Hollywood

The 1968 miniseries L’Odissea remains the definitive adaptation of Homer's epic It is profoundly dispiriting to watch timeless epics or famous fictional characters, let alone actual historical ones, rendered hollow... Read More

“Is Paris burning?” barked Hitler down the telephone to General Dietrich von Choltitz in August 1944, as the Allies pressed into France and the Führer awaited news of destruction. The... Read More

As the Cold War entered its twilight and Gorbachev’s glasnost began to thaw decades of ideological frost, Australian director Fred Schepisi gave us ‘The Russia House’ (1990) from John le... Read More

I have never cared for Robert Ludlum’s airport reads. While the Bourne trilogy promised glimpses into the shadowy world of the terrorist Carlos the Jackal, Ludlum’s bloated doorstops, with titles... Read More

Ritual has often met raw political calculation in the cloistered opulence of the Vatican. The death of a pope is not merely an occasion of mourning but an invitation to... Read More

By the mid-1970s, the audacious William Friedkin had already made two signature American films of the decade - The French Connection (1971) and The Exorcist (1973). The former pushed the... Read More

U.S. actor Richard Chamberlain, who passed away recently at 90, will forever be remembered as television’s dashing Dr. Kildare and his performance as the shipwrecked sailor in the grand 1980... Read More

Gene Hackman, who has died aged 95 under mysterious circumstances, was an actor of such unassuming brilliance that it is easy to take for granted just how consistently he delivered... Read More

Few novelists have eluded the grasp of cinema quite like Joseph Conrad (1857-1924). His works famously teem with psychological complexity, unreliable narrators, philosophical depth – all rendered in elliptical prose... Read More

1974 was a banner year for cinema, a time when screens were graced with films of exceptional variety and brilliance, from ‘The Godfather Part II’ to ‘Chinatown.’ Nestled among titans... Read More