An unrenowned novel by the author of Dracula, previously untouched cinematically, touched now by (worst luck) Ken Russell. The treatment is severely but not fatally infected with the sort of campiness infecting recent treatments of Bram Stoker's more famous work -- but even more so, with a burlesque-skit naughtiness ("Do …
A movie about a professional oral reader (Miou-Miou) does not promise to be much of a movie. And accordingly the moviemaker, Michel Deville, has made sure that her clientele conforms to a standard of eccentricity matching that of the clients in Belle de Jour. (Not an altogether inapt reference point: …
Don Bluth, with the support of Lucas and Spielberg, continues to emulate (for lack of any better notions of his own) his animation mentor, Walt Disney, in a tale of prehistoric dinosaurs. But the model is not so much those ferocious battlers of Fantasia as it is the fawns and …
Two illegitimate children head out from Greece toward Germany in search of their fictitious, mythical, symbolical father. Director Theo Angelopoulos — an heir of the neo-realists and a pathos-addict in need of continual jolts of the stuff — certainly thinks cinematically, thinks cinematographically, but he also thinks pretentiously. His beautiful …
What Martin Scorsese and company (scriptwriter Paul Schrader, quite prominently) appear to be up to at the most basic level is something that storytellers have been getting up to since the birth of the oral tradition: retelling a standard-repertory myth and altering it in the telling. (In this case using …
An unknown enemy menaces Gandahar. You must discover who the enemy is..., etc., etc. An animated fantasy for adults (bare breasts, etc.), drawn in a Saturday-morning-television style that only small children won't mind. Written by Isaac Asimov; directed by René Laloux.
This story, we were told at the end of Nobody's Fault and are told again at the start of its sequel, "must now be seen through Little Dorrit's eyes." (It had been seen up to that point through Arthur Clennam's.) But the heart sinks a little on finding out that …
A dismal little espionage thriller that proposes to put an old shoe on another foot. All decent Americans, of course, are brought up to shudder in horror at the thought -- and not just thought, but absolute certain fact -- of little Russian children ratting to the authorities on their …
A script co-written by François Truffaut (with Claude de Givray), finally realized by Claude Miller (with the help of two more scriptwriters) four years after Truffaut's death. The children's marching song behind the opening credits, containing the phrase "the best way to walk," reminds us that Miller had directed a …
Troubled and troublesome Russian youth -- and a chance for the Westerner to get on the glasnost bandwagon, or at least to apply some grease to its wheels. More exactly, a chance to enjoy (from any of several political vantage points) seeing the Soviets suffer openly where before they had …
Small-scale character piece about a large-scale character: a great teacher (of piano), a great fanatic, a great eccentric, a great "character" in short, and at times -- thanks to Shirley MacLaine's great appetite for ham -- a great bore. The life around her, when it can crowd in, is lifelike …
A gangland comedy starring Michelle Pfeiffer as a Mafia widow sick of the whole environment, sick of living among "hot" furniture and appliances (many of them still in their boxes), sick of fending off the passes of Tony "the Tiger" Russo, sick of her son taking the neighborhood kids at …
Bob Swaim has attempted again to append a footnote beneath Webster's definition of "romantic love," to pencil some scholia in the margin, perhaps to stretch a disputed border or annex some unclaimed territory -- in specific, to define love around some not very lovable characters, and under not very favorable …
An estranged son and father -- the son is a New York doctor apparently drawn to the profession by watching episodes of MASH; the father is the King of the Hollywood Extras -- swim towards one another across a sea of treacle. (Father: "Did I ever lay a hand on …
Honorable but tedious hack work, by J. Lee Thompson in service (once again) to Charles Bronson. The prologue, with two men in wide-brimmed hats closing in on a house in the woods, is chillingly well constructed; and for a while it looks encouragingly as if Mormons are to become eligible …