The freedom-of-expression debate thrashed out in the abstract: a stage-set of stylized antiquity, a nameless country, and only two (nameless) characters, an inquisitor and an author of children's books. All impulse to giggle at the pretension is soon crushed by the shared torture of it all. Madeleine Stowe, Alan Rickman; …
Boringly cryptic and oblique Death-in-Venice tale about an unmarried English couple preyed upon by an ambiguous white-suited native (actually Christopher Walken with a bad accent, explained or excused by biographical brushwork to do with an upbringing in England and a Canadian wife). Harold Pinter, working at about half-alert on an …
That's the name of the band (their subhead: "The Saviours of Soul"), a retro rhythm-and-blues group in present-day Dublin, founded on the logical enough assumption that "the Irish are the blacks of Europe." A number of the members of the group (a cast of unknowns) are colorful and photogenic: the …
Glibly cynical and expediently plotted spy-jinks about the growing bond between an over-the-hill CIA man and a captive KGB man who both are left out in the cold when a prisoner swap goes bad. Mikhail Baryshnikov virtually disappears alongside that amiable scene-hog, Gene Hackman. Some European tourist spots hold their …
A memorial to the Gullah culture on the Sea Islands off the Georgia coast, set at a pivotal moment in 1902 on the eve of one family's emigration from the African sanctuary to the U.S. mainland. Plainly a labor of love for filmmaker Julie Dash, but a labor for the …
Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, in his second feature, paints a portrait of an indolent, amoral, apathetic lady-killer and his poisonous milieu, ca. 1960. Wong's camera is both very close and very mobile: overfamiliar, nosy, nuzzling, liberty-taking. And although the focus tends to be extremely shallow, the impression is of …
Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, in his second feature, paints a portrait of an indolent, amoral, apathetic lady-killer and his poisonous milieu, ca. 1960. Wong's camera is both very close and very mobile: overfamiliar, nosy, nuzzling, liberty-taking. And although the focus tends to be extremely shallow, the impression is of …
Kenneth Branagh's second directorial effort makes his first one, Henry V, look downright modest. Any filmmaker (it bears repeating) will require no more taste or knowledge than the average high-school sophomore to think to impress somebody by aligning himself with Shakespeare. To attempt additionally to replicate the three-hatted juggling act …
Four guys, three girls, a battalion of Nazi zombies at a snowbound cabin in Norway. (Grieg's "Hall of the Mountain King" behind the pre-credits sequence.) Played decreasingly straight, and always played self-consciously. Directed by Tommy Wirkola.
Tried-and-true thriller formula: the husband who's not the man his wife thinks he is. Aside from him and her, this one's a bit underpopulated (Goldie Hawn not being the most sharing kind of star) and, partly because of that, a bit unsurprising. But not undiverting even so. Smooth, slow, ominous; …
Albert Brooks's fourth directing job, his first in six years, with no apparent boost or wheel-greasing from his Oscar-nominated part in Broadcast News, and with no loss in modesty, either -- or integrity -- or funniness. The modest idea this time has to do with the tribunal that awaits every …
Murder investigation, overly contrived yet overly obvious -- a bad combination. Some intense pieces of acting, especially by Mary Beth Hurt as an immaculately manicured neat-freak and by Sheree North as a teenage porno actress's anguished mother, insufficiently comforted by Jesus. Less especially by Barbara Hershey and Sam Shepard, that …
From the filmmaking team of Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro, a vision of a cannibalistic future in a rust-colored Paris. The futurity opens the door to plenty of oddities besides the cannibalism and the monochrome. In fact nothing that's not odd gets in. (A flooded cellar crawling with snails and …