La Desenchantée by Benoit Jacquot stars the stunning young actress, Judith Godrèche, as Beth, a supposedly down on her luck teenager who, far more rapidly than most teenagers (especially teenagers who look like this) is shorn of her illusions as a sheep in the springtime is shorn of its wool. I am suspicious of a…
Un Air de Famille, directed by Cédric Klapisch (While the Cat’s Away) from an original play by Agnès Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri, is enormous fun, and I highly recommend it if you are lucky enough to find it opening in your neighborhood. Denis (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) is having affair with Betty (Miss Jaoui) while working for…
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…
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…
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 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…
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…
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…
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…
Hav Plenty by Christopher Cherot is a young man’s film about love and success in the black middle class and as such, I suppose, is to be applauded merely for existing. At least it is a welcome break from those tiresome boyz in the hood and other forms of playing up to black stereotypes. But…
Normally, I make it a rule never to go to basketball movies (especially if they star basketball players) or those whose titles are in ebonics. But Spike Lee is a talented director about whose work it is still possible to be hopeful, in spite of a string of disappointments. He Got Game turns out to…
Hope Floats directed by Forrest Whitaker to a screenplay by Steven Rodgers is a feel-good movie selling a relatively innocuous version of the Hollywood dream—i.e. that all the world’s problems come from people, especially parents and children, not hugging each other enough and giving tongue to their feelings of love for each other. The other…
