I’ve always been more than a little perplexed by movies that require an exclusively American cast to use a “foreign” accent even if the entire movie is in English. I’ve always thought, “Well, if they’re speaking English and we the audience are supposed to assume that...

It’s no surprise that “Bend It Like Beckham” is coming to American theaters sometime later this year after a successful run in its native England. It’s one of those “feel good” hits that will pull in the same crowd that gave repeat business to the surprise hit of 2002,...

I won’t try to hide the fact that I find the whole “Harry Potter” franchise to be a tad underwhelming, if not just a little bit too juvenile in most of the things it does. The first “Harry Potter” movie did not exactly thrill me, and perhaps it was just a bit too long for...

I believe the reason “About a Boy” is so good is because it’s hard to peg the movie into any (or any couple of) categories. It’s not exactly a Comedy, since there’s very little laugh out loud moments. It’s not exactly a Romance because a love interest for Huge Grant’s...

The British Sports in Prison movie “Mean Machine” is a remake of the American Sports in Prison film “The Longest Yard,” about convicts who uses a game of football to get back at their prison guards. “Mean Machine” replaces football with, well, football (only the international...

There is something insanely enjoyable about Paul McGuigan’s English crime film “Gangster No. 1.” Aside from the rather oddball title, the movie brings a fresh perspective to the Rise and Fall of the Gangster genre by treating its subject matter — the unnamed “Gangster”...

“Intimacy” is the kind of film that you never see being made in America. This could be for a number of reasons, from the average American’s belief that anything with vast amounts of nudity should be rated XXX (or that mind boggling NC-17) or be tossed into the frozen wasteland of late-night...

Besides being incredibly lacking in originality, scares, or even those small guilty pleasures I always manage to find in any Slasher film, the new British Slasher flick “Long Time Dead” doesn’t even have the decency to flash some T&A in my direction. How utterly…lacking....

The new British Werewolves Attack film Dog Soldiers is most interesting for fans of American horror films who have ever entertained this thought: “Gee, I wonder how other countries would approach these [insert film subgenre here] movies?” Dog Soldiers is a Werewolves Attack film with elements...

Michael Apted’s Enigma is a World War II suspense/mystery and concerns the British’s attempts to break the German code machine called Enigma. The American World War II movie U-571 breached the same subject, but from an action-adventure point of view. Enigma is written by Tom Stoppard, who...

Like some people I know, some movies think they’re more interesting than they really are. This is the case with John Duigan’s Paranoid. Paranoid stars Jessica Alba (TV’s “Dark Angel”) as Chloe, an up-and-coming fashion model who travels to the country home belonging to...

I know a lot of people like the ones that appears in Mike Hodges’ Croupier, a movie about a novelist who takes a job as a casino dealer (or croupier) when he runs out of money. The people in Croupier are losers. There’s really no other way to describe them. Everyone is a loser in one form...

I have very low expectations of movies I’ve never heard of. This may be why I’m usually very surprised by the superior quality of a lot of low-budget films (or independent films) that have been ignored by the general populace by their lack of publicity. Look at it this way: when you have...

The year 2001 has been a banner year for fantasy novels turned event films. Both well-known book series, The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter have been adapted from their print form into much-anticipated movies, each one with legions of fans waiting to pay any price to see them. Of the two, Rings is...

I have only seen two Guy Ritchie movies (he’s made 3 so far) and I can reasonably determine what the third movie will be like: 1) It will have a multitude of characters, some of which comes and goes at the whim of Ritchie, who is his own writer, and thus he’s his own creative partner; 2)...

My knowledge of England and all of its districts, ‘burbs, provinces, or whatever they call them over there, is as extensive as my knowledge of, say, particle physics — which is nonexistent. So, as I sit down to watch Essex Boys, a movie that takes place in Essex, which I assume is a town...

Barrels concerns the problems of 4 British buddies who owe a big shot mobster name Hatchet Harry $500,000 English pounds and must get the money together in one week. The problem came about when the four buddies saved up $25,000 each in order to deal their friend, a card shark name Eddie, into a high-stakes...