Third Man, The

Despite having almost nothing to do with the novel by Alexandre Dumas from which it is supposedly adapted, The Man in the Iron Mask by Randall Wallace is not so bad as one might have expected it to be. Certainly it is a lot better than the ineffably silly Three Musketeers of a few years…

A movie about self-satisfaction that is itself way too self-satisfied to have anything very interesting to say

It is not a particularly original or even, necessarily, interesting observation that marriage, like other symbiotic relationships, is often a matter of complementary pathologies. Or what would be pathologies if they were found in an individual. Benoit Jacquot (A Single Girl, The Disenchanted) has given us a portrait of such a marriage—and not much hope…

Niagara Niagara directed by Bob Gosse, is what we might call a sick flick which reproduces in its title the “echolalia” or weird repetitions and irrational tics incident to sufferers of Tourette’s Syndrome. The sufferer in this case is a young woman called Marcy (Robin Tunney) from a wealthy but uncaring family who meets (while…

Amazing! An old-fashioned drama of honor and faith and romance and swordplay not intended to send these things up.

Un Air de Famille, directed by Cédric Klapisch (While the Cat’s Away) from an original play by Agnès Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri, is enormous fun, and I highly recommend it if you are lucky enough to find it opening in your neighborhood. Denis (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) is having affair with Betty (Miss Jaoui) while working for…