No one could mistake this, a survival adventure in Jack London territory, as a major creative effort on the part of its decorated author, David Mamet. But nor is there any mistaking the conscientious craftsmanship, the sturdiness of construction, the ingrained artistry. The essential plot ingredients are meticulously laid out. …
The old luggage mix-up at the airport: yes -- truth in labelling -- the bag of the Mob hatchet man does indeed contain graphic proof of a successful "hit" (eight of them), and it is soon in the possession of a med student on Mexican holiday with his future in-laws. …
Tokyo-3 is under attack from “Angels,” extraordinary beings that possess various special abilities. Multipurpose Humanoid Decisive Weapon, Evangelion is the only method to counter these Angels.
Characteristic piece of Wim Wenders deep-think, or deep-sulk anyway, about the decline of Western civilization, the ascent of Big Brother, the crass commercialism of the American cinema, and similar morsels. To get down to brass tacks: it tells of a successful Hollywood producer (Bill Pullman), specializing in violent movies and …
The situation of a Mexican wife with five current and contented husbands, and of the public scandal that erupts upon her arrest, is fresh and promising; and the initial disclosure of it is deftly done (the secret compartment of wedding rings in the heroine's compact, the collage of wedding photos …
It has a viable premise, a hybridization of the derelict spacecraft and the haunted house. And it has a chewable mystery: where has the spaceship been for the past seven years when it was supposed to be exploring the boundaries of the solar system? and what happened to its crew? …
Traditional women's picture, transplanted to the exotic locale of a black Louisiana backwater, and touched up with trendy occultism: clairvoyance, voodoo, "magic realism." A first effort by actress-turned-writer-director Kasi Lemmons, who's highly sympathetic but none too commanding in her new roles, overdependent on an undependable child actress (Jurnee Smollett). The …
Gimpy romance between the poor little rich girl who has faked her own kidnapping to get Daddy's attention and the car thief who makes off with the BMW in whose trunk she has locked herself. The self-conscious affectations of the stars -- the halting, tremulous line-readings of Benicio Del Toro, …
Simple small-town tragedy, complicated a little by a pingponging nonlinear narrative, and an ambivalent view of the Almighty. What's the connection, we want to know, between the dumbstruck, blood-soaked teenager and the religiose ex-convict who meets and marries his prison pen pal in dismal Oklahoma oil country? The answer is …
By means of a radical face-lift seemingly in conscious homage to Georges Franju's Eyes without a Face (surgical lasers replacing scalpels), John Travolta and Nicolas Cage trade faces and places as an anti-terrorist federal agent and a mad bomber, respectively. And then, if you follow, vice versa. The actors look …
We see them for ourselves, these Spirits of the Air, buzzing around the wooded nook like dragonflies, we and two wee girls of eight and twelve; and then we sit back and watch as the benighted grownups of WWI-time England debate their existence. The plodding attention to the historical "facts" …
Director Errol Morris is less a moviemaker than a tastemaker, a tour guide to unbeaten paths, and here his nose for the odd and the eccentric has led him to sit down to chat with four diverse specialists, a wild-animal trainer, a topiary gardener, a robotics scientist, and an authority …
Off-screen buddies Robin Williams and Billy Crystal finally find a project that allows them to work together on the big screen. How nice for them. But what's in it for the rest of us? Another dull-witted Hollywood plunder of the commercial French cinema, in specific Francis Veber's Les Compères. The …
The premise, or thesis, taken from a work of nonfiction by Dr. Louise J. Kaplan and spelled out on screen in a printed preamble, asserts that conformance to the "normal" is the biggest perversion of all. Or something like that. First-time filmmaker Susan Streitfeld has attempted, with some degree of …
The cast members of A Fish Called Wanda -- John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline, Michael Palin -- reassemble in different characters (Kline in two characters: son and snowy-haired father) and in an English zoo, and count on the fond remembrance and good will of the audience to pull …