The Game, directed by David Fincher, may be one of those films about which it is possible to say virtually nothing without giving away an essential fact about it—a fact which a great many viewers would be very cross at me for having revealed. It always seems to me a very shallow sort of enjoyment…
The new nukes-on-the-loose action thriller, The Peacemaker, tells us in its opening credits that it was directed by Mimi Leder, but as the first and presumably showcase cinematic product of the Spielberg-Katzenberg-Geffen “Dreamworks” studio, it has all the earmarks of a Spielbergian extravaganza. There are advantages and disadvantages to the fact. Or, really, one advantage…
Kicked in the Head directed by Matthew Harrison and co-written by him and the film’s star, Kevin Corrigan, is another of those slacker movies whose makers got far too much money far too early in their careers. This is a movie so immature in its conception, its writing and its execution that even in spite…
Le Huitième Jour(The Eighth Day) by Jaco Van Dormael begins with a somewhat whimsical attempt to portray the world as seen through the eyes of Georges (Pascal Duquenne), a Downs syndrome sufferer. Like Genesis (the pop group of the same name makes an appearance later in the film), it begins “In the beginning. . .”…
Of The Edge, written by David Mamet and directed by Lee Tamahori, it must be said that we should be grateful for what it does not do. It does not make the billionaire, Charles Morris (Anthony Hopkins) into a predictable rich-man villain, or even into a soulless, unpleasant character who stands aside as the real…
To the question of why anyone would want to rewrite King Lear so as to make Goneril and Regan the heroines and poor old Lear and (to a lesser extent) Cordelia the villains, there can only be one answer: in order to make a revolutionary statement. Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres, now translated to the…
Britain may be the only country in the world where it is still possible to make movies which glorify and romanticize and sentimentalize an old-fashioned view of masculinity—and have it come off looking progressive. Last spring we had Brassed Off which traded off its romantic notions of a stag-line of Yorkshire coal-miners down t’pit or…
The House of Yes, directed by Mark Waters and adapted by him from the stage play by Wendy MacLeod is enough to make you feel sorry for the Kennedys. Its occasional flashes of wit and its more persistent intellectual superciliousness have no other point than redundantly to assert that somehow (the means can be left…
Intimate Relations written and directed by Philip Goodhew is a lovely black comedy, supposedly based on a true story, which shines with brilliant performances by Rupert Graves and Julie Walters. Mr Graves plays Harold Guppy, a bit of a ne’er-do-well who, after stints in the Royal Navy and the Merchant Navy, comes to Abergavenny on…
Perhaps the most unforgettable moment in In and Out (written by Paul Rudnick and directed by Frank Oz) comes as Joan Cusack, having just been jilted at the altar by Kevin Kline, who has picked that moment to decide that he is gay ( “Was there any other time you could have told me this?”…
She’s So Lovely was directed by Nick Cassavetes from a screenplay by his late father, John Cassavetes, and provides a showcase for the talents of Sean Penn and his real-life wife, Robin Wright Penn, in classic Cassavetes situations of groups of friends sitting around, getting drunk together, laughing and saying the sorts of things that…
Wide Awake, directed by M. Night Shyamalan, must have attracted its stars — Denis Leary, Dana Delaney and Rosie O’Donnell, all of whom are badly miscast — because it tells what purports to be a heartwarming story of a kid in Catholic school, presumably of Irish extraction, who has to come to terms with his…
