Fact-based story of a near-miss nuclear disaster aboard a Soviet submarine in 1961. (A companion, of sorts, to Thirteen Days.) Full of Russian fatalism, isolationism, and hugger-muggerism, in addition to clenched muscles, sweat, and merciless music. A grind, but not unbearable. The only comic relief comes in the coda: the …
Audiovisual aids to the same-named, self-mythologizing autobiography of Hollywood producer Robert Evans (Love Story, The Godfather, Chinatown), a former two-bit actor (Man of a Thousand Faces, The Sun Also Rises, The Fiend Who Walked the West) and former women's sportswear manufacturer (Evan-Picone). It's something of a trade-off: you get bountiful …
An alternative-lifestyle romantic comedy starring and co-written by two unknowns, Jennifer Westfeldt (reminiscent of Lisa Kudrow around the mouth) and Heather Juergensen (reminiscent, for those with longer memories, of Suzanne Pleshette around the eyes). Their characters are, in their separate ways, thwarted heterosexuals -- a routine dates-from-hell montage is entered …
Beijing filmmaker Liu Bingjian’s third feature is banned in China and "has struck a chord for its equally humorous and honest portrayal of Chinese life."
Three sour marriages in the Land Down Under. Director Ray Lawrence and writer Andrew Bovell (whose screenplay is adapted from his own stage play) seem to be going for something deep, something fundamental about relationships. But the degree of coincidence in the multiple path-crossings surpasses the improbable. Eye-catching work from …
A French economics student goes to study for a year in Barcelona, shares an apartment with six other nationalities (a "Euro Pudding"), has plenty of spare time for tourism and amour. Cedric Klapisch communicates something of the richness of the experience, no thanks to the manic gimmickry of his direction. …
Sixteenth-century Siamese epic, written and directed by a genuine prince in the Thai royal family, Chatri Chalerm Yukol, who appears to have taken Scorsese's Kundun for his model. The camera keeps tracking, dollying, craning -- trying to coax some life from the poseurs in costume, and give some emphasis to …
A thirteen-year-old, four-and-a-half-foot orphan (teen rapper Lil Bow Wow) makes chumps of a roster of as-themselves NBA stars: Allen Iverson, Jason Kidd, Tracy McGrady, David Robinson, Alonzo Mourning, Chris Webber, et al. Is it the shoes? (MJ's childhood sneakers?) Is it the bolt of lightning? Or is it just moonshine? …
Disney cartoon with a strained and stretched and far-fetched premise, even for a cartoon. A pint-sized extraterrestrial, genetically engineered for deviltry, escapes to planet Earth, state of Hawaii, and bonds with an ostracized orphan. The movie spends a lot of time being "edgy" and anarchic, roughly up the alley of …
A cool, collected, fourteen-year-old violin virtuoso (Evan Rachel Wood, a sweetie-pie) sets up a pocket-change business as the official secrets-keeper and advice-giver of her neighborhood, and the younger kids are happy to line up and pay fifty cents per secret. But all these secrets, including a whopper of her own, …
Another three hours on the journey of a thousand miles, with pretty much the entire third hour given over to a single indecisive battle. (And now: "The battle for Middle-earth is about to begin.") The viewer who did not scrounge up the video of Part One for a refresher, or …
Another three hours on the journey of a thousand miles, with pretty much the entire third hour given over to a single indecisive battle. (And now: "The battle for Middle-earth is about to begin.") The viewer who did not scrounge up the video of Part One for a refresher, or …
Johnny-on-the-spot documentarists Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe trace the crash-and-burn trajectory of Terry Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. (They had performed the same service for the completed flight of his Twelve Monkeys.) A testament to his runaway ambition, this behind-the-scenes peek at the Creative Process offers much of …
Perhaps you've been asking yourself why they don't make more two-and-a-half-hour video documentaries about African-American rehabilitated crack addicts who recover their children from foster care after six years of separation and who then lose them again after their daughters give birth out of wedlock to HIV-positive babies. Or perhaps not. …
The grief-sticken widower of a carbon-monoxide suicide (he cannot bring himself to read her note) takes up the hobby of sniffing gasoline, and then the hobby of remote-control model airplanes (initially as a cover for the smell of gas around the house). An emotionally unrestrained but nonetheless static little film, …