Yet another comic-book movie ("graphic-novel" movie, anyway), with no relation to the 1960 British caper comedy, The League of Gentlemen. The present gents, and one lady, are assuredly out of the ordinary, a Dream Team of Victorian fictional characters assembled to save the Empire from early termination: a senior-citizen Allan …
From James Ivory (by way of a Diane Johnson novel), a light, witty, civilized divertissement about Americans abroad, living the high life and the heady life in present-day Paris. A lot has changed since Henry James and Edith Wharton were writing about this sort of thing: sooner to bed and …
The sequel follows our pretty-in-pink Harvard Law grad to our nation's capital (or Capitol) as a legislative aide with a personal agenda: to outlaw animal testing in the cosmetics industry and simultaneously to free the mother of her pet Chihuahua, Bruiser, in time for her nuptials. (Wishful point of reference: …
A falsely modest title, or falsely lightweight, for a pious parable about a contrite murderer in quest of atonement: cozying up to his victim's sister after twenty-three years in confinement, carrying her groceries, presenting her a rose, keeping his identity to himself. Billy Bob Thornton plays the slow-witted, humor-impaired protagonist …
Preachy, preposterously plotted, ostentatiously overwritten beat-the-clock thriller in which a Texas death-penalty abolitionist finds himself on Death Row. How ironic! How heavily, heavy-handedly, oppressively ironic! Kate Winslet, as a carpetbagging journalist ("Mike Wallace with PMS") looking to reopen the case in the final hours before execution, brings her usual credibility, …
Seamy as distinct from seamless blend of live action and animation, following in the footsteps (or the cattle trail) of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Space Jam, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, et al. Under the direction of Joe Dante, a dependable maker of messes, it pays homage to the …
The former Fellowship of the Ring prepare for the final battle for Middle Earth, while Frodo (Elijah Wood) & Sam (Sean Astin) approach Mount Doom to destroy the One Ring. Directed by Peter Jackson, starring Sean Astin, Sean Bean, Orlando Bloom, Billy Boyd, Bernard Hill, Christopher Lee, and Ian McKellen.
The former Fellowship of the Ring prepare for the final battle for Middle Earth, while Frodo (Elijah Wood) & Sam (Sean Astin) approach Mount Doom to destroy the One Ring. Directed by Peter Jackson, starring Sean Astin, Sean Bean, Orlando Bloom, Billy Boyd, Bernard Hill, Christopher Lee, and Ian McKellen.
Sofia Coppola's sophomore effort marks an advance over The Virgin Suicides: a phlegmatic comedy about two American outsiders who fall into an ill-defined relationship in Tokyo, a bond forged of loneliness and misery between an over-the-hill Hollywood action star (a sadsack Bill Murray, who surely should have been written as …
A five-week countdown to Christmas Eve, plenty of time and the proper occasion to show how love makes the world go round, or anyhow makes Jolly Old England go round. The writing and directing debut of Richard Curtis, writer only on Four Weddings and a Funeral (he herein reminds us …
A five-week countdown to Christmas Eve, plenty of time and the proper occasion to show how love makes the world go round, or anyhow makes Jolly Old England go round. The writing and directing debut of Richard Curtis, writer only on Four Weddings and a Funeral (he herein reminds us …
Two schoolchildren, bound together by a spirit of anarchy and a never-ending game of "dares," can't escape the binds as they go their separate ways into adulthood: an unwinning combination of the cute and the cruel. The most "daring" escapade is perhaps the pillow fight that has the nerve to …
Crowd-pleasing, or anyway crowd-courting, feminist fairy tale about the liberating experience of having your husband kidnapped: you meet such nice neighbors (a whitebeard Commie freedom fighter, a curly-headed calendar boy), and you have such wild and wacky adventures. This product of the advertised "Mexican New Wave" has less in common …
Argentinian director Adolfo Aristarain (A Place in the World, a memorable memory film) sets the action against an up-to-the-minute backdrop of his country's economic crisis: a wordy but truly literate, witty, wise, mature, urbane, novelistic account of the forced retirement of a feisty old Leftist professor of literature, long ago …