Reviews of the Bosch

“Love is All Around” by the Troggs is a song that shows up with frequency in the work of Richard Curtis. It appeared in Four Weddings and a Funeral and was sung by a choir in an episode of The Vicar of Dibley . Most significantly though is its use as a commentary on the cheapness of holiday pop singles in the terrible Christmas-themed cover “Christmas is All Around” sung by Bill Nighy’s cynical rock star Billy Mack in Love, Actually . This version of the song is unabashedly awful and transparently corporate, yet it still becomes the Christmas Number One. The thing is though, the joke would work with any song about love, but Curtis, whose musical choices are never an accident, chose this favourite of his for a reason. Because Love is All Around is the thesis of his movie. Love, Actually was the first movie Curtis directed, which is often forgotten in light of how the movies he wrote have just as much his personal stamp on them, as I discussed a few months back in Richard Curt...

       Richard Curtis movies are movies about love. Most of them are about conventional romantic love, but the occasional love letter like The Boat That Rocked  or Yesterday  will slip in there. Even War Horse , not often thought of as a Richard Curtis film due to being directed by Steven Spielberg (who can’t help but overshadow most other creatives on the films he directs), is a boy and his pet love story. He’s clearly very compelled by the idea of love, its importance, its many varieties, and what it means, enough so to make a movie encompassing a wide variety of loves with Love Actually . But even this wasn’t quite comprehensive enough, dealing with love strictly pertaining to human relationships (and of course it unfortunately leaves out any non-heterosexual, non-cisgender relationships, thus coming up short of what it strives to be). There came a point though when Curtis wanted to explore love in the abstract as a companion to living a meanin...

Richard Curtis finally made the leap to directing his movies himself in 2004 with Love Actually . But what is a Richard Curtis-directed feature like? Obviously there’s a greater degree of control –the three films he directed feel like unconstrained visions. There’s a maverick wildness with certain ideas and characters and plotlines not present to such a degree in the movies he wrote for other filmmakers. With Love Actually  and The Boat That Rocked  we see his enthusiasm for ensembles, inspired heavily by Robert Altman. But mostly there’s a more pronounced style, a greater emphasis on music, a cheekiness, and occasionally stand-out editing choices. The sharpness of the script remains the same. The quality of the story: not entirely so. And that brings us to what’s probably one of Curtis’ lesser films, certainly his weakest as a director. But it’s also a movie I do quite like in some regards. The Boat That Rocked  was his first movie since  Bean  (that one...

As I pointed out with  Four Weddings , a number of Richard Curtis’ ideas come from romance fantasies. And there’s perhaps none more pervasive than falling in love with a celebrity. Everyone, and especially movie fans, has had a crush on a famous actor and likely has dreamed about romancing them. Notting Hill  is Curtis’ realization of that dream, and his exploration of what a relationship would be like between a regular chap working in a London bookstore and one of the most famous actresses in the world. Julia Roberts doesn’t play herself of course (Curtis is a much smarter writer than the scribe of Ocean’s 12 ), but Anna Scott is certainly a star of a similar stature, likely written specifically for Roberts and her on and off-screen persona. And perhaps it’s because of that star power that she’s gifted with a relatively fleshed out personality. Notting Hill , as with Four Weddings , is firmly rooted in the point of view of Hugh Grant, this time a less awkward but lonel...

Richard Curtis doesn’t get enough credit. Just in general: he doesn’t get enough  credit for his skills as a screenwriter (everyone forgets he was nominated for an Oscar), he doesn’t get enough credit for his monumental impact on British comedy (primarily through Blackadder and Mr. Bean ), he doesn’t get enough credit for the insurmountable good he’s done for the world through Comic Relief, he doesn’t get enough credit for defining the British romantic comedy (hell, romantic comedies in general) of the last quarter century, and he doesn’t get enough credit for his singular voice that overwhelms his movies, whether he directs or just writes them. And the reason he doesn’t get enough credit does seem to be because of the kind of movies he’s known for: romantic comedies, the “chick flick” genre to use an antiquated term.  Further, they aren’t the American brand of masculine-friendly romantic comedies, often based in broad jokes and premises or else sex comedies of the ...