Touch by Paul Schrader, based on a twenty year old novel by Elmore Leonard, has an appealing premiss but with no idea of what to do with it. The premiss is that a young former Franciscan calling himself Juvenal (Skeet Ulrich), but whose real name is Charles Lawson, returns from a missionary calling in the…
Chasing Amy is another slacker movie and thus another piece of redundant evidence that America has become far richer than is good for it. Boys the age of this film’s director, Kevin Smith, whose earlier efforts are Clerks and Mall Rats, ought to be doing their army basic training, or serving as apprentices at some…
Gridlock’d is yet another attitude film, this one by Vondie Curtis Hall and starring the late Tupac Shakur and Tim Roth. They play a couple of junkie musicians in Detroit vaguely trying to “kick” (i.e. the habit) after Tupac’s girlfriend, played by Thandie Newton, overdoses one New Year’s Eve. They take the girl, Cookie, to…
Fools Rush In by Andy Tennant offers us mildly engaging characters and an even more mildly witty screenplay but cannot escape the clichés of its plot—which, when you boil it down, is nothing more than the old work-family conflict. All this romance—and there is a potential romance here of some charm—only so that yet another…
It was an interesting experience to go to see Kevin Spacey’s Albino Alligator with Jackie Chan’s First Strike fresh in my mind. The two films stand at opposite poles: the one delightfully fresh and uncomplicated and entirely based on its swift, non-stop movement and the other slow and lugubrious and full of portentous dialogue and…
The People vs. Larry Flynt is one of Hollywood’s more typical propaganda films—which is to say one which makes it too easy on itself. Unlike, say, Dead Man Walking, which was a very untypical propaganda film, it does not play straight with us. It stacks the deck in favor of its hero, Larry Flynt (Woody…
Cosi by Mark Joffe is the perfect Australian movie, containing as it does opera, insanity, coming of age and that most intricate of metaphysical questions: how to resolve the conflict between one’s girl and one’s mates. Based on a play by Louis Nowra, it stars Ben Mendelsohn as Lewis, a young college dropout who doesn’t…
Jackie Chan’s First Strike, directed by Stanley Tong, is another example of the only kind of action film I seem to get any enjoyment out of anymore. Most of them are so artificial and unbelievable: special effects overwhelming the human element. But the remarkable Jackie Chan does action at the human level. This he gets…
In the Realm of the Senses is a Japanese film made twenty years ago by Nagisa Oshima. At the time it was considered shocking even by the relaxed standards of the day and it was seized by U.S. Customs Agents. What innocent times they seem! Nowadays we aren’t so much more depraved than people were…
Beverly Hills Ninja by Dennis Dugan tries yet again to make Chris Farley’s brand of physical comedy, which consists of smashing into things and roaring, funny—but with no more success than Black Sheep or Tommy Boy. Artistic, or comedic, success I mean. At the box office it is boffo. For some reason, Americans in the…
In the Realm of the Senses is a Japanese film made twenty years ago by Nagisa Oshima. At the time it was considered shocking even by the relaxed standards of the day and it was seized by U.S. Customs Agents. What innocent times they seem! Nowadays we aren’t so much more depraved than people were…
Jackie Chan’s First Strike, directed by Stanley Tong, is another example of the only kind of action film I seem to get any enjoyment out of anymore. Most of them are so artificial and unbelievable: special effects overwhelming the human element. But the remarkable Jackie Chan does action at the human level. This he gets…
