Who lives by the plot shall die by the plot. Copland, written and directed by James Mangold, is an old-fashioned, plot-driven, realistic thriller that almost succeeds but that falls down because of a central incoherence in the plot. The problem is this. Everything depends on the far reaching ramifications of what happens one night to…
Guantanamera is, I guess, a sort of Cuban communist version of such US movies as One Fine Day or that one with Nicholas Cage and Bridget Fonda about the cop who wins the lottery ( “We’re in the money” ? “Can’t buy me love” ? I can’t remember). In other words, it borrows the name…
Mrs Brown written by Jeremy Brock, directed by John Madden and starring Judi Dench as Queen Victoria and Billy Connolly as her servant, John Brown, is a Masterpiece Theatre costume drama, based fairly faithfully on true events, which has found its way onto the big screen and manages, in spite of all expectations, not to…
Career Girls provides evidence that Mike Leigh has been spoiled by success. Or by something. Anyway, he is spoiled. Perhaps it is because he has mellowed politically. This film only has one gratuitous swipe at Margaret Thatcher, and even that seems half-hearted at best. He was better when he was a fulminating leftie. At least…
Buddy by Caroline Thompson is the (more or less) true story of Gertrude Lintz (Rene Russo), a Brooklyn socialite of the 1920s and 30s and author of Animals Are My Hobby, who raised chimpanzees as if they were children with some interesting results and later tried the same trick with a gorilla (the eponymous Buddy,…
Perhaps the most telling moment in Disney’s Hercules (directed by John Musker and Ron Clements) the latest in that company’s long succession of dreadful, vulgar and philistine cartoon movies, comes near the beginning with a musical recapitulation of Greek mythology (most of it garbled or deliberately altered to suit the use that Disney wants to…
Nothing to Lose, written and directed by Steve Oedekerk, stars Tim Robbins as Nick, an advertising executive in Los Angeles who is carjacked by “T” (Martin Lawrence) while in a state of shock over his apparent discovery of his wife, Ann (Kelly Preston), in bed with his boss, Phil (Michael McKean). Sittiing at an intersection…
George of the Jungle, directed by Sam Weisman and written by Dana Olsen and Audrey Wells is Disney’s concession to children who found Hercules too sophisticated. I would have guessed that anyone over the age of nine who so much as cracks a smile at all this strenuous but vain effort to be funny must…
Operation Condor directed by and starring Jackie Chan, is one of his Hong Kong movies, made before he became a star in the U.S., and now released with dubbing for the American market which, together with the amateurish acting, makes it look like a cheap porno title. Let us be clear. This is trash. But…
Ponette by Jacques Doillon is a tribute to the precocious brilliance of the child actress, Victoire Thivisol, and presumably to Doillon himself for directing her and the other remarkable children — Matiaz Bureau, Delphine Schilz and Leopoldine Serre — who take up most of the screen time here. The film is worth seeing just for…
La Promesse by Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne stars Jérémie Renier as Igor, a Belgian boy of about 16 working to help his father, Roger (Olivier Gourmet), who is a shady dealer in the import and export of illegal immigrants in Liège. He also works as an apprentice mechanic at a service station and seems genuinely…
When the Cat’s Away (not a very adequate translation of the French Chacun Cherche Son Chat or “Everyone’s looking for his cat”), by Cédric Klapisch, is a charmingly old-fashioned kind of film, in spite of its depiction of very contemporary social realities. It offers a marvelously undimmed romanticism about Paris, and about the glamour of…
