Love and Death on Long Island, directed by Richard Kwietniowski from a novel by Gilbert Adair, is not really about death. Its title puns on the name of its principal character, played by John Hurt, who is called Giles De’Ath. But it might as well have been called De’Ath in Venice, since it is all…
Please note that the star in this case has a very special meaning. This is that if you have strong nerves and are not subject to nightmares—and you live in one of the few places where Funny Games by the Austrian director Michael Haneke can be seen—by all means go to see it. But don’t…
Krippendorf’s Tribe, directed by Todd Holland, is almost as unfunny a comedy as An Alan Smithee Film. Richard Dreyfuss plays James Krippendorf, a professor of anthropology with three children whose wife has recently died. Prostrated by grief he has shut himself up in the house and lived on his research grant until, one day, a…
Dangerous Beauty by Marshall Herskovitz bills itself as a “true story” of Venice in the 1580s, but if there is one thing this film is not, it is not true to Venice in the 1580s. The story of a courtesan and a poetess called Veronica Franco (Catherine McCormack) is made into an object lesson in…
The Big One is Michael Moore’s return to the merry prankster movie—like his breakout hit Roger and Me—after a detour through a feeble attempt at comedy-drama in Canadian Bacon. He is once again playing a kind of political Allen Funt who brings his cameras into various corporate headquarters—or, in one instance, the Wisconsin state capital—and…
The Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, have always had something of the smart aleck about them. Even such wonderful movies as Miller’s Crossing and Fargo teetered on the brink of becoming mere smart aleck movies like Barton Fink and The Hudsucker Proxy. What saved them in their better movies was a sense of moral seriousness…
The key line in Mike Nichols’s adaptation of Joe Klein’s Primary Colors comes as Governor Jack Stanton (John Travolta), hot on the trail of the presidency after having just disposed of his last rival for the Democratic nomination, tries to persuade his idealistic young aide, Henry Burton (Adrian Lester), to stay with the campaign. Henry…
Post Coitum Animal Triste, directed by Brigitte Roüen, stars Miss Roüen herself as Diane, a publisher married to the decent but boring lawyer, Philippe (Patrick Chesnais). She suddenly falls passionately in love with the much younger Emilio (Boris Terral) — a hydraulic engineer who goes about doing good, bringing water to the third world. What…
And you thought they didn’t make them like this anymore! Twilight, directed and co-written by Robert Benton is what every fourth or fifth movie out of Hollywood these days tries and fails to be — that is, an old fashioned noir thriller. I hope that people will be able to tell that, compared to the…
The Real Blonde by Tom DiCillo shows as much promise as his first film, Living in Oblivion of 1995. Both are very funny, but both are rather inward looking — obsessed with movie making and acting — and both somehow fail to hold together very well. The Real Blonde, in fact, is like a collection…
Poor Deputy Marshal Sam Gerard! The only fugitives he ever gets to chase are Houdini-like in their ability to wriggle out of certain capture and who thus put him through a hell of frustration over and over (and over and over) again. . .and then they turn out to be innocent! Oops! Hope I didn’t…
Mr Nice Guy, directed by Samo Hung, stars Jackie Chan as a TV cook who accidentally gets mixed up in gang activity in Melbourne, Australia. His now deceased father was supposed to have been a policeman and best friends with a man named Baggio (Barry Otto). Dad had made Baggio promise to ensure that Jackie…
