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A Place Called Chiapas, directed by the Canadian Nettie Wild, is a documentary about what the New York Times has rightly called “the world’s first post-modern revolution.” It begins with military vehicles emerging from darkness and a voiceover talking about the Zapatista movement of the Chiapan campesinos, led by Subcomandante Marcos, as having been “born…

A somewhat ponderously philosophical movie is redeemed by several outstandingly good performances.

Can any of us be sure that it’s not mere self-interest which determines who we love and whom we are loved by?

Holy Smoke by Jane Campion is a movie whose most basic assumptions—arising out of a weirdly anachronistic, 1970s-vintage view of bourgeois life—makes it rather difficult to like. From the first glimpse she gives us of “Sans Souci, Sydney,” an overhead shot of acres of tiled-roof bungalows that bespeaks “suburbia,” we know that Miss Campion’s sympathies…

A bittersweet and often very funny look at family relationships which, in spite of a good script and a great cast, doesn’t quite come off

The old stories are always the best. When I saw the trailer for She’s All That, directed by Robert Iscove, I thought: here was a kiddies’ movie that, unlike the dreadful but depressingly popular Varsity Blues, I might not find it quite unbearable to sit through. First, it was a retelling of the Pygmalion story,…