Dishonor among thieves, two Brits and two Yanks to be exact, plus a proper bewigged barrister who's drawn into the mess. There are plenty of fresh and funny ideas: the use of foreign languages as an aphrodisiac, a gunsel who reads (but doesn't understand) Nietzsche and will fly off the …
Another Tony Bill contemplation of violence and pacifism among the young (to go with My Bodyguard). But different. Very different. A sort of horror-comic vision of the Bronx in the Sixties, complete with a scarred Frankenstein's monster and an unconscious blonde in his arms. The interest of an Irish policeman's …
A soul-(and-body)-laid-bare affair, shot in the sandpaper-grained black-and-white of a bottom-drawer nudie circa 1964, about an actress whose professional repertoire ranges from Racine to a carnival strip show with a stuffed monkey, and whose private repertoire ranges from mad love to madder love. It's unmistakably a virtuoso role, to which …
Teenage pregnancy. What to do? "Put it up for abortion" or what? Tim Kazurinsky and Denise DeClue, who did the screenplay for About Last Night, turn their attentions here to a slightly younger set. They hit some key points, in the manner of TV-movies-of-the-week; but without the starting boost from …
Another lump of evidence in the thickening dossier on Eric Rohmer as a Dirty Old Man. A dysfunctional dirty old man, if you will; a menace to no one except maybe the thrill-seeking filmgoer; just an urbane and courtly old gent who likes to surround himself with slim young pretties, …
A low-flame suspense thriller that comes, by and by, to a pretty steady and sustained simmer. Polanski's main notion of tension is to have actors in the same frame standing at radically different distances from the camera, so that the visual plane is pushed inward, like a door ajar. (A …
Damp, cold, dismal romance, skidding along on a layer of musical slush. Molly Ringwald is miscast as the mesmerizing and enigmatic country girl, and Andrew McCarthy is miscast as -- well, as anything human and natural, but in this case as an amorously obsessed engineering student. Adapted by Larry Ketron …
A waste of time. Maybe not for Chevy Chase, who seldom seems to have better things to do, but for director George Roy Hill, who sometimes does have. It's in the tradition of George Washington Slept Here, The Egg and I, and (with a somewhat different tone) Jean de Florette: …
The adaptation of Sue Miller's novel dawdles through some biographical background of doubtful import, and through a standard movie romance blossoming out of a Meet-Cute at the laundromat (she has removed his wet underwear from the dryer in his absence, but has left behind a pair of pink panties of …
Flatteringly retouched portrait of zoologist and gorilla-rights activist Dian Fossey (a bit more warty in the last half-hour, as the movie begins to tabulate suspects for her unsolved murder). It's a "terrific role" for Sigourney Weaver (it gives her plenty of chance to stick out her chin and accentuate that …
Isao Takahata animated tale of a young boy and his little sister struggle to survive in Japan during World War II.
Yes, well: the outdoors is all right; it's what happens inside it that's not: another vacation horror story from John Hughes (scriptwriter only, as in the National Lampoon's Vacations, not director too, as in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles). Dan Aykroyd, speaking in a voice pitched for the deaf, makes life …
Australian anti-nuke thriller builds up a high moral dudgeon but, despite the assurances of the background music, little real suspense: the governmental cover-up comes uncovered with too much help from divine intervention. Colin Friels, Jack Thompson, Donald Pleasence; directed by Michael Pattinson and Bruce Myles.
Where does John Waters's poor taste leave off and his characters' poor taste begin? (Which came first, the chicken or the egg?) His deepest wade into the mainstream to date (but no higher than the ankles), this is sort of his personal American Graffiti, set in Baltimore in 1962. And …