The first thought one has while watching The Next Best Thing is, “Was Madonna always this bad an actress?” It’s a question that soon fades from consciousness, to be replaced by, “Was Rupert Everett always this bad an actor?” Then, a little later, arrives this query: “Was John Schlesinger always…
In the closing years of the 20th century, lowbrow white America finally learned to enjoy an ironic laugh at itself, led by Hollywood’s cheerful mockery of the culturally challenged working class. Outside the system, John Waters had this stuff pegged from the get-go, but the American grotesqueries of the original,…
Willie Morris’ autobiographical novel, My Dog Skip, is a nearly perfect piece of bedtime reading for children — and their parents. Each chapter is virtually a self-contained anecdote; the descriptions of World War II-era Mississippi are lush and dreamlike; and the escapades of the central canine character, depicted as smarter,…
If you think the prevailing attitude toward sex in the United States is often archaic, consider that of late 1960s Ireland, as depicted in Agnes Browne, the new movie directed by Anjelica Huston. When asked by her best friend, Marion (Marion O’Dwyer), whether she misses “it,” the recently widowed Agnes…
Once, a very long time ago, John Frankenheimer was scared of things. He was scared of being fired from his job directing live television dramas during the 1950s; scared of missing a shot, of trying something daring and failing so spectacularly that he would never work again. Once, in the…
Director John Frankenheimer has been putting bad guys on the street since Luca Brazzi slept with a teddy bear, and he shows no sign of letting up at age 70. In Reindeer Games, a relentless (and relentlessly witty) crime thriller set in the frozen wastes of northern Michigan, a sleazy…
Step right up, youth of the world, and receive the Boomer inoculation that is Wonder Boys, the first feature from director Curtis Hanson since his much-lauded adaptation of James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential. (Indeed, this is yet another adaptation, this time of Michael Chabon’s 1995 novel.) Then marvel at Michael Douglas…
It’s not a startling breach of conventional wisdom to apply the term “masterpiece” to Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 film Rear Window, which is being reissued this week in a nice restored print that, if memory serves, is better (though not that much better) than we’ve seen before. But critical reputations can…
What’s going on here? A tender, patient shot of a school custodian sweeping the floor? Frequent cutaways to branches teeming with singing birds, or to an unused water tower looming like an alien monolith? Split-level houses, bric-a-brac, and a freshly renovated kitchen? Is director Eric Mendelsohn attempting, in his first…
Some film aficionados are weaned on art-house offerings, savoring the mise-en-scène of Kurosawa, the montage of Eisenstein, and the imagery of Fellini. Others suckle on the teat of Cinemax, sneaking back into the living room after Mom and Dad have gone to bed to study the brutal disfigurement of bad…
Beating and being beaten about the head and torso until one of two bruised and bloodied humans drops — clever sport, boxing, which tops even American football for sheer poetic elegance. So it’s not surprising — and this is only half sarcastic — that so many fine films have been…
The Cup In a Tibetan monastery-in-exile in Bhutan, the head abbot (Lama Chonjor) is curious, though not the least bit ruffled, to discover that some of his monks are secretly sneaking off to a nearby town to watch World Cup matches on television. Not surprisingly, the abbot has never heard…
Twenty-seven-year-old Ben Younger delivers the message of his first feature, Boiler Room, with all the subtlety of a car bomb. To wit: Greed is alive and well in the new century, fueled by the material dreams of a generation bent on instant gratification and the distorted expectations of neophyte investors…
Even at just 92 minutes, this film feels endless. Intended as a humorous, heartwarming take on dysfunctional family relationships, Hanging Up doesn’t work as comedy or drama or anything in between. Given its wealth of above-the-line talent — director and costar Diane Keaton, writers Delia and Nora Ephron, and actresses…
Pitch Black is one of those films that becomes a distant memory while you watch it. Not only does it barely register as you sit through it — the film feels so distant, it occasionally seems as though it’s being shown in a neighboring theater — but it recalls a…
It’s hard to blame Kirk Douglas for choosing so formulaic a vehicle as a comeback film, especially after fighting back from a devastating stroke almost four years ago. Certainly no one can fault him for wanting to act again, to prove he’s still got it. However, the question is: Can…
Jane Campion’s 1992 film The Piano was an intoxicating work of art, a film of such beauty and power, it literally took my breath away. Nothing the New Zealand-born writer-director has done before or since even comes close to matching it in form, content, or sensibility. And her latest film,…
La crème de la coiffure! A mock documentary about, of all things, a Scottish hairdresser who travels to America to compete in an international hairstyling tournament, The Big Tease is a mildly amusing romp that benefits enormously from an ingratiating performance by Scottish actor Craig Ferguson, who also co-wrote the…
Ewan McGregor — you can’t toss a caber in Scotland these days without toppling a gaggle of blokes who closely resemble him. Yet some magical combination of talent, charm, and shrewd management has thrown wide the gates of choice projects for the young superstar, whose résumé already glows like a…
Director Wes Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson’s 1996 Scream was something of a breath of fresh air — a little of the slasher film’s familiar old holy-shit! mixed in with self-aware glances and not-so-sly asides. It offered nothing new — indeed, Scream often felt like a sequel to something –…
Director Chen Kaige is best known in the United States for Farewell My Concubine, the most successful Chinese production ever released here. As many pointed out at the time, this Oscar-nominated 1993 epic of modern Chinese history may have been wholly Chinese in both content and viewpoint, but it was…
Sharon Stone doesn’t appear on-screen until halfway through this tale of three lives unraveling, but when she does, she makes quite an impression as Rosie, the third player in a horse-racing scam. Adapted from a play by Sam Shepard, Simpatico jumps back and forth between the present day and the…
