The point of departure is truly inspired: a young Australian woman's religious conversion while on holiday in India, and the scandalized reactions of her middle-class suburban family back home, the most severe of which is to enlist the help of a recommended deprogrammer: "The number-one exit counselor in America." The …
Special pleading on behalf of the one-time prizefighter, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, railroaded into jail by a Javert-like Philadelphia cop. The presentation is so lopsided that it arouses more mistrust than outrage. And the curious Toronto household (two men, one woman, and a black foster child from Brooklyn), credited with effectuating …
Somewhat heavy reading of Oscar Wilde's stage comedy of manners and morals. Julianne Moore, as Mrs. Cheveley, has the role that makes everything go, and she is fully present and alert in it, and her departure before the final act is a grave loss. Rupert Everett seems strangely uncommitted, and …
Backstage comedy, set a century ago in New York City, though most of the characters have quaint Italian names (Tuccio, Flavio, Pallenchio, etc.). It manages to be alternately overstated and obscure, burlesque and arty. Star and director John Turturro, as in his Mac, gives a big part to his off-screen …
Psychic thriller concerning a clairvoyant named Claire whose precognitive dreams of a series of child murders develop into a telepathic correspondence with the killer. The basically trashy material is spruced up with fairy-tale allusions (Claire is the illustrator of a children's book entitled Grimm's Fairy Tales -- yes, singular Grimm), …
A textbook case of a worthy cause mistaken as screen-worthy. The cause is anti-smoking, the urgency of which is somewhat undermined by the curious fact that no one on screen is guilty of smoking, even in the high-stress environment of the CBS News Department, even in the unwinding environment of …
Live-action version of the TV cartoon show. It uses up half an hour just to explain who the central character is -- "a geek from Kansas who became a security guard" -- and how he got to be a "prototype cyber police officer," equipped with all manner of James Bondian …
University of Miami psychologist looks into the case of a fellow faculty member, a primatologist who dropped out to live among the gorillas in Africa, becoming a sort of grown-up Mowgli, and who now is returned to the U.S. in chains, lugging a murder rap and important lessons for civilized …
Animated sci-fi fable, set in the Fifties and drawn in a retro comic-book style, though the anti-violence message (specifically anti-nuke message) is hardly dated at all. The saccharine relationship between an overimaginative boy and a humongous metal-eating robot from outer space is in the Spielberg vein (specifically E.T. vein); as …
Animated sci-fi fable, set in the Fifties and drawn in a retro comic-book style, though the anti-violence message (specifically anti-nuke message) is hardly dated at all. The saccharine relationship between an overimaginative boy and a humongous metal-eating robot from outer space is in the Spielberg vein (specifically E.T. vein); as …
Give Robin Williams credit for the courage (or the folly) of his convictions. He has already secured an Oscar (Best Supporting Actor for Good Will Hunting), yet he persists in throwing himself into tubs of humanist mush, doing his smile-turned-upside-down number, begging to be taken seriously. This one -- a …
Kindergarten black comedy set in high school. It presumes to have something to say, not necessarily something new, about cliquism and conformism and other such crappism among American teens. It is likelier, however, to provoke thoughts about how little talent you can get by with in Hollywood as long as …
Feminist hell. The wife of a Talmudic scholar in the extreme-Orthodox section of modern Jerusalem has given him no offspring after ten years of marriage. And: "The only task of a daughter of Israel is to bring children into the world." Divorce is mandated. (Surely not womandated.) In a subplot, …
Takeshi Kitano forsakes the crime genre for a deadpan road comedy about a mere reprobate (idler, gambler, brawler) who guides a small boy on a summer-vacation search for his long-lost mother. In his on-screen persona, Beat Takeshi, he is still a bit of a roughie if not a full-fledged toughie …
Gruesome but unconcernedly lighthearted monster movie featuring a thirty-foot Asian crocodile who has somehow migrated to backwoods Maine. The dialogue, by the TV writer-producer David E. Kelley, has some snap and crackle, and Bridget Fonda is especially funny as a paleontologist who has no field experience but is not hesitant …