The story comes from an early-Fifties novel by Charles Williams, a dead ringer for any number of direct translations or approximate paraphrases of the works of James M. Cain: it's conventional, in other words, all the way, unless you can count having a wicked blonde and a demure brunette as …
Cold War underwater thriller: neither too boring nor too interesting. The postulation of a new and bigger Soviet submarine, with an "almost silent" propulsion system undetectable to conventional sonar -- or in other words, with the capacity of cozying up to the United States coastline with a huge payload of …
This could be likened to The Purple Rose of Cairo, but why should anyone want to do that? Dislikened to it, if there were such a verb, would be certain to get more takers. The premise is one of those that inevitably seems more complicated in the retelling than in …
A black comedy for whomever Arsenic and Old Lace suffices as a black comedy. The trumpeted preamble -- "This film is based on a true story": a story, so it develops, about a wife's repeated attempts to murder her husband after she discovers he's been tomcatting around on her -- …
Female vice cop in peril of turning vicious herself. Pretty gritty portrait by Theresa Russell; one pretty tense action scene when a drug bust breaks down; one pretty tense love scene; one whopping coincidence, from which the plot never recovers. With Jeff Fahey; directed by Sondra Locke.
The "cops of cops" are trying to get the goods on a very bad one. Better-than-average script (by Henry Bean), with a decently complicated plot and decently filled-out personal lives for the characters. It gets a bit pretentious when it extends to and over the psychological edge, and the direction …
The true story of the 17th-century liberal-minded and materialistic (finest library in all Mexico) nun, poet, and playwright, Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz, becomes a moving tribute to the creative impulse and a first-rate movie all around: feminist, humanist; ascetic, aesthetic; inspirational in a nonsectarian, secular way; the furthest …
No, it isn't a portrayal of the Biblical vision that Arnold Schoenberg had hoped to turn into an oratorio of the same name. The advance advertising campaign tried to make it look like a horror film, tried to hide the fact that it was actually a Vietnam film, tried (to …
Eye-dropper satire on an avant-garde renovation of a Catholic parish's annual open-air Passion play. It promises some fun (a dubbing session for a porn film, a TV ad for cologne), but the play itself, taken very seriously and at considerable length, puts the kibosh on that (notwithstanding a couple of …
The family of the future, out of an animated TV series of the Sixties, drawn in a style of the Fifties -- a particularly bad style, too, like that of floor-wax and toothpaste commercials. (Some clashing computer graphics, to inject a little contemporariness, only aggravate the queasiness.) Not so much …
In the directorial debut of playwright and screenwriter John Patrick Shanley (Moonstruck, Five Corners), there are several eye-widening romantic visions: a Manhattan city block lit up like a literal Christmas tree; the spreading sunrise on a California beach; a yacht bedecked with Chinese lanterns under a crescent moon. That sort …
Very pretty Chinese period piece, set in a silk-dyeing mill in the 1920s and 30s (much blue light and amber, much red dye and yellow). "Very pretty," though, is not the highest compliment to pay a tawdry little tale with strong sadistic and voyeuristic elements, centered around a young bride, …
Imitation film noir. Director John Dahl is a sincerer flatterer than some: he's got the look, he's got the feel. There is nevertheless a going-through-the-motions quality about it. And a trace of mockery. With Joanne Whalley-Kilmer, Val Kilmer, and Michael Madsen.
Unsteady balance of very light comedy and moderately heavy drama, to do with a tough cop under cover as a kindergarten teacher. Arnold Schwarzenegger, slow on the double-take, slower still on the punch-line, does little to hold up comedy's end. Carroll Baker, however, has ripened beautifully into a battleaxe role …
Abel Ferrera (Ms. 45, China Girl) is a free-swinging, heavy-fisted pictorialist till he gets tied up in dialogues, where he can't (or won't even try) to maneuver. This -- the tying-up -- doesn't happen often, but because the movie is so overloaded toward violent action, the irony of the gangster-slash-philanthropist …