The search for an Alzheimer's cure produces first a trio of experimental sharks of superior intelligence, speed, strength, cunning. And the floating laboratory of Aquatica becomes for the viewer a gruesome torture chamber (arms lopped off, bodies torn in half) and a real strain on the nerves. With Saffron Burrows, …
The search for an Alzheimer's cure produces first a trio of experimental sharks of superior intelligence, speed, strength, cunning. And the floating laboratory of Aquatica becomes for the viewer a gruesome torture chamber (arms lopped off, bodies torn in half) and a real strain on the nerves. With Saffron Burrows, …
A swatch of TV-movie material given a big-screen sheen. Michelle Pfeiffer is cast as a Mother Discouraged whose three-year-old middle child disappears from the crowded lobby of the host hotel at her fifteen-year high-school reunion. Nine years later, after an unavailing nationwide search, a People Magazine cover story, and a …
Absurdist comedy as flat as its setting, a godforsaken Southwest town (pop. 87) put under quarantine when an overturned tanker spills the "secret ingredient" of Empire Cola across the road. The literal high point is the World's Largest Ice Cream Cone, the town's tourist attraction. With Brendan Sexton III, Kate …
A nostalgic ramble down the road to a KISS concert (ca. 1978), in the bonehead-and-proud-of-it style of a heavy-metal music video. The unrelenting songtrack heightens the effect. (Co-founder of the band, Gene Simmons, co-produced the movie.) With Edward Furlong, Giuseppe Andrews, James DeBello, Sam Huntington, Natasha Lyonne, Melanie Lynskey, and …
A French farce ticketed, like any of Francis Veber's directorial and/or auctorial efforts, for a Hollywood remake. The title is not a verbatim translation of Le Dîner des Cons, which would (or could) have been The Dinner of Assholes. Said dinner, in any case, is a periodic ritual of a …
Filmmaker Kevin Smith shows some nerve, though maybe not as much of it as he showed in Chasing Amy. Where, in the mature-adult-relationship stuff of that previous film, he took a chance on alienating the affections of his callow followers from Clerks and Mallrats (an already dwindling band), he takes …
A wronged-woman thriller in which the flattery of the heroine reaches such nauseating heights as to call into question its sincerity. (The once-in-a-million-lifetimes event of driving an automobile off a moving ferry into the bay, while one hand is cuffed to the door handle and the other is fending off …
The appropriate cartographical co-ordinates are easy to fix: the Coen brothers' Fargo, for its Minnesota setting, accents, and idioms (one of the unsung stars of that film, Kristin Rudrüd, has a cameo as the TV spokesperson for the St. Paul Pork Company, and is permitted to keep her own surname …
The second of a "Trilogy of the Elements" by Indian-born, Canadian-based filmmaker Deepa Mehta. It has little in common with Fire, the first, beyond its Indian setting, its general interest in social changes there, and its alluring leading lady, Nandita Das. The backdrop this time is historical, at the very …
Culture-clash comedy, set in Manchester in 1971. A transplanted Paki, who himself has taken an Anglo wife, is for some reason determined that his own sons be brought up in the old way: arranged marriages and no guff. The quest for humor stoops to large quantities of pee-pee, a belated …
Old-fashioned women's picture, true in spirit to the period in which it is set, centered around the dutiful French wife of a Russian émigré who accepts Stalin's limited-time offer of repatriation, post-WWII. Once the couple (plus their small son, for whom the movie has little time) are securely behind the …
The depiction of dirty politics in an Omaha high school, and by extension dirtiness in the national politics, or dirtiness in the national character, observes the time-tested satirical strategy of making a big deal out of a little deal, namely a campaign for the presidency of the student council. It …