In My Country

John Boorman continues his exploration of remote political situations by moving from an invented situation in Panama to a fictional account around the real stories told during the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission after the end of Apartheid under the presidency of Nelson Mandela. He also continues his propensity for pushing too much into…

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The Emerald Forest

John Boorman goes full Luddite. Taking the harrowing real story of a man searching for his son for years after the boy was taken by a rainforest tribe in South America and applying his ever-increasing pessimism about humanity and its relationship to technology, Boorman takes his ideas towards their supposedly inevitable conclusion and embraces the…

Around the World in 80 Days

I've read a few Jules Verne novels, but I've never gotten around to Around the World in 80 Days. I wonder if the book has the same lethargic travelogue feel as the film. It's not a complete bore of an experience, but there's no real energy to the narrative as a whole. There's some energy…

The Greatest Show on Earth

Maintaining the reputation for one of the least worthy films to win the Best Picture Oscar, Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth feels like it's going to be something of some quality to start as it lays out its vision of the Ringling Brothers circus as well as all of the little personalities…

A Royal Scandal

Ernst Lubitsch was due to direct this screenplay that he helped develop with the screenwriter Edwin Justus Mayer, but he fell too ill to actually go beyond the pre-production process. The executives at Twentieth Century Fox tapped studio director Otto Preminger, another European émigré to Hollywood, to take over the production, and I think this…