Affair to Remember, An

Mad City, directed by Costa-Gavras, has a good subject, but it can’t seem to stay focused on it. The director, known for such anti-American films as Z and Salvador, here ostensibly changes his subject to the media. Now I yield to no one in my dislike of the media, and especially of television newsmen, but…

When the Cat’s Away (not a very adequate translation of the French Chacun Cherche Son Chat or “Everyone’s looking for his cat”), by Cédric Klapisch, is a charmingly old-fashioned kind of film, in spite of its depiction of very contemporary social realities. It offers a marvelously undimmed romanticism about Paris, and about the glamour of…

A disgraceful bit of hyped-up PR on behalf of an unapologetic thief, bully and rapist

Shakespeare in Love, which was directed by John Madden from a screenplay co-written by Tom Stoppard, has all the signs of the high Stoppardian style, including lots of puns and Elizabethan English transplanted to unexpected situations, where it takes on new and usually humorous meanings. And not only Elizabethan words either. At one point we…

A highly watchable but somewhat dubious lesson in how not to be a victim — or at least not a victim of fate

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…