deprived the film of an Oscar, while it picked up two distinguished awards at the Cannes Festival...

Medium Cool takes up the issue of the opportunistic voyeurism of TV journalism (its ‘˜coolness') and opens with two TV cameramen photographing a road accident in careful detail. After they have gone about it meticulously, one of the two suggests to the other that they should call an ambulance. Wexler was not known as a director but as a famous cinematographer, essentially, and he tries to use the motif of TV journalism to present a ‘˜real' picture of Chicago in 1968 at around the time of the Democratic convention. In order to do this he eschews dramatic narrative and tries to capture the moment in all its frantic intensity....

The Queen of reincarnation's latest avtaar is that of a film director. Madonna has tried her hand at acting and, to put it politely, I don't think that's her vocation. Which is probably why she has kept herself out of her own film. To say that Madonna is a better director than actor isn't really saying much about her as a director. F & W is an OK effort for a first film. It won't knock the socks off you, but you won't mind wasting time over it either....

S. Darko is like a hybrid of Donnie Darko and Final Destination 3, an ominous exercise in the seeming inevitability of death in which time travel and ghostly visions briefly (at least physically) featured in the first film are magnified to the point of ridicule as director Fisher repeats himself a few times over, virtually undoing the majority of the good moves he makes. When a central character dies in a car accident the moment comes as an authentic surprise, suggesting that the filmmaking team had greater aspirations than much of the movie suggests...

Overall, the movie seems to be a hastily put together mish-mash of different sequences, scenes and songs with some repetitive stock footage of Hollywood stars and a few guest appearances thrown in for good measure. Amateur, vulgar and illogical dialogue writing is a high point of this film....

Hannah Montana: The Movie, the inaugural adaptation of Disney's insufferable sitcom-lite television show, almost caught me off by. Coasting by on typical Disney archetypes and a broad but winning message, the film begins to promise a cyclical success as the minutes go by, doing away with the borderline-ironic laugh track of the series and integrating its slapstick elements into a personal story about a girl trying not to lose track of her personal identity in the face of global fame and a worldwide fanbase of undiscerning teenage girls....