Respectably complicated romantic comedy about building a life on lies: a con woman and a lovelorn architect team up in a mutually beneficial phoney marriage. Funny scene of near-seduction when an infidelitous index finger roams the shirtfront of an Other Woman. Nervy bit in the climactic party scene when Steve …
Director James Ivory's -- and producer Ismail Merchant's -- and scriptwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's -- third try at E.M. Forster, after their Room with a View and their Maurice. The third time's the charm. The diminished satirical element as compared, say, to Room with a View, and diminished comical element, …
Woody Allen's experiment with the hand-held camera. At its worst, the camerawork suggests the manic manneredness of those jostled-elbow, buckled-knee TV advertisements currently in vogue. At its somewhat better -- at its somewhat more rationalizable -- it suggests the informal intimacy of a home movie or the formless immediacy of …
Gianni Amelio's oblation to neo-realism. The title recalls especially De Sica's Ladri di Biciclette (Bicycle Thief) along with his I Bambini Ci Guardano (The Children Are Watching Us), as does the employment of a morose child -- two of them, in fact -- for assault on the viewer's heartstrings: a …
Michael Apted's documentary companion piece to his fictional Thunderheart: no permissive mysticism this time, and no tidy Hollywood ending either (though one can clearly see the leanings that would lurch all the way to the FBI-as-bad-guy conclusion of the fiction film). This is strictly true-crime stuff, re-examining the murders of …
Female vampire, French, gamine, Peter Pan coiffed, finicky in her tastes, takes advantage of a gang war to gorge her appetite (i.e., "eat Italian"). John Landis, back in the mood of his American Werewolf in London, turns out a movie of mild horror and milder humor (the fondness of Mafiosi …
An "evocation" of the boyhood of the late French filmmaker Jacques Demy, by his long-time wife and a very dissimilar filmmaker, Agnes Varda. The better you know Demy (some interspersed clips from his films are an inadequate introduction), the more open you will be to the charm and tenderness and …
This blind-lady-in-distress thriller marks a departure for writer-director Bruce Robinson, a departure from the United Kingdom for one thing (Withnail and I, How to Get Ahead in Advertising), and a departure from the side road and the banana peel for a couple of others. The detective work on the trail …
Nonsense to do with a wide-eyed Harry Langdon-like bus driver who, with the addition of a mole on his cheek and a toothpick in his mouth, is a dead ringer for a sequestered Mafioso. Roberto Benigni's gifts for physical comedy are abundant enough to keep the idea alive for the …
What starts as a tongue-in-cheek fairy tale tapers off into a mere shaggy-dog story about a rock-star wannabe (and Ricky Nelson idolator) who sports a pompadour combed straight up from his forehead, adding half a foot to his height. It's quite well acted without being in the least believable (Brad …
Impoverished view of impoverished life on the streets of Harlem. "Yo." "Wha's up?" "Tha's bullshit, man." "Fuck you, man." "What the fuck!" "You're fucked up, man." "Fuck that." "You better stop bullshittin' me." "Shut the fuck up." "What the fuck is wrong with you?" "Freeze, motherfucker!" "You crazy, man." Etc. …
Tiny base of reality: privately owned and endowed police squads in San Francisco known as Patrol Specials. The rest is off base: an unemployed high-school dropout, inheriting one of these, sets out to avenge his brother's murder while delivering a dribble of fatuous patter straight to the camera and the …
Rodney Dangerfield coaches an all-girl soccer team plus one ringer in drag. The most that can be said is that it provides gainful employment, or we might flatteringly say underemployment, to the director of The Leather Boys, The Ipcress File, The Naked Runner, Lady Sings the Blues, The Entity, among …
The James Fenimore Cooper tale of the French and Indian War has survived its demolition by Mark Twain and has gone on to have several screen versions made of it, with varying degrees of recognizability. The story in this one -- your basic boys' adventure of protecting the white women …