Brother, a Russian film written and directed by Alexei Balabanov, stars Sergei Bodrov, Jr, as Danila, a recently discharged soldier at a loose end who makes his way to St. Petersburg where his brother, Viktor (Victor Suhorukov) is somebody in the burgeoning underworld of Russia’s second city. The city itself is a main character in…
Small Soldiers, directed by Joe Dante, is typical of Hollywood attitudes towards military values and military people. Even the grief of soldiers for their dead comrades in arms is made fun of as the leader of the toy soldiers brought to life by computer wizardry pronounces over one of his men that: “Nick Nitro’s battery…
It’s time that the team of computer programmers from IBM who developed “Deep Blue,” the machine that beat the world chess champion, Gary Kasparov, to take on a real challenge. Let them try to develop a movie-making program that is more formidable — or more machine-like — than Steven Spielberg. His latest directorial effort, Saving…
In the first paragraph of his review, of Peter and Bobby Farrelly’s movie, There’s Something about Mary, Stephen Hunter of the Washington Post suggests that the picture is not only brilliantly funny but also one in the eye of those carping critics (presumably those with “artistic” pretensions) who don’t believe that “it is enough for…
Out of Sight by Steven Soderbergh.is a film reminiscent of so many of the brilliant products of the Coen brothers in that it is an excellent bit of movie-making with absolutely nothing to say. It plays around with time sequence like Pulp Fiction (only not so boldly) and fantasy and provides us with a real…
Six Days, Seven Nights, directed by Ivan Reitman, tries and does not completely fail to be an old- fashioned sort of romantic comedy. Anne Heche plays Robin Monroe, deputy editor of a New York fashion magazine who meets cute with Harrison Ford as Quinn Harris, a crusty old souse of a pilot living the life…
Lawn Dogs directed by John Duigan from a screenplay by Naomi Wallace is the worst movie I have seen since Fried Green Tomatoes. It touches reality at no point. Next to this piece of cinematic offal, Godzilla or Deep Impact look like kitchen sink realism. I don’t mind the mindlessness of such popcorn movies. They…
The Opposite of Sex, written and directed by Don Roos, is a young man’s film with all the virtues that natural wit and talent can supply in the absence of maturity, depth and judgment. These last named are qualities which often come to people with time, so we may hope for splendid things in the…
The General, written and directed by John Boorman, stars Brendan Gleeson as Martin Cahill, a real-life if legendary Irish outlaw who was assassinated by the IRA in 1994. The film, shot in black and white, begins with the assassination, ordered because Cahill had sold some stolen paintings to the Protestant paramilitaries of the UVF. “They…
Well, they got the loathing part right anyway. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, directed by Terry Gilliam, is very nearly as unwatchable as the book by Hunter S. Thompson on which it is based is unreadable. In spite of the presence of Johnny Depp, for whose talent I have considerable respect, in the Raul…
The X-Files, directed by Rob Bowman (no relation) and written by the series’s creator, Chris Carter, gives us an example of the perfect post-modern movie, because it presents to us a non-functional conspiracy. That is to say, the conspiracy is detached from its objective, or else the objective is so obscure that it remains unclear…
Bulworth is Hollywood political fantasy from one of Hollywood’s inveterate political fantasists, Warren Beatty, who is both director and star. Like The American President, which starred Beatty’s wife, Annette Bening, this movie proposes that the ticket to electoral success in America is a frank and robust avowal of socialist principles by hitherto cowardly and mealy-mouthed…
