Turbid tale of parallel passions: a 19th-century double axe-murder on Smuttynose Island off the coast of New Hampshire, and a present-day photojournalist exploring the scene of the crime on a boating party, with Elizabeth Hurley flaunting herself in a bikini under the basilisk eye of the photographer's husband, a Pulitzer …
Co-written and -directed by the brothers Anthony and Joe Russo, this counts as the second American remake, after Louis Malle's crummy Crackers in 1984, of Mario Monicelli's prototypical caper comedy, Big Deal on Madonna Street. The freshness and flavor, naturally, are long gone. But considered as a repertory piece, like …
The post-Private Ryan fashion in war films now reaches the treacherous terrain of the Vietnam War. Call it the all-guts-all-glory look: the stomach-turning level of mayhem commonly associated with the anti-war film, and yet a crispness of salute more typical of the wartime flag-waver. Writer-director Randall Wallace, who wrote but …
Maori mysticism, from a novel by Witi Ihimaera, brought to the screen by writer-director Niki Caro in the bright rich color that seems to be indigenous to the New Zealand cinema. The storyline tells of a moribund modern-day tribe awaiting the arrival of a savior, and not recognizing the one …
The long and winding and rocky road of an adolescent foster child after her bohemian mother ("She's an artist. She doesn't care about things like Parents' Night") is imprisoned for murder. A hair-tearing women's picture (hair-hacking and hair-blackening, too), with some authentically messy emotion en route to the triumphal uplift. …
A product of cinephiliac inbreeding. It has to do with a hitman named Critical Jim who, besides his work, loves movies ("The old movies, you know, where it was all about the story"), and it has even more to do with his assigned target, who delays his execution in the …
John Woo's Second World War shoot-'em-up. The premise of the film, in contrast to that of any previous John Woo you will have seen (Mission: Impossible II, Face/Off, Broken Arrow, etc.), brings to bear what we could call a pressure of reality, to push against the director's cartoony tendencies, and …
PBS-y nature documentary, French-made, following avian flight routes and disabusing you, along the way, of all that free-as-a-bird baloney. Being a bird looks like killingly hard work. And getting picked out of the sky by duck hunters is an occupational hazard observed with a stoical no-comment. With its strict focus …
Torpid, stagnant romantic triangle, notwithstanding the amount of locomotion. Twice a week, the titular Zhou Yu, a painter on porcelain, rides the rails to her poet lover, Chen Ching, and en route meets Zhang Jiang, a feet-on-the-ground veterinarian. The film signals a return to action for Gong Li, or anyway …
Three Dutch sisters, their gay brother, and their messy lives. Writer and director Paula van der Oest shows a beyond-Bergman interest in biology and a nowhere-near-Bergman interest in psychology. The three actresses -- Monic Hendrickx, Anneke Blok, Sylvia Poorta, as well as a fourth, Halina Reijn, as the brother's fiancée …