The shipyard painter, political activist and razor-sharp cartoonist Bob Starrett has just written a new book The Way I See It on his eventful life and times. Below we reprint one of his stories and review an essential read
ENO's production of La Boheme is a triumph,
JOHN Turturro told the critics at the press screening that his film is about "regular" people with strong imaginative lives.
THIS is a puzzling film. I wanted to like it more but, despite its melodramatic plot involving numerous rather sad characters, I found it unmoving.
A BANK heist that obviously promotes more than it suggests, Spike Lee's fine new movie is a mystery wrapped in an enigma and very much relies on critics swearing an oath to secrecy.
AFTER the low-budget claustrophobic cannibalistic Cabin Fever, writer-director Eli Roth sets the teeth on edge with Hostel, a grisly horror movie in which an Icelander (Eythor Gudjonsson) and a couple of US backpackers (Jay Hernandez, Derek Richardson) get lured to a hostel in Slovakia.
Contrary to their usual fare of poor taste jokes, this feel-good family film about a guy (Johnny Knox) who impersonates a mentally challenged competitor to win the Special Olympics will probably have you wringing out your hanky if you're not already laughing in the aisles.
REX TATLER
JEFF SAWTELL peers into a post-Blairite totalitarian Britain, where a man in a strange mask is stirring the populace into revolution.
WE read occasionally of car thieves who discover to their discomfiture or horror a baby sleeping peacefully on the back seat of the car that they have nicked.
WHY anybody would want to remake Peter Sellers's classic comedy is beyond me, especially when you remember Sellers's dislike of the franchise that made him loads of money.
THE idea of writing a comic fable about the will of God might strike you as some sort of contradiction in terms, but this is what we are offered in this film about an ultra-orthodox, childless Israeli couple passing through a test of their faith.
WHOA. Al Pacino turns up the volume, screaming and shouting and rolling his eyes as he seeks to out-do every other over-the-top performance that he's ever produced, not least his blind, bombastic soldier in The Scent of a Woman.