Dirty Work

Hard Rain by Mikael Salomon could have been and almost is a really competently managed thriller. Half-way through it I was weighing up whether it deserved one or two stars and delighting in what I took to be an unexpected throwback to the old days in Hollywood when the stories the movies told were tough…

Addicted to Love, written by Robert Gordon and directed by Griffin Dunne has its moments of humor but it never really seems to understand the seriousness of the issue it is playing with. This is the issue of revenge. Maggie (Meg Ryan) has been dumped by Anton (Tcheky Karyo), who has since moved on to…

A silly attempt to re-imagine Jane Austen as a romance novelist of our own time inexplicably marooned in the 18^th century

Affliction, based on a novel by Russell Banks, is written and directed by Paul Schrader, and, like so many other Hollywood products these days, it asks us to believe that traditional ideas of masculinity are psychically and socially destructive. Though it is well-written, well-acted and well-photographed, the movie really has nothing else to say to…

The thing I like about the films of Zhang Yimou, especially the early ones like Red Sorghum, Ju Dou, and Raise the Red Lantern is that he takes such complete advantage of being almost the only filmmaker in the world today who is allowed to wallow in nostalgia for a frankly reactionary past. The reason…

What Dreams May Come, directed by Vincent Ward from a screenplay by Ron Bass and based on the novel by Richard Matheson, is the Orpheus myth translated into Californian — with visuals by Caspar David Friedrich. I don’t know about you, but that’s pretty close to being my idea of hell. Not that hell as…