Drawing on Jane Austen's life, letters, journals, and maybe even mystique in addition to the novel itself, writer-director Patricia Rozema projects the author onto the heroine to a degree that no novelist worth her salt would abide. (And Austen was a novelist worth her salt and her pepper, too.) The …
A valiant performance from Sigourney Weaver, big, bold, daring, dauntless, yet always fully in control and thoroughly human. (Quite a feat, that, for an actress who can easily seem too good to be true: too beautiful, too brainy, too confident, too strong, too perfect.) But this is a complete movie, …
Indecipherable cyber-fiction postulating that what we accept as reality in the present day is actually a computer-dictated virtual reality a century later. (What is the matrix? "Unfortunately, no one can be told what the matrix is. You have to see it for yourself." Unfortunately indeed.) The Wachowski Brothers, billing themselves …
Indecipherable cyber-fiction postulating that what we accept as reality in the present day is actually a computer-dictated virtual reality a century later. (What is the matrix? "Unfortunately, no one can be told what the matrix is. You have to see it for yourself." Unfortunately indeed.) The Wachowski Brothers, billing themselves …
The screen adaptation of the Nicholas Sparks romance novel -- about a disillusioned divorcee who runs across a half-buried bottle during a jog on the beach, finds an unsigned letter to a Lost Love inside, tracks down its author in a North Carolina coastal town, and applies, in essence, for …
Here we have a Joan, presumably, for the Nineties, a demystified and desanctified Joan, an impatient impetuous petulant bratty obstreperous strident starving-model Joan, a Joan on coke, speed, angel dust, something, a Joan more ripe for urinalysis than for canonization. She has little in common with any other screen Joan, …
English gentleman loves Mafia princess, gets sucked into "family" business. Labored farce, apart from the no-waste performance of Burt Young as Uncle Vinnie. Hugh Grant can't charm his way out of this one. Jeanne Tripplehorn, James Caan; directed by Kelly Makin.
Shakespeare's supernatural sex romp re-set in Tuscany in the age of the bicycle and the Victrola, with all attendant discord and discomfort. (Why would Tuscans have names like Theseus, Hermia, Demetrius, and Lysander? Why, prithee, would they still be talking like that?) It doesn't help that the major roles are …
Sardonic study of a mild-mannered nonviolent serial killer (poisoned Amaretto is his weapon of choice), an ingratiating drifter who leaves a place a little less populous than he found it. Believable behavior from Janeane Garofalo, Mercedes Ruehl, and Brian Cox, but Owen Wilson in the lead role is more a …
The Mouth Squad. The Attitude Squad. The Insubordination Squad. An assembly-line youth movie, noisy, gaudy, and jiggly, recycled from the Swinging Sixties television series about a demographically mixed trio of juvenile delinquents turned undercover cops. Claire Danes, Omar Epps, Giovanni Ribisi; directed by Scott Silver.
Dangerous Liaisons retailored to the bodies and needs of modern American teens: it's still weighted with quaint notions of purity and reputation, but played mainly for catty laughs. (Don't misunderstand. It's not about teenagers who consciously act out a video they've seen, much less an 18th-century novel they've read. They …
An Errol Morris documentary on an execution expert. Even before you get past the opening credits -- crackling electric arcs accompanied by quasi-Wagnerian heroic music -- the irony weighs on you like iron. And the rapidly deployed stylistic devices carried over from Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control -- the …
Sunny light comedy, but not without shadows. The central character of a small-town psychologist -- both the character and the town are named Mumford -- will naturally have easy access to the murky corners of life. And the neat twist whereby the psychologist himself proves to be a benign imposter …
Gagged-up resurrection of the ancient Egyptian monster, mated here with Indiana Jones, renamed Rick O'Connell. (He announces his mission like so: "Rescue the damsel in distress, kill the bad guy, save the world.") So contemptuous of their material are the filmmakers, they felt compelled to spend a jillion dollars on …