A Neil Simon original (i.e., no chance to fine-tune it en route to Broadway), in his more serious vein, or anyhow more unhumorous vein, about the offs-and-ons of a thrice-married couple. Alec Baldwin, potentially the new Ray Danton, is too interested in being sexy to be also funny. And Kim …
A solemnly instructional coming-of-age in a Czech-German border town in the late 1930s, under the guiding hand of an indulgent Jewish uncle ("He'll have a pounding headache, and be the wiser for it"), who has illustrated editions of Balzac and Boccaccio, an unfaithful wife, and a loyal housekeeper who later …
On an out-of-the-way Aegean island an unaggressive unit of Italian sailors uneventfully waits out the reign of Mussolini. They play soccer, they smoke dope, they skinny-dip with the sultry goatherdess (normally dressed in a Flashdance-style off-the-shoulder sweater), they visit the local putana (one of them eventually making an honest woman …
Amiable banalities about the forces interfering with the creation of true art -- egos, libidos, politics, unions -- on a Parisian opera company's production of Tannhauser. Niels Arestrup, a facial composite of Jon Voight, Nicol Williamson, and Bruno Ganz, is the "dedicated" Hungarian conductor, and Glenn Close (singing voice of …
An American politician, an expatriate poet, and a sequestered physicist come together on Mont-St.-Michel to talk about The Big Picture. (The script was co-adapted by physicist Fritjof Capra from his own book, and was directed by his brother Bernt Capra, so guess which of the three principals gets to do …
Two Irish teens, a Platonic boy and girl, while away their summer holiday concocting fictions around the denizens of their seaside village (a foursome of nuns: "Their skin had a clear pellucid texture that could only have come from a lifetime's confinement"). A promising start, soon narrowed down by the …
A potentially risky project for director Bruce Beresford. After he'd just done a piece about the docile Negro servant of the American South (Driving Miss Daisy), he now does one about the West African native who takes up the White Man's Burden more ardently than the colonial white man: "I …
Christian Slater, Patrick Dempsey, Richard Grieco, and Costas Mandylor playing costume-party "dress-up" as Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, and Frank Costello. Sort of a Young Gats. The lighting is Godfather gold; the storytelling is mud. With Anthony Quinn, Michael Gambon, and Lara Flynn Boyle; directed by Michael Karbelnikoff.
Domestic crime drama about the well-deserved death of a wife-battering, coke-sniffing boor (a one-note performance, and a loud note at that, by Bruce Willis). Suspense is minimal, since the story is told in flashbacks from a police interrogation room; and the "shocking" ending raises more questions than it answers. But …
Quelle idée! A two-part biography of French author Marcel Pagnol, whose original novels had (so recently) formed the basis of the two-part Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring. The first part of the biography, which spans from birth through elementary school, and is garrulously narrated in the patronizing …
A comedy about a neurotic eleven-year-old who lives in a funeral home with her widowed father has possibilities. But not when acted and directed with the eager pleadingness of a pilot for a TV series. Dan Aykroyd, Jamie Lee Curtis, Macaulay Culkin, and Anna Chlumsky; directed by Howard Zieff.
Amiable rodeo drama -- actually a domestic drama bracketed at both ends by rodeo drama -- about an aging bull rider and his more rapidly aging father (the wrinkled Scott Glenn and the more heavily wrinkled Ben Johnson). The ending is rather ROCKY, but the local color is dabbed on …
The companion to My Father's Glory: more good times in the youth of Marcel Pagnol. How nice for him! Then early manhood comes, and with it a spate of deaths in a final flood of narration. Too little, too late. Directed by Yves Robert.
A sometimes engaging, more often irritating, more often boring portrait of a pair of Portland street hustlers, one of them (River Phoenix) a narcoleptic who's as prone to drop off in mid-embrace as in mid-street, the other (Keanu Reeves) the slumming mayor's son who plans to accept his birthright as …
Ethan Hawke, with his hair framing his face like parted curtains, works very hard at being fumblingly innocent and ingratiating on a first date with his Dream Girl, while also having to dodge crooked cops and the Chinese Mafia. It's too tough a job. With Teri Polo; directed by Jonathan …