Godfrey Cheshire

Last summer I was invited to the Jerusalem Film Festival to speak about Iranian cinema, as part of a discussion about national cinemas worldwide. Afterward, a friend told me that every time I mentioned Iran, some audience members squirmed. Given that this occurred in the context of a very cosmopolitan, secular and beautifully run festival, […]

A friend says that he expects the impending war on Iraq–which now seems equally inevitable and obscene–to be a “high-tech Vietnam.” By that I think he means that the invasion will be accomplished with high-tech weapons, and that it could turn into a costly sinkhole for the United States. Yet the phrase also suggests something […]

Early in the slick spy-world thriller The Recruit, we hear the CIA characterized as a bunch of “old, fat white guys” who were asleep at the switch when their country needed them most. Other than proving, yet again, that old, fat white guys are about the only group in the United States who can be […]

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is a strange movie. Part of the reason for that description is that it provoked in me a reaction I seldom recall having had. I came out of the film in a state of annoyed befuddlement, liking it very little beyond admiring various aspects of its execution. But the more […]

Movies are a medium of illusions, and perhaps one of their greatest illusions concerns the medium itself. Whether it’s movies or cinema, we tend to think of this peculiar art-entertainment hybrid as something static, given. Everyone knows what movies are, surely. The individual films may change from year to year, but the thing itself remains […]

Although in recent times I’ve increasingly paid less attention to the Oscars, the 2003 race is already shaping up as an exception. The reason, quite simply, is that the past year has been such a rich one for the kinds of movies that Oscar is designed to reward. Indeed, there are now more plausible candidates […]

I can’t say much for George W. Bush’s timing. Just three days before I was to leave for Iran’s annual Fajr Film Festival, he all but declared war on my second favorite country. Nor were the terms he used any less idiotic than the declaration itself. Axis of evil? Give me a break. Did the […]

J ust last week in this space, I opined that a critic should admit it when he hadn’t seen all of the movie under review. Well, it’s happened again. The circumstances this time, though, were entirely different. Last week I was confessing to bailing out of a movie I found unendurable (I Am Sam). This […]