Plainly, if only partially, Claude Lelouch's title echoes that of his 1974 And Now My Love. The film as a whole echoes the other more faintly: two destined lovers on distant paths, a debonair British jewel thief and a soulful French cabaret singer, each as gaunt and haunted as the …
Unpretentious, un-epic Western, adapted from a novel by the hard-boiled mystery writer Robert B. Parker. It bears more than a passing resemblance to a pseudonymous variation on the Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday legend, the 1959 Warlock, without itself qualifying as a variation on that legend. We have again the two-man …
In a word, exhausting. In a few more, overblown, overstuffed, repetitive, bombastic, and sometimes just dumb. (Never mind dreary to look at and punishing to hear.) Zack Snyder follows his Superman reboot Man of Steel with a muddled meditation on man's anxiety about God walking the earth. Except of course, …
As the sun fades on the Twilight series, Hollywood sets its sights on another stretch of successful teen Harlequin Romances. Gatlin, South Carolina is the type of place people can leave only after they die. A group of "casters" (don’t call them witches) transform the town and an otherwise handsomely …
An aggressively, gleefully dumb outing from director David Ayer and star Jason Statham, beginning with the admittedly funny bit that the guy we meet at the outset who works as a beekeeper used to be a Beekeeper — a super-agent acting outside the system to Protect the Hive, aka, American …
Annette Bening takes to the role of an aging diva of the London stage, ca. 1938, like a starving lioness to a raw steak. Her range of expression is most impressive (whether suffering the attentions of a young admirer in an elevator or rising to the challenge of an ingenue …
A triangle tale related in reverse chronology, starting, that is, with the breakup of the pertinent marriage and working backwards nine years to the first extramarital embrace. The effect of this arrangement is to ensure that every step of the way we know more, and better, than the principal trio. …
Sensibly scaled portrait of the Greek soprano, captured well past her prime, when she was involved in a project of dubious artistic integrity, lip-syncing on film to an earlier recording of Carmen. Fanny Ardant, as dark and dramatic-looking as the real diva, conveys the appropriate amount of passion -- which …
Undisclosed chapter in the career of the 18th-century rake: his courtship of a protofeminist ghostwriter and swordswoman, the Ms. Right who can tie him down for keeps. The sort of romantic fantasy, in other words, that ruins real lives. A tiresome rompish costume party in antiquing golden light, under a …
Like many musicians, accomplished Saudi cellist Nasser (Samer Ismail) has aspirations for greatness, though he feels like he’s held back by the old, dilapidated instrument he’s forced to play. When Nasser is offered the chance to take possession of a gorgeous red cello by a mysterious shop owner (Tobin Bell), …
Wayne Wang's you-are-there coverage of the final days of British colonial rule in Hong Kong, a story of crushingly heavy symbolism: there's the dying Englishman (Jeremy Irons), the beautiful kept woman from the mainland (Gong Li), the scarred local with an illusional past and a cloudy future (Maggie Cheung). Part …
Felicitous comic conceit: a community-theater production of The Beggar's Opera as a microcosm of small-town tawdriness. It affords Anthony Hopkins a role in which he can really let loose without unbalancing the ensemble: a moonlighting director (a solicitor by day) who thinks he can be a caustic, eccentric genius with …
With this, David Cronenberg comes very near to "straight" psychological drama, and -- excepting only one nightmare scene, from which the dreamer awakens before it becomes too disgusting -- gets quite far from his icky-gooey horror mode. And any horror aficionado who honors the name of Val Lewton (I Walked …
NYPD Det. John McClane (Bruce Willis) is presently on suspension for undisclosed reasons, and hence hung over and unshaven, when a massive explosion rips through the Bonwit Teller department store (no casualty report: such is the level of human interest); and the German-accented, nursery-rhyming mad bomber (Jeremy Irons) phones up …