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….
The Emperor and the Assassin by Chen Kaige presents us with an interesting and reasonably honest look at the way power is (or at least was) wielded in the world—as perhaps only a Chinese Communist who denounced his parents to the Red Guards of Mao’s Cultural Revolution could do. True, the action takes place over…
Milos Forman’s Man on the Moon is worth seeing for two reasons. One is the remarkable performance of Jim Carrey as the late comic and performance artist (as we should call him today), Andy Kaufman. I confess that I have always numbered myself among the Carrey-skeptics, and cannot remember a single performance of his that…
Christopher: I’m workin’ my ass off on this movie script. You know how many pages I got? Nineteen.Paulie: Is that a lot or a little?Christopher: Books say a movie’s supposed to be about 120 pages.Paulie: [whistles softly].Christopher: With this f***in’ computer, I thought it would do a lot of it.Paulie [menacingly]: If you’re bein’ frank…
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…
A Map of the World, adapted by Peter Hedges and Polly Platt from the novel by Jane Hamilton and directed by Scott Elliott, is essentially an Oprah movie that rises above the level we might expect of such a thing—at least until the end when it tries to tidy things up with far too neat…
If you are a Buddhist or very fond of soccer—or possibly one of the yuppie aristocracy who are both—then The Cup is for you. Even I, who have very little time for either Buddhism or soccer, found it completely charming. Written and directed by Khyentse Norbu, it tells the story of a Buddhist monastery in…
It is fascinating how, although Hollywood has implicitly believed in every crackpot conspiracy theory for decades and has been willing to attribute to the democratically elected government of the United States any and all perfidies, it retains a sentimental attachment to the idea of the presidency. The image of the good king dies hard in…
Eye of the Beholder, written and directed by Stephan Elliott from a novel by Marc Behm is routine post-modern noir—which is to say that it has no interest in the kind of tight plotting or carefully built up motivation that characterized traditional film noir. Presumably the media sophisticates who patronize movies these days don’t care…
What is it about Frank Darabont and prisons? Or, for that matter, Stephen King and prisons? Having already idealized prison life in his dreadful version of Mr. King’s dreadful Shawshank Redemption a few years ago, Mr Darabont is at it again in the even more dreadful King story, The Green Mile. In Shawshank, although most…
Oliver Stone’s latest, Any Given Sunday, is not for those, like me, who are put off by the Oliver Stone’s style of moviemaking. Leaving aside for the moment the fact that what he has to say is often historically inaccurate, irresponsibly speculative or politically tendentious, the worst thing about a Stone movie is the attempt…
The Cider House Rules, directed by Lasse Hallström, is the inspiring tale of an abortionist, Dr. Wilbur Larch (Michael Caine), and his long life of tireless, unselfish, devoted service to unwanted children in an orphanage in New England in the early part of the century—when, of course, he was forced to ply his trade illegally….
