Roman Polanski's disgraceful adaptation of Thomas Hardy's ungraceful novel, Tess of the D'urbervilles -- disgraceful not because it mangles the original (quite the opposite), but because it creates nothing of its own. Much in the manner of the PBS Masterpiece Theatre, Polanski's movie seems to want to rest on Hardy's …
The Buchan novel yet again, and Robert Powell looks tickled pink to be asked to play Hannay, and to go through all those close shaves and costume changes -- much pinker, he, than the viewer is apt to be, if the latter has any recollection of Robert Donat. The climax …
Camp treatment of a Cornell Woolrich suspense yarn. On what can't have been a very lavish budget, director Mark Reichert works up an immaculate film noir surface, but the viewer is under constant strain to pretend as if the 1940s lamp shades, ashtrays, curtains, peignoirs, etc., are adding up to …
A Texas oil worker (John Travolta, who would not look out of place at a dude ranch) experiences deep emotional fulfillment with his success in riding the mechanical bucking bronco at Mickey Gilley's Texas-sized saloon (three and a half acres, capacity of 7,000 -- and y'all come now, hear). His …
Bertrand Tavernier's somewhat bookish treatment of a somewhat bookish (and not especially good bookish) subject: a Seventh Grade schoolteacher suffering from job burnout, taking a doctor-ordered leave of absence, and re-evaluating her life. The heroine, in the manner of those in psychological novels, experiences numerous flashbacks when sitting in the …
For a movie about two men in love with the same woman to begin with those two men initially meeting one another at a screening of Jules and Jim seems a bit ill-advised, if only because of the comparison it invites. This beginning, though, gives only a tiny taste of …
Elizabeth Ashley is a ravenous lesbian whose seduction technique entails the hiring of a drooling rapist to sour her prey on the entire male gender. Talia Shire is the unappetizing prey, an embarrassingly self-conscious stutterer and less self-conscious but equally embarrassing sniffler at Now Voyager on the TV late show. …
Old-fashioned musical of the kind where the intervals between musical numbers are slow, uninspired, lifeless, and bland, and where the musical numbers themselves are all of those things and worse. And the latter are hardly made better here by the electric music, the psychedelic color, or the ersatz-Disney animation sequence. …
Old-fashioned musical of the kind where the intervals between musical numbers are slow, uninspired, lifeless, and bland, and where the musical numbers themselves are all of those things and worse. And the latter are hardly made better here by the electric music, the psychedelic color, or the ersatz-Disney animation sequence. …
An Italian imitation of Night of the Living Dead, the gruesome makeup and special effects of which are slaved-over and slavered-over to an extent that makes you worry just slightly less about the moviemaker's sanity than about his soul. For entertainment, this is right up there with squashing spiders and …