The comedy that scandalized Mexico! Mexico, if the ad copy can be believed, must be easily scandalized. A heavy-handed satire of the ruling political party, set discreetly -- to soften the blows -- fifty years in the past and in a puny backwards pueblo. The blows will make themselves felt, …
The title refers not to the night before today, but to the last night ever. At midnight, the world is scheduled to come to an end, never mind how or why. That's simply a given. The characters all accept it. There is no struggle against the inevitable. There is only …
Overblown anecdote about a shipboard foundling (found at the turn of the century and hence christened "1900") who never leaves the transatlantic liner throughout all his days, despite an untaught pianistic prowess, in styles ranging from Late Romantic to Impressionist to boogie-woogie ("When you don't know what it is, it's …
Barry Levinson goes back to Baltimore, back to the setting of his Diner and Avalon, back to the Fifties, back to the bygone days of school prayer, segregation, and striptease with pasties, in order to remember what it was like to find out that the whole world was not Jewish. …
Overserious, underfunny prison comedy about a pair of bickersome New York blacks who are railroaded on a murder charge in Mississippi in the early Thirties. (Director Ted Demme, who made the independent Monument Avenue, will not have to turn in his Concerned Citizen card.) Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence begin …
A John Sayles film, not to be confused with (much less to eclipse) the same-named Vietnam-era soap opera about POW wives, directed by Mark Robson. This one starts out with the standard Sayles pitch, strong on human interest, supported by sociological and geographical interest, and delivered with the familiar blend …
Modestly budgeted revenge tale (somewhat thin, hollow, tinny sound) about a British ex-con, just out of prison after a nine-year hitch, who comes to L.A., tossing around uncomprehended slang such as "nicked" and "scarpered," to look into his daughter's death. The resurrection of the Terence Stamp character from Kenneth Loach's …
A crime farce about separate but not necessarily opposing groups of felons on a chain-reaction collision course in London's East End. And a prime piece of evidence of the music-video-ization of movies. Everything in it is just for show, most of all the convoluted, contrived, and confusing plotline. Even with …
A crime farce about separate but not necessarily opposing groups of felons on a chain-reaction collision course in London's East End. And a prime piece of evidence of the music-video-ization of movies. Everything in it is just for show, most of all the convoluted, contrived, and confusing plotline. Even with …
After the extravagant acclaim for Leaving Las Vegas, Mike Figgis appeared to take leave of his senses with One Night Stand, and he appears to have still not found his way back to them, with this jumbled think-piece in which a black Adam and blond Eve roam around a butterscotch …
Addressed to "Dearest," signed by "Yours," and found between the cushions of a bookstore sofa, the typewritten billet-doux triggers an older-woman-younger-man affair, and other misunderstandings. The locale is called Loblolly-by-the-Sea, an accurate indicator of the general level of tweeness. Blythe Danner, without any old-age makeup, plays the mother of Kate …
A psalm to the Strong Woman and to the force and ferocity of her love, based on a true story of a Resistance leader's wife who wrested her man from the clutches of the Gestapo. Writer-director Claude Berri (who has treated the WWII period before, in The Two of Us …
A multi-character affair traversing a single day in the San Fernando Valley -- in three hours of screen time. Paul Thomas Anderson, writer and director, starts off with a narrated prologue to set up the theme of chance and coincidence throughout human history, or at least throughout the last century …
Milos Forman's "biopic" on the late Andy Kaufman is little more than an anthology of Greatest Bits: the Mighty Mouse lip-sync on Saturday Night Live, the Vegas lounge singer "Tony Clifton," the Intergender Wrestling Champ, etc. (And hence the complete absence of the entertainer's big-screen career: Heartbeeps, In God We …