Jon Amiel's doomsday thriller in the tradition of The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1962) and Crack in the World (1965) stays serious long enough for a couple of catchy introductory scenes: thirty-two civilians simultaneously dropping dead within a few-block radius in Boston (the common thread appears to be their …
Another indigestible mix of martial arts and hip-hop, the special niche that cinematographer-turned-director Andrzej Bartkowiak has carved out 4 himself. (In exactly what way, except of course 4 money and power, is it better 2 be the director of Romeo Must Die and Exit Wounds than 2 be the photographer …
It begins with an armed robbery at a jewelry store, a shooting, and a suicide — though the single-take camera seems more concerned with the symmetry of the composition and the rectangle of light at the center of the shot than it is with the people inside the store or …
Paceless, listless political thriller about a terrorist insurrection in an unnamed Latin American country that seems as though it must be Argentina. (Note the Calle Peron street sign.) Javier Bardem gives it some backbone as the honest-cop hero, humble, grave, apprehensive, all too human. With Laura Morante; directed by John …
Pretty flimsy even for a comic book. The gotta-have-a-gimmick superhero has been blinded in a childhood run-in with some biohazardous substance (in a quarter-hour prologue), and his handicap causes him to develop his remaining senses to the point where he can swing around the skyscrapers like Spider-Man, dodge projectiles of …
Inflammatory cop drama set against a backdrop of the well-documented racism in the LAPD. It begins, indelicately enough, with the infamous Rodney King tape, and the bulk of the action takes place while awaiting the verdict in the Simi Valley trial of the arresting officers. (The conclusion of the action …
Not just the name of a movie, but the name of a New England town where Matilda the Tooth Fairy, hanged as a child-killer in the deep dark past, and now a fluttering flapping thing in a porcelain mask, still makes vengeful visits on the occasion of a resident's last, …
One type of queen portrays another type of queen: Charles Busch, who adapted his own stage play, dolls himself up in drag to impersonate a faded Hollywood diva, in this salute to, or spoof of, the women's pictures of old. (The diva's husband, for contrast, is a Stanley Kramer-ish producer …
The bicontinental British filmmaker Stephen Frears returns to the milieu of his Sammy and Rosie Get Laid and My Beautiful Laundrette -- the London melting pot, but this time in the grimmer mood of a Thirties-style social drama (the Warners studio, most typically), with a rough, raw, skinned-knuckle image and …
The mating dance of a trailblazing, best-selling feminist author and a men's-magazine hedonist revives the Rock Hudson and Doris Day series of bedroom comedies, right down to the re-creation of the original period (1962) and the presence on screen of Tony Randall (although David Hyde Pierce takes the role that …
In light of the fact that it was made by a director of at least moderate stature -- Lawrence Kasdan of Body Heat, The Accidental Tourist, Mumford, etc. -- this might have raised higher anticipation than most Stephen King adaptations, till you remind yourself of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. Like …
Lumpy potage of Sixties politics, "revolutionary" sex, and ravenous cinephilia, whipped up by Bernardo Bertolucci. Last Tango in Paris would seem to be the career milestone -- or is it millstone? -- to which the filmmaker here reverts: same city, same era, same revolution. Yet the recipe's main ingredient turns …
By increasingly foul means, a yuppie couple attempt to root out their upstairs Neighbor-from-Hell, a wizened Irishwoman with a deceptive grandmotherly twinkle. Director Danny DeVito has been toiling too long in the same black-comic mine (Throw Momma from the Train, The War of the Roses, Matilda, Death to Smoochy), and …
Gus Van Sant's response to the Columbine school shooting, an unemotional, calculated, measured, extremely limited response, not in the least freed up by its fictionalization: the action takes place in Oregon, during football season, among autumn leaves, and the body count appears to climb higher than the reality. In the …