An open-and-shut case of miscarriage of justice, based on fact. (It might better be named In High Dudgeon.) A petty thief from Northern Ireland just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time: Guildford, England, 1974, when a no-warning IRA bomb goes off in a crowded pub, …
The co-stars of Twins, Schwarzenegger and DeVito, together again, in another one-joke comedy, this time to do with the world's first pregnant man (not counting Marcello Mastroianni in The Most Important Event Since Man Walked on the Moon or Billy Crystal in Rabbit Test). The script -- "My nipples are …
The septuagenarian Dustin Hoffman secures a role he can really sink his teeth into, or sharpen them on: a jazz pianist manqué who makes do composing musical scores for TV commercials. (Funny-sad sight of him staring intently at the little screen to appraise his latest opus for OxiClean.) With his …
It’s a case of foreshadowing from the grave when the first line of George Michael’s titular tune provides the basic framework for an entire feature. Small screen enchantress Emilia Clarke teams with Henry Golding and Michelle Yeogh, stars of last year’s unexpected big screen sensation, Crazy Rich Asians, for romantic …
If one were to judge a film by its poster, one would arrive at the theatre with a pocketful of insulin. Mindy Kaling writes and stars and Emma Thompson likes to work.
A five-week countdown to Christmas Eve, plenty of time and the proper occasion to show how love makes the world go round, or anyhow makes Jolly Old England go round. The writing and directing debut of Richard Curtis, writer only on Four Weddings and a Funeral (he herein reminds us …
A five-week countdown to Christmas Eve, plenty of time and the proper occasion to show how love makes the world go round, or anyhow makes Jolly Old England go round. The writing and directing debut of Richard Curtis, writer only on Four Weddings and a Funeral (he herein reminds us …
Undersexed parents electronically spying on their oversexed teenage kids as a metaphor for the lack of value and worthiness of the human race. If asked why the need for a two-hour chalk talk on cosmicism and the utter insignificance of humanity, Jason Reitman, like the clueless parental figures he contrived …
Shakespeare, naturally, and nearly as naturally, Branagh. As always with Shakespeare, even without Branagh, there is a period of adjustment. The opening recital of the "Hey Nonny, Nonny" lyric, with the widely spaced and overarticulated words spelled out on screen in almost a follow-the-bouncing-ball fashion, is meant to make the …
A Mary Poppins for the Tim Burton era. Magical powers, for sure, but also a bulbous nose, a bucktooth, a unibrow, and two hairy moles, all of which disappear one by one as she imparts her Five Lessons to the "very clever but very, very, very naughty" seven children of …
The British Big Chill, a gathering of all the old gang at the inherited manor of one of them, following the death of his father. Kenneth Branagh, in a hurry to prove he can do anything and everything, has here done something quite different from his Henry V and his …
The best-selling roman à clef by "Anonymous," a/k/a journalist Joe Klein, on Bill Clinton's drive to the Presidency, is short on imagination: just take the reality and tweak it a little. Clinton becomes "Stanton," George Stephanopoulos becomes black, and so forth. And the further the story ventures from established fact …
Another literary adaptation of the Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvala team, this one set in the 1930s and 50s, and based not on a recognized "classic" but on a mere Booker Prize winner, by Kazuo Ishiguro. It does much of what we ask of a work of fiction. It sets up an enclosed world, …
Walt Disney spent over 20 years of his life struggling to bring author P. L. Travers’s Mary Poppins to the screen. As if the story behind the making of Uncle Walt’s greatest commercial success didn’t provide enough fodder to craft a compelling narrative, screenwriters Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith squander …
From the Jane Austen shelf, a cinematic Classics Illustrated. And altogether an agreeable comedy of manners, though hardly on course to become a classic in its own right. In its own medium, to be more precise. Ang Lee, of Eat Drink Man Woman and The Wedding Banquet, is the perhaps …