Women's-issues forum on body image, sexuality, maternal instinct, career, the whole can of worms. Issues, it would be fair to say, in search of a movie, if not in search of characters. Brenda Blethyn is the middle-aged mother whose two biological daughters have flown the nest, though not as far …
Can Jennifer Lopez be Pretty Womanized? The question does not ask whether she can be America's Sweetheart (which, owing to her career choices to date, and despite the cuteness of her giggle, her nose-scrunch, her accent, etc., seems very much out of the question), but rather whether she can have …
Slow-to-develop, yet not carefully or credibly developed, Faustian tale of a struggling writer whose financial straits impel him to moonlight as a male escort, and then as a collaborator with a dying Pulitzer Prize winner, rewriting the old lion's historical novel on Roman slaves into a topical piece on California …
Dubious male bonding. A taciturn bank robber, waiting to pull his next job, lodges with a gregarious retired poetry teacher when the only hotel in town proves to be closed for the season. (Where are his several confederates staying?) The two leads -- Sixties pop star Johnny Hallyday, gloriously ravaged, …
The man in question, a wood carving by the name of Markku Peltola, is a train passenger who, in a scene of jolting brutality, gets mugged on his first night in Helsinki and wakes up with amnesia. A quirked-up comedy, despite the rough start, by the deadpan Finn, Aki Kaurismaki, …
Having disposed of her cancelled sitcom in I'm the One That I Want, Margaret Cho has less ammo in her second concert film. For the remainder, there's a feeling of going over old and depleted (and dirty) ground, though no feeling of boredom whenever the ground is her mother. Too …
You are already supposed to know, possibly from the comedian's earlier concert film, You So Crazy, that the last word of the title is actually a contraction of three words: run, tell that. He does have some new things to tell since then: a couple of arrests and a coma. …
A vehicle to showcase Dana Carvey's skills as a mimic: an Indian snake charmer, a human turtle, an English dowager, a suave Scotland Yard inspector, Al Pacino in Scarface, Robert Shaw in Jaws, George W. Bush (not nearly as authoritative as his Bush, Sr., on Saturday Night Live), and -- …
The embodiment, the epitome, the acme of the "franchise picture," one of those brass rings that studio executives like to stack up on their lances. So perfect a one, in truth, that it would make more sense to cover the movie in the financial pages than in the entertainment ones. …
In the industrial, tri-level world of Metropolis, Duke Red is a powerful leader with plans to unveil a highly advanced robot named Tima. But Duke Red's violent son, Rock, distrusts robots and intends to find and destroy Tima. Lost in the confusing labyrinth beneath Metropolis Tima is beginning a sweet …
Director Sandra Goldbacher (The Governess) spills some beans about the dynamics, the turbulence, of female friendship, in this case the friendship since early girlhood of a Jewish intellectual and a Gentile airhead. The account seems candid and credible if not especially compelling. Bits of it, admittedly, are swallowed in the …
A Steven Spielberg vision of the future, via Philip K. Dick, with a legitimate science-fictional idea in it. The idea has to do with an experimental crime-prevention unit in Washington, D.C., in the mid-21st Century -- the Department of Pre-Crime -- whose task is to stop the murders foreseen by …
Mildly maudlin group portrait of laid-off shipbuilders on the north coast of Spain, and their cheerless, unsmiling, grim camaraderie. The minor daily mortifications -- watching a soccer match from a free perch without a view of the goal, applying for a bank loan from a smug yuppie, splitting duties with …
A gathering of the clan for an arranged marriage in modern Delhi. You won't be alone if you have a hard time telling who's who and how they're related: even one of the invitees voices the complaint. It's a standard comic situation (Father of the Bride, etc.), almost a can't-miss …
Strained chipperness in the face of tragedy: the innocent-bystander shooting of an imminent bride-to-be. (Not just the characters are strained, but writer-director Brad Silberling most of all.) What the victim's parents do not know -- Dustin Hoffman, Susan Sarandon -- is that their daughter had already broken off the engagement; …