Philadelphia Story, The

Amazon, the IMAX film now being shown at the Museum of Natural History in New York, begins with scenes from an old black and white movie of pith-helmeted explorers fighting everything from vicious natives with poison-dart blowguns, to crocodiles to piranha. The picture is a tiny keyhole in the middle of the screen. Then up…

The Rainmaker is redundant proof that Francis Ford Coppola has lost it permanently. If you thought that things couldn’t get any worse for him after the egregious Jack, wait till you see this two-hour infomercial on behalf of the Trial Lawyers Association. Coppola seems to have used up whatever stores of subtlety and moral ambiguity…

The Other Sister, directed by Garry Marshall, tells the story of Carla Tate (Juliette Lewis), a young woman of 22 or 23 who, because she is mentally retarded, has spent most of her life in a “special school” and is now coming home, as the picture begins, to live with her well-to-do family in San…

Andrew Dominik’s Chopper, which tells the story—more or less—of a true-life Australian criminal-hero called Mark “Chopper” Read (Eric Bana), attempts to make its mark, and to a considerable extent does so, as a fascinating study of raw masculinity. Chopper got his nickname by cutting his own ears off while in prison in order to get…

Senseless, directed by Penelope Spheeris, is a gross-out comedy of the school of Eddie Murphy’s Absent Minded Professor, designed to appeal to upwardly mobile blacks. Marlon Wayans stars as Darryl Whitherspoon, a student working several jobs in order to pay his way through college while at the same time sending money home to his single…

Movies about novelists can be even more deadly boring and narcissistic than novels about novelists. Wonder Boys, directed by Curtis Hanson from an adaptation by Steve Kloves of Michael Chabon’s novel, is a case in point. Not only is the movie far too taken up with writers and writerliness, it is a movie made according…