Jokeyness is the keynote of the sequel. Naturally the damsel-in-distress, who at one point has to wear the peeled-off face of a friend of hers as a mask, finds plenty of things to scream about: your eardrums take a real beating. But the family of murderers suggests nothing so much …
Probably as near to verisimilitude as Blake Edwards is able to come: a serious, sometimes altogether somber comedy, with none of the lapses into boorishness and buffoonishness that marred such other serious efforts of his as 10 and S.O.B. (or at least fewer and less severe lapses). The "life" pointed …
The devotional life of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, a.k.a. "The Little Flower of Jesus," rendered in delicate, petal-like scenes, and arty salon photography, with textured backdrops, a frosty white light, and blackouts seemingly controlled by rheostat. Rigorously ascetic, but sneakingly prettified, even cutesified, in its own way, too, and a …
Sort of an understaffed Magnificent Seven, only not nearly three-sevenths as good a movie (nor even with three-sevenths as good an Elmer Bernstein score). These heroes are actually just Hollywood actors, ca. 1916, who have been invited to a besieged Mexican village for what they mistakenly believe to be a …
An ingenious, charming, and ultimately touching conceit equating silent movies with Lost Youth -- specifically the lost youth of a reclusive former film actress: faint echoes of Sunset Boulevard -- and re-creating brilliantly the actual style of that era, right down to the title cards in place of speech (though …
Two-different-worlds romantic comedy: he's a Chicago hockey star nicknamed "The Hornet"; she's an unmarried Latina with a troublesome son. Some of the realities of ghetto life are acknowledged in passing, and Maria Conchita Alonso (of the sparkling dark eyes) fills in some emotional realities as well. These don't help with …
The Over-the-Hill Gang formula for supplying new roles to old film stars: the last American train robbers (circa 1956) are let out of prison thirty years later to try it one more time. Re-teaming the Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday of Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (circa 1957) gives it …
It's been over 30 years, but the Orson Welles completest in me actually has fond memories of seeing this in a theatre. If given the choice, one would certainly prefer this to the Michael Bay atrocity of the same name.
David Byrne's obtainment of a director's hat, in addition to his on-screen cowboy hat, does not quite signal the transfusion of fresh blood and fresh ideas which rock-and-rollers everywhere must feel sure Hollywood could use from them. His True Stories, neither exactly true nor stories, is modestly subtitled, with tongue …
Jane Campion's first feature-length film, made in 16mm for Australian television. This is no find on the order of the three packaged shorts from her film-school days, Peel, Passionless Moments, A Girl's Own Story (the absence of Sally Bongers as cinematographer is a possible tipoff), though it undoubtedly has its …
Prince's second movie (and first one directed by him personally) is much less tuned to the MTV wavelength than might have been expected -- especially in view of his previous screen appearance in Purple Rain. Until the closing credits (and until after his character has been shot dead), he does …
The title announces what turns out to be a constant refrain: the difficulty of the L.A. punk group, X, in getting themselves heard through normal commercial channels. How great a loss this is to American culture is -- on the evidence -- open to debate. But their movie is amiable …
Agnes Varda, roughly represented on screen by Macha Méril, recounts the last weeks in the life of a teenage girl found frozen in a ditch. You couldn't say that the conception of the character isn't, in its own inverted way, sentimental -- more an existential beau idéal than a flesh-and-blood …