Badlands (1973)

Le Huitième Jour(The Eighth Day) by Jaco Van Dormael begins with a somewhat whimsical attempt to portray the world as seen through the eyes of Georges (Pascal Duquenne), a Downs syndrome sufferer. Like Genesis (the pop group of the same name makes an appearance later in the film), it begins “In the beginning. . .”…

The idea behind this movie is mistaken, I think, but its execution makes it very watchable

Of The Edge, written by David Mamet and directed by Lee Tamahori, it must be said that we should be grateful for what it does not do. It does not make the billionaire, Charles Morris (Anthony Hopkins) into a predictable rich-man villain, or even into a soulless, unpleasant character who stands aside as the real…

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

John Frankenheimer’s new movie, Reindeer Games, for which Ehren Kruger (Arlington Road) wrote the screenplay, is in some ways an admirably old-fashioned sort of picture. Or so I am inclined to think of any movie whose soul is its plot, as it generally is in the movies of the greatest directors from Hitchcock to Rohmer….

La Séparation, directed by Christian Vincent from a screenplay written by himself and Dan Franck, tells the story of the unraveling of a marriage, except that it is not a marriage. Pierre (Daniel Auteuil), a book illustrator, and Anne (Isabelle Huppert), who is some kind of professional or businesswoman, have lived together for years, and…