Invasion of the Body Snatchers

The Eyes of Tammy Faye, a documentary by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, is worth seeing in the limited sense in which many inferior documentaries are worth seeing—that is, as a document of cultural or sociological interest. I confess to a further enjoyment of the campy set-up—including narration by RuPaul Charles and little Shari Lewis-style…

Small Time Crooks has, like all Woody Allen’s films some excellent jokes. The best of them, however, are stupid-jokes (very popular in Hollywood lately) which, it always seems to me, is the comedic equivalent of dynamiting fish. It used to be drunks, now it’s idiots. Woody Allen himself plays Ray Winkler, a petty thief whose…

The Devil’s Own by Alan J. Pakula is a dishonest film in the way that we have come to expect Hollywood films to be dishonest when they deal with politics. Here we see noble IRA terrorists fighting only against heavily armed (and comically incompetent) British soldiers instead of blowing up innocent civilians, which is what…

Titus, written and directed by Julie Taymore, is a revelation. Like most students of Shakespeare, I had always thought Titus Andronicus the weakest of his plays, its Grand Guignol effects obviously the fruits of an apprentice hand. I think so still. But it took Miss Taymore to show us that even Shakespeare’s prentice work was…

Jane Austen as seen by Whit Stillman — who doesn’t quite see all of her

Shooting Fish by Stefan Schwartz stars Dan Futterman and Stuart Townsend as Dylan and Jez (short for Jeremiah), an American and an Englishman who team up to run various scams in the interests, they say, of some orphans, namely themselves. If this strikes you as a jolly jape, you may be as much stuck in…