Some of the credit must presumably go to The Sixth Sense for reopening the door to an old-fashioned, low-tech, thick-atmosphered ghost story. There remains plenty of credit still to spread around among the Spanish writer and director (and musical scorer!) Alejandro Amenábar, heretofore known for the overly tricksy Open Your …
After thirty years, a homosexual writer returns to his hazardous hometown of Medellin, Colombia, to await death, but in the meantime to have a fling with a trigger-happy young prostitute. A topical shocker, instructive, provocative, but slackly plotted between shootings ("All this butchery leads nowhere"). Barbet Schroeder filmed it on …
Neo-noir dark comedy about a suburban family man cum hitman in midlife crisis, developing a crush on a fellow patient in his therapist's waiting room. There is nothing credible about the hero's vocation -- his only underworld contact is his father; his wife thinks he merely runs a mail-order business …
Two elderly Belgian sisters, one retarded, with an obsession for flowers as well as for her girlishly "feminine" sister, a portly boutique owner whose favorite colors (to the exclusion of all others) are pink, purple, and red, and whose favorite pastime is amateur operetta. Simple, gentle, underplayed heart-tugger. A tidy …
WWII history according to Michael Bay (Armageddon, The Rock), a three-hour lesson. To some extent the seriousness of the subject -- as contrasted to the director's previous subjects of the end of the world and the mere annihilation of San Francisco -- seems to have inspired Bay to sit up …
Hyperbolized cliché: the repressed artist whose entire supply of passion is funneled into art. But this artist, a female pianist fixated on Schumann's knowing descent into madness, adds some special kinks to her repression: visiting a porn-shop viewing booth and breathing through a discarded Kleenex as if through an oxygen …
The "unique personal vision" of Tim Burton comes down here to the burgeoning field of science-fiction graphics: a new illustrated edition of an old familiar classic. (Rather dark and murky illustrations, too, with a forest-primeval feel to deepen the timeless mythicality of it all.) Sure, the ape makeup, to say …
Slow and "heavy" Americanization of an egghead detective novel by Friedrich Dürrenmatt. Like a lot of actors-turned-director, Sean Penn is disposed to dump an emotional load on his actors and watch them stagger around under it awhile. Most of them -- Benicio Del Toro, Patricia Clarkson, Mickey Rourke, Vanessa Redgrave, …
Unpenetrating piece on a stubby, chubby, hairy veteran of the adult (as it flatters itself) film industry. Probably more than you want to know, and yet (once you've made the commitment) less, too. Directed by Scott J. Gill.
Tom Tykwer's followup to Run, Lola, Run is something of a letup -- or from the audience's point of view, a letdown. Franka Potente, the Lola runner, is back on board, but after she gets flattened by a truck and released from the hospital on shaky pins fifty-three days later, …
Fairy-tale success story: from little nobody to big somebody, minus any desire or effort, more like a lottery prize. More exactly like an unexpected inheritance: the throne of Genovia (pear capital of Europe), by subterranean bloodline. What a surprise for a frizzy-haired, four-eyed, fifteen-year-old San Franciscan misfit! The transformation of …
Interesting idea: to re-enact the drug addiction, mental breakdown, and recovery of actor Jia Hongsheng with the actor himself playing the role. (Together with his real father, mother, others.) The shopping excursion of the peasant father to purchase a Beatles tape is amusing (the old man has never heard of …
Half a dozen Vegas vacationers are picked at random, for the private betting pleasure of high-rollers, to chase down the two million dollars in a locker in Silver City, New Mexico. Bargain-basement Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, sharing shelf space with Scavenger Hunt and Million Dollar Mystery. The opening credits …
French filmmaker Jacques Audiard (son of the prolific scriptwriter Michel Audiard) sets himself the interesting task of how to make use of the faculty of lip-reading for the purposes of a thriller. The result is not all that interesting. The personalities and the relationship of an introverted secretary (Emmanuelle Devos, …
"Based on a true story", it says right below the title, lest you demand justification: twenty-five years of a life rerouted by teen pregnancy. The quarrel isn't with the story; it's with the pushy direction (Penny Marshall), the anemic image (Miroslav Ondricek), the cranked-up performances (Drew Barrymore, Steve Zahn, James …