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 …
Doggedly biographical treatment of the celebritized twins of the London underworld in the 1960s (real-life models for the fictitious gangsters of Performance, Villain, The Long Good Friday). It begins in, or right outside, the womb, and dwells on their attachment to Mum's apron strings. But for all that, it contributes …