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Articles by Neil Rosen

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About Neil Rosen

Neil went to the City of London School and Manchester University graduating with a 1st in economics. After a brief stint in accountancy, Neil emigrated to a kibbutz In Israel. His articles on the burgeoning Israeli film industry earned comparisons to Truffaut and Godard in Cahiers du Cinema. Now one of the world's leading film critics and moderators at film Festivals Neil has written definitively in his book Kosher Nostra on Jewish post war actors. Neil lives with his family in North London. More Posts

Defending war films

Whenever I meet my fellow film reviewers at the Sundance Film Festival rest assured when we take a latte after some indie film of indescribable tedium and conversation turns to our favourite genres and films I’m under bombardment for enjoying war films most, yet I continue to defend them not [...]

June 6, 2019 // 0 Comments

Ben Hecht/Adina Hoffman

We film critics live in a bubble so I should not be surprised that few outside our world have apparently ever heard of scriptwriter Ben Hecht. His is a strange craft. Movies are star driven, a few directors are household names, but never a scriptwriter. Typically on a film there will be a group of [...]

May 25, 2019 // 0 Comments

The Desert Fox/1951

The Desert Fox, a biopic of Field Marshal Irwin Rommel starring James Mason, can rightfully claim to be the most groundbreaking war film of all as it lauds a German soldier but 6 years after VE Day. James Mason, ironically a conscientious objector, gives a fine performance as Rommel, Leo G. Carroll [...]

May 12, 2019 // 0 Comments

“You’re only supposed …”

No doubt Rusters will have their own favourite candidates, but today I found a piece by Brian Viner detailing a list of his “Best movie one-liners” which I thought worthy of a recommendation – see here, on the website of the – DAILY [...]

May 10, 2019 // 0 Comments

Kelly’s Heroes

Kelly’s Heroes (1970) supports my theory that a war film tells you as much about the time it was made as the time it covers. In 1970 America was involved in Vietnam and the film is less about gung-ho heroism than a buffoon general (Don Rickles), a long-haired hippie soldier (Donald Sutherland) [...]

May 5, 2019 // 0 Comments

That was then but this is now (revisited)

Without doubt a prime candidate as the greatest agent of impetus in human civilisation is the invention of means of ‘recording’ first language (in the form of writing) and then – as regards performing arts – the use of devices capable of recording sound and movement ‘in the moment’. [...]

April 6, 2019 // 0 Comments

Fred Zinnemann

Last night the excellent SKY ARTS cinema programme featured one of my favourite directors Fred Zinnemann. It’s a name that the more casual cinema-goer probably knows but perhaps cannot list his films which include From Here to Eternity, High Noon, A Man for all Seasons,  Oklahoma!, The Nun’s [...]

March 15, 2019 // 0 Comments

Dirk Bogarde

We critics are no different from the general audience in our likes and dislikes – worse if anything. I never really liked two of the most talented female Hollywood stars Meryl Streep and Katherine Hepburn, the first for being so pleased with herself and the second lacking the warmth and [...]

March 5, 2019 // 0 Comments

Das Boot

I watched the final 4 episodes of Das Boot. One critic observed that a few years ago you would call it unmissable but such is the improvement in European productions that he down graded this to hugely enjoyable. I would not have gone as far at that. There were 2 parallel stories, one on the U-boat [...]

March 2, 2019 // 0 Comments

Six Degrees of Separation (1993)

Watching the biopic of Donald Sutherland on Sky Arts inspired me to rent one of the more neglected films in his canon of considerable work – Six Degrees of Separation. Sutherland is in every sense a towering actor able to fulfil many roles, the concerned father in Ordinary People, the cop in [...]

February 23, 2019 // 0 Comments

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