Bernardo Bertolucci combines a pamphleteer's penchant for straight, party-line ideology and a best-selling novelist's flair for wanton sensation: heaps of flesh, blood, and excrement (of both the literal and figurative sort). In its breadth, if not in its detail, this maxi-budgeted extravaganza could loosely be termed "novelistic." But just whose …
A power surge on an International Space Antenna nearly knocks career astronaut Roy McBride (Brad Pitt, in his earnest, Robert Redford mode) out of commission. SPOILER ALERT: It turns out that Ad Astra, Latin for “to the stars,” is Apocalypse Now in space — there’s a lot of Capt. Willard …
Old-fashioned spook story, as well it ought to be, set as it is in the Eighteen Teens, and based on a documented case in Tennessee. Fumbling direction (by Courtney Solomon), crude shocks, and dull color shatter any illusion. With Donald Sutherland, Sissy Spacek, Rachel Hurd-Wood, and James D'Arcy.
Hexes, hexagrams, and such, in rural Pennsylvania (or the moss-green Norwegian locales that pass for it) in the 1920s. "Inspired by a true story," but not very truly inspired: a slow starter, a slow finisher, and a slow in-betweener. With Donald Sutherland, Chad Lowe, and Mia Sara; directed by R.L. …
Lush, loud, furious, preposterous espionage thriller, something to do with a pending Chinese Trade Agreement and ongoing attempts to scuttle it. The too-much-too-soon opening is as indigestible as any recent James Bond pre-credits sequence. But Wesley Snipes, although incontestably a superspy, is at least not supercilious about it. And there …
Depression-period romance, written and directed by Robert Towne, in a largely dark, nocturnal, unsunny Southern California, a star-crossed affair between a gringo and a Chicana, or more disparagingly a "dago" and a "spic," an impoverished young novelist taken under the wing, at long distance, of H.L. Mencken (whose voice in …
A former FBI agent (Christian Slater) is brought in to track down a terrorist-killing vigilante. Also stars Donald Sutherland and Elika Portnoy.
Some gorgeous images of fire, swirling and undulating with almost a shifting-sand, simmering-pot sort of subtlety. Also some standard fireball images of the kind you get when any One-Man Army launches a bazooka rocket into the opposition's ammo dump. And while the finale socks you with spectacular sights at approximately …
Lots of action, of various types, on a barren island in the Barents Sea (no bears, even, on this Bear Island), used during World War II as a U-boat base and now the center of some mysterious neo-Nazi activity. Not as clever at concealing the villains' identities as some of …
Convicted wife-killer, parolled after twenty-two years, cozies up to the daughter who testified against him as a child, and who now has a child of her own. What is the man after? And was he guilty or not? Plodding suspense film with an even heavier-footed climactic chase. Amy Irving looks …
What Bill and Ted did for time travel (i.e., less than nothing), Buffy does for vampire hunting. An airheaded high-school cheerleader, whose yellow-and-purple costume is neutralized by jaundiced cinematography, is the Chosen One to combat an infestation of bloodsuckers in Southern California. Mostly flat outside of Kristy Swanson's chest and …
When all else deserts him -- all purpose, all commitment, all vitality -- Fellini likely will still engineer projects with unstinting multimillion-dollar budgets, with eerie, enclosed, otherworldly sets, and with unsurpassed color work by his faithful cameraman Giuseppe Rotunno. He appears to be closing in on that goal in Casanova. …
The hardships and heartache of the American Civil War, cushioned in the plushness of the production: the crane-happy camera, the spendthrift special effects, the "painterly" washes of color and "dynamic" compositions, the visual poetry and bombast, the chiselled and sanded faces of the A-list romantic leads, Nicole Kidman (with her …
Nathanael West's virulent portrait of the Hollywood he lived in, in the 1930s, and of the hopes that turned to despair there, is converted by John Schlesinger into a display of latter-day Hollywood know-how and wherewithal (a lavish re-creation of period, a couple of spectacular catastrophe production numbers), whose purpose …
Sexual harassment in the workplace: of a man, by a woman. It eventually comes to light (a dim, glimmering light at most) that the perpetrator was motivated not by lust but by a calculated scheme to oust the victim. Which would seem to transform her into more a Mata Hari …