An Australian Western, or in other words not truly a Western, notwithstanding the Western iconography of six-shooters, horses, spear-chucking "savages," a fraternal gang of outlaws (Guy Pearce, Danny Huston), a bounty hunter (John Hurt out-hamming John Carradine), a ruthless land-taming lawman and his genteel wife (Ray Winstone, Emily Watson). Even …
A comedy of knee-jerk quirkiness, from Paul Thomas Anderson, about a major-league misfit impersonated by Adam Sandler. (E.g., he stockpiles Healthy Choice puddings for the promotional offer of frequent-flyer miles, although he never flies, nor does he eat pudding.) One hardly knows which is more of a shock: that the …
A remake of Manhunter, 1986, for the sole purpose of instating the "real" Hannibal Lecter -- Anthony Hopkins -- in the role. (It would have been simpler, if it would have been technologically possible, to cut-and-paste him digitally into the pre-existing film, obliterating Brian Cox.) And never mind that the …
A tangled-web tale, succinct, adult, a trifle stodgy. The setting-up of an illusion of happiness and a veneer of civilization (the country life, cricket, Constable landscapes) is rather pedantic, but the weaving of the web itself is easily followed and understood. With Tom Wilkinson, Emily Watson, Rupert Everett, Hermione Norris; …
The erudite title, when pronounced correctly, is an obvious play, not to say a meaningful play, on Schenectady, New York, the main setting of the film, where a regional stage director of high pretension and acute hypochondria gets left behind by his wing-spreading painter wife and their young daughter, then …
Partly, if not equally, stop-motion animator Mike Johnson's Corpse Bride, a voguishly grotesque kiddie film in which all the characters look like reflections in fun-house mirrors, and the worm-eaten title figure is not appreciably more ghastly than the living. Indeed the netherworld boasts more color, albeit garishly expressionistic, than the …
Alias Miss Malaprop 2000, alias the Mistress of the Mixed Metaphor, a self-described "private defective," a peerless gum-chewer if not gumshoe, who stumbles upon a case of political chicanery while employed as a security guard at a Pacific Northwest casino. "You're out of your rocker," "ya gotta grab the bull …
Actor Richard E. Grant's semi-autobiographical coming-of-age film, set in Swaziland on the verge of its independence, but centering on his messy domestic situation, his cheating mother, his boozing father, and his unceremonious American stepmother, "a common little ex-air hostess." (The title comes from her mimicry of Brit speech affectations.) It …
A fatherless lad during WWII finds the egg of "the rarest of all creatures" -- only one on the planet at a time -- and nurses the hatchling into the Loch Ness Monster, easily mistakable for a Nazi submarine. Spectacular scenery (New Zealand supplementing Scotland) as the backdrop for a …