Two movies in one. The mostly charming and inventive first half traces an unhurried courtship by funnyman Roberto Benigni (also the director) of his regular co-star and real-life wife, Nicoletta Braschi. In the second half, picking up the characters' lives several years after the birth of their son, Benigni tries …
Mark Herman's transplant to the screen, minus the first five words of the original title (The Rise and Fall of...), of Jim Cartwright's London stage piece, conceived as a showcase for the unsuspected talents of Jane Horrocks. Some of her abundant talents had of course been well known, from Mike …
Directorial debut of screenwriter Richard LaGravenese (The Bridges of Madison County), a slightly fawning women's picture about starting over after the derailment of a sixteen-year marriage and striking up unconventional new relationships with a blues singer and a bereaved elevator operator. In the early going, LaGravenese does some creative things …
Adrian Lyne's decade-long labor of love, a faithful remake of the Nabokov novel, true to the period of the novel, true to the narrative of the novel, truer than Kubrick, bends over backwards to win sympathy for the infamous Humbert Humbert (in the pity-please performance of Jeremy Irons), the visiting …
That's where you end up when you go into hyperdrive without passing through an established Hypergate. The campy TV series from the Sixties serves as a frail scaffold on which to hang several smothering tons of special effects. Lacey Chabert, the spunky punky early teen in this Space Family Robinson, …
British literary light Giles De'Ath -- "Dr. Death" to the chipper delivery boy at his front door, "Erstwhile fogey, now cult" to the BBC program guide in its write-up of his guest appearance on a radio chat show -- takes an unaccustomed plunge into the cultural mainstream when he ventures …
A seven-year slice -- more like a mince -- of the life of British painter Francis Bacon and his S&M relationship with his model, George Dyer. John Maybury's attempt to recapture in live action the "atmosphere" of a Bacon painting, without actually showing any, relies on the cold mechanics of …
Otto and Ana, by name, two walking palindromes on destiny's roadmap. This rumination on cycles, endings, and the dream of eternal love, from Spanish filmmaker Julio Medem (another palindrome, please note), is a juggling-act of viewpoints, time periods, poetic motifs, and philosophical nuggets. Mildly diverting but severely taxing. With Najwa …
Bowl of Pablum ladled up from the series of children's books by Ludwig Bemelmans, about twelve orphan girls in Paris, especially the littlest of them (the name rhymes with "rain or shine"), and their vigilant Miss Clavel ("Something's not right!"). It raises serious questions for the fans of Frances McDormand. …
The original title, Jane Austen's Mafia!, was shortened for the publicity campaign, although the whole of it still appears on screen in the final print. We may presume that this joke did not "score" particularly well with the test-screening audiences or market-survey groups (giving them false expectations, perhaps, of a …
Seventeenth-century French history rewritten as if for TV soap opera: the secret twin brother of the cruel King Louis. (The big throb: the Queen Mother comes face to face with the son she never knew she had, and vice versa.) There is no worthy villain; the action is spotty, and …
The difference of one letter -- "s" rather than "r" -- marks rather than masks the difference between a remake and a sequel. In the cumbersome quarter-hour prologue, the original Zorro (Anthony Hopkins -- and what's the use of a mask when you're the only man in Old California who …
Maddeningly slow remake of Death Takes a Holiday, at more than twice the length of the 1934 version. There is a shocking special effect early on, when that darling Brad Pitt, right in front of our eyes, without apparent edits, gets bounced around between two cars in a crosswalk. (This …
John Sayles goes a step beyond the independent film, all the way to the foreign film, working entirely in Spanish with English subtitles except for some spots of facile comedy at the expense of a couple of American tourists ("What's the word for fajitas?"). The tale, proceeding at an inchworm …
Try this on for size. Two underlings with the NSA (National Security Assholes, or something) take it upon themselves, without clearance from their iron-fisted superior, to test their new two-million-dollar secret code by running it past the "geeks" who subscribe to the World of Puzzles periodical. An autistic nine-year-old in …