This is the first thing you notice about John Travolta as he stands before you, extending his hand in welcome: He does not look at all like a Movie Star. At 45, he seems a bit softer and a tad shorter than he did even on television, where the small…
Joy isn’t a word that often comes to mind when thinking about the films of director Wim Wenders. But infectious, intoxicating joy is the emotion conveyed by every frame of this ravishing, exuberant documentary. Buena Vista Social Club is not only the German filmmaker’s most engaging, soulful film since 1987’s…
Anthology films are an odd-duck genre: While there once was a time, long gone, when books of short stories were published with nearly the frequency of novels, their cinematic equivalent has never amounted even to 1 percent of the fictional films released. You could argue that Pulp Fiction counts as…
Disney’s The Lion King, one of the studio’s most popular films ever, contained a streak of xenophobia that bordered on the fascistic. Think about it: The effeminate usurper of a hereditary title pollutes the leonine kingdom by integrating the hyenas — creatures with ethnic voices — into the pride. Late…
In John Sayles’ Limbo, which is set amid the rough-and-tumble of southeast Alaska, an ex-salmon fisherman with guilty memories (David Strathairn), an itinerant lounge singer with a lousy voice (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), and the singer’s melancholy teenage daughter (newcomer Vanessa Martinez) become stranded, Robinson Crusoe-style, on a remote island. This…
Bernardo Bertolucci’s Besieged is a movie of enthralling visual poetry. Set almost entirely inside a ravishing Roman villa, it is a love story played out in furtive glances and stolen looks by characters on opposite sides of the ethnic divide. Culturally, Mr. Kinsky (David Thewlis) and Shandurai (Thandie Newton) couldn’t…
Lauren Hutton may not be the best actress in the world, but she sure has sex appeal. And she has a nice ability to mock her sexiness at the same time she is playing to it, which is a trick not every actress can pull off. In Just a Little…
A fine line divides inspired silliness from out-and-out witlessness; it’s a short leap from grin from groan. In 1997’s Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Mike Myers took a thin premise–spoof the ’60s by transplanting a horny Matt Helm-like secret agent into the ’90s–and danced an unsteady watusi along that…
While Hong Kong movies have been invading Hollywood through the success of Jackie Chan, John Woo, Jet Li, and others, mainland Chinese cinema has invaded the “classier” neighborhoods of the film industry during the last decade or so. The latest contender is The King of Masks, an affecting melodrama from…
In an early scene in Instinct, we’re told that a brilliant primatologist named Ethan Powell (Anthony Hopkins) is being brought back to the United States from Rwanda, where for several years he has been engaged in a close study of mountain gorillas. Actually, his study has gone a bit beyond…
David Mamet–famous for his in-your-face characters, brutal and frequently raunchy dialogue, and deliberate, staccato prose about, ya know, dat thing–would seem an unlikely choice to write and direct a screen adaptation of British playwright Terence Rattigan’s genteel drama about injustice. But the Pulitzer Prize-winning author (for Glengarry Glen Ross), whose…
Deja vu is usually a sign of love at first sight. Says who? Says the heroine of The Thirteenth Floor to the hero she’s on the verge of kissing. Though they’ve just met a scene or two earlier, they both feel they’ve seen each other before. That maxim about dejà…
Maybe it’s the damned blinking thing, because it’s not simply the foppish hair and boyish face–or, for that matter, even the vaguely befuddled reticence and wry, self-abasing demeanor we Americans prefer to see in our Brits. It’s got to be the blinking. That’s what he does, almost all he does,…
Nearly a quarter of a century after the fall of Saigon, only a small film industry has managed to grow on Vietnam’s war-scarred soil. And what has emerged is rarely seen outside of local cinemas. If ever there was a country that needed to seize back control of its cinematic…
The Love Letter has the dubious distinction of being the other studio film to open this week. In a week when all the other majors have run for cover, Dreamworks has taken a gamble with a classic bit of counter-programming–in nearly every way, this sweet romance/romantic comedy is the opposite…
Relentlessly hip? You’d better be. Enjoy pretentious talk about the great god Art and the hidden meanings in old gangster movies? Couldn’t hurt. Like to sit up till dawn smoking cigarettes and exchanging ironic barbs about the tragedy of life? Bingo. Amos Poe, an East Village-based avant-gardian since the Talking…
If your poodle is decked out in the complete Captain Kirk uniform, you’ve taken Klingon language classes, or you once mailed DeForest Kelley a joint taped to a piece of cardboard just “to return the favor,” the 86-minute documentary called Trekkies is must viewing–love it or loathe it. In the…
The return of Jesus Christ would have trouble living up to the advance billing of Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace. (“I mean, it’s OK, but why isn’t he turning water into wine like he used to? And where’s Peter? He was, like, my favorite disciple.”) That’s not an…
This, of course, is an exercise in futility. The Force is strong with this film; you’ve seen the Boba Fetted geeks lined up outside theaters, their freaky, frightening, flashlight-turned-lightsaber-wielding numbers growing every day. Good Lord, Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace could be two hours of static–and it nearly…
The Castle is a modest little comedy from Australia that falls into the subgenre of Capraesque idealism, in the little-guy-triumphs-over-evil-powers-that-be division. The story revolves around the unpretentious Kerrigan clan: Darryl (Michael Caton), the father, has his own little towing business. Sal (Anne Tenney), the mother, is the family cook, and…
A Midsummer Night’s Dream came early in Shakespeare’s career. He had written it by at least 1598, in roughly the same period as another lyric-romantic masterpiece, Romeo and Juliet. Despite Samuel Pepys’ famous dismissal of Dream as “the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life,” it…
Even English actresses of a certain age have a difficult time finding good roles, so it’s understandable that Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, and Joan Plowright might jump at the chance to star in Tea With Mussolini, Franco Zeffirelli’s new film about a group of English expatriates living in Florence during…
