Breaking Away (1979)

Near the end of Black Orpheus (Orfeu Negro), Marcel Camus’s masterpiece of 1959, there comes what can only be described as an authorial disclaimer that strikes the film’s one seriously false note. “The happiness of the poor is the great illusion of Carnival,” we are told, more or less out of the blue. Up until…

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…

Jay Roach mops up whatever laughs are left in this franchise, but I’m already sick of these Fockers

Steve Martin makes the mistake of over-estimating his own talents in taking on a role made famous by Peter Sellers

A portrait of spiritual and emotional emptiness among the academic classes — that may or may not be spiritually and emotionally empty itself

Buddy by Caroline Thompson is the (more or less) true story of Gertrude Lintz (Rene Russo), a Brooklyn socialite of the 1920s and 30s and author of Animals Are My Hobby, who raised chimpanzees as if they were children with some interesting results and later tried the same trick with a gorilla (the eponymous Buddy,…