Unimaginative, undistinctive retitling of Joan the Mad, a tale of passion, infidelity, jealousy, madness, death. A tawdry and commonplace tale, in other words, elevated on the high heels of history and nobility: Princess Joan of Castile and Philip the Handsome of Flanders, ca. 1500. Well-produced, which is to say well-costumed …
An apolitical blacklisted screenwriter (Jim Carrey, pining after the Oscar that got away) hits the road to nowhere, drives off a bridge into the river, knocks his head, and wakes up on the beach with amnesia, right outside a California town where he happens to be a dead ringer for …
The first Coen brothers film to disappoint. That's not to say it's not good, certainly not to say it's not even as good as their first, Blood Simple, when there could be no expectations and so no disappointment. The brothers have not suddenly lost their touch. They do for Billy …
Rob Morrow's directing debut, casting himself as a New York artist with Tourette's Syndrome, an obsessive-compulsive disorder, and a major crush on the pregnant girlfriend of his oldest pal, an altruistic doctor ignorant of the pregnancy during his volunteer tour of duty in Burundi. Earnest effort, full of bad little …
Refrigerated Forties-style melodrama from French director Claude Chabrol (and from a novel by Charlotte Armstrong, original author also of Chabrol's excellent La Rupture). The gabby exposition takes a while to set up the situation: a chocolate heiress and a concert pianist, long-time friends and lovers, have elected to tie the …
Trifling crime comedy slash road movie which for some reason, out of the truckloads of scripts dumped at their individual doorsteps, captured the fancy of both Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt. (Typical Roberts line, spoken to her abductor: "You know, you're a very sensitive person for a cold-blooded killer." Typical …
Before we get to the film's title, before we get to one of Hou Hsiao-hsien's patented group portraits in flux around a table, we are introduced to his heroine in a dreamy slow-motion single take, with the camera tagging along behind her, unable ever to catch up, as she strides …
Before we get to the film's title, before we get to one of Hou Hsiao-hsien's patented group portraits in flux around a table, we are introduced to his heroine in a dreamy slow-motion single take, with the camera tagging along behind her, unable ever to catch up, as she strides …
A cartoonist in a coma, whence he descends to dreamland along with his fictional creation, Monkeybone, a simian symbol of the id; or more simply, the phallus; more precisely, an erect one. Fitfully sophisticated; mostly tedious and ugly (the sets, the animation, Monkeybone in particular); very rarely and very mildly …
Swiss-born filmmaker Marc Forster focuses on the middle man (Billy Bob Thornton) in three generations of Georgia corrections officers. The film starts right out throwing haymakers -- first-thing-in-the-morning vomit, wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am sodomy, good-ole-boy bigotry, Death Row, the Last Walk, more vomit, a suicide, and a hit-and-run fatality -- before it settles …
Plump and rubbery computer animation prefaced by a refreshingly retro (ca. 1960) two-dimensional title sequence. Safely recommendable to any child up to the age of five, and less safely as his age increases. The whole premise of a parallel universe of monsters making nightly forays into our own universe, bottling …
Germany's donation to the cinematic food drive seems unlikely to have received distribution without its appeal to the salivaries. And indeed, despite the pasty complexion of the film, the visual appeal of the dishes can match any screen menu outside of maybe Babette's Feast. Yet it has more to offer …
Baz Luhrmann's razzle-dazzle reconstruction of Gay Paree on Australian sound stages and inside computers. Nothing, no matter how overdesigned, overdressed, and overdecorated, is held onto for an adequate appraisal. Everything is handled as a hot potato. And the easy-come-easy-go juggling act takes on a rough resemblance to post-Satyricon Fellini filtered …
David Lynch's The Straight Story, we are hereby reassured, was the aberration; the twisted story is the one for him. In this case it's a braided story, besides twisted, of the intertwined fates of two women, one light and one dark, a starry-eyed, starry-sweatered Hollywood hopeful from Deep River, Ontario, …