Curtis Hanson. My opinion about this director has changed many times in the past. When he’d only really done The River Wild, I probably in some pretentious moment called him some kind of hack. When I first saw L.A. Confidential, it became an instant member of my top 100 movies, for about a month. Last time I saw that movie, I wasn’t nearly as impressed as in 1997. Now here’s his follow-up to that multi-Oscar nominee, and you kind of wonder what happened. There’s nothing particularly wrong with this movie, there’s just nothing particularly right about it either. It’s just a series of vignettes featuring an ageing Michael Douglas. Neither a waste of time nor a great use of it… the definition of average, I think. He’s improved on it with 8 Mile, but again, that was not really his movie in the way L.A. Confidential was. He needs to do something more personal, or something, I dunno, ‘cos he is a really good director when he’s good.

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