Spanish romantic romp (and part-time political romp) about a Republican Army deserter, circa 1931, who hides out in a household of four nubile daughters -- lesbian, widow, fiancée, virgin -- and who cozies up to each in turn before finding the one right for him. The first cozying-up is the …
Convicted wife-killer, parolled after twenty-two years, cozies up to the daughter who testified against him as a child, and who now has a child of her own. What is the man after? And was he guilty or not? Plodding suspense film with an even heavier-footed climactic chase. Amy Irving looks …
Intolerably twee romance that fudges the border between madness and daffiness. A clinical nutcase (breakfast of milk, peanut butter, Cap'n Crunch in the blender) "wins" a semiliterate, Chaplin-and-Keaton-emulating clown during a poker game, and discovers in him a true soulmate (cheese sandwiches grilled by clothes iron, potatoes mashed by tennis …
Another cast of characters (but not cast of actors) rounded up in TV re-run heaven (or the Other Place) and brought back to life. Why? To what purpose? For whom? The how of it offers no clue. Dialogue excerpt: "What's smog?" And after a pause for the "Final Jeopardy" melody: …
A minor embarrassment from a minor master: Polanski directing his plump, sleepy-eyed wife, Emmanuelle Seigner, as a megaton Sex Bomb. The setting is shipboard, but any comparison to the same director's Knife in the Water goes out the porthole with the endless narrated flashbacks to a sadomasochistic imbroglio in Paris. …
Full original title: Three Colors: Blue (it's part of a trilogy, completed by the remaining colors of the French flag, Red and White). Blue is certainly the color of the dawn when the heroine's husband, a world-renowned classical composer, is killed in an auto accident. And elsewhere there's a great …
Banned in China! Apparently for having the temerity to suggest that Party politics -- through the Rectification Movement, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution -- could be oppressive to private individuals. Cultural Relativism in action! Sort of a Frank Borzage heart-tugger (Little People tossed by Big Storms) without …
Slightly cerebral romantic comedy (the title derives from Newton's First Law of Motion) about the attachments and disconnections of a quartet of under-thirties in Enfield, Az., over a single weekend. It is just cerebral enough to be more than slightly pleased with itself; just enough to be more than slightly …
Minor Madonna (assuming there's anything that could be called major Madonna). So, what, then, was the lure? The role of an S&M; mistress (hair and makeup styled at the Eva Braun Beauty Salon) on trial for the murder of her weak-hearted lover -- allegedly screwing him to death after spiking …
Second remake of Don Siegel's epochal Invasion of the Body Snatchers, sixteen years after the first remake, thirty-eight after the original. Though the theme -- creeping conformity in the form of extraterrestrial "pods" that replicate and replace the bodies of earthlings -- has not in the least become dated, the …
Though set in contemporary L.A., this is an old-fashioned urban thriller (the Johnny Mercer tune, "Dream," as mellowly performed by the Danny May Orchestra and Singers, harks back to the correct period during the opening credits), with a tightly constructed plot, a low-key acting ensemble as smooth and well-blended as …
Repertory cinema. Remake of the Garson Kanin play -- Galatea Goes to Washington -- starring Melanie (Wee Little Voice) Griffith as Judy Holliday, John (Good Enough) Goodman as Broderick Crawford, and Don (Coppertone) Johnson as William Holden. The pro-education and anti-materialist sentiments haven't dated; and Griffith, though she lacks Holliday's …
Ethnic epic covering much the same ground, a year later, covered by American Me, only less of it and at greater length: three hours of heavily accented and sometimes English-subtitled snarls and sneers, directed by Taylor Hackford with his customary disdain for subtlety. (Floyd Mutrux receives a screenwriting credit on …
Tale of erotic obsession from first-time director Jennifer Chambers Lynch, daughter of director David Lynch (Twin Peaks, etc.). The protagonist, a masterful surgeon but a stammering, stumbling idiot when it comes to his object of obsession, tries to hold on to her by amputating both her legs (Twin Stumps, so …
Leslie Cheung plays Zhuo Yihang, a rebellious but extremely talented swordsman of the Wudang Sect (aka the Wu-Tang Clan, a fictional martial arts sect that appears in many wuxia novels and films). One day he meets and falls in love with Lian Nichang (Lin), the adopted daughter of a rival …