Merchant Ivory productions–Howard’s End and A Room With a View being two of the most notable–are famous for their almost tactile sense of time and place. The company’s latest effort, which was not directed by the team’s customary director, James Ivory, but by its producing half, Ismail Merchant, is no…
A more nasty and cynical film was never made, and this from a director (Alexander Mackendrick) known previously for his comedies; though, when read between the lines, this 1957 masterpiece plays darkly hysterical–the laugh that coughs up blood. Tony Curtis is Sidney Falco, a pathetic PR man peddling mediocre clients…
It’s easy to see why this comedy-drama about a thoroughly assimilated Indian-American college student at loggerheads with his tradition-minded father has been such a big hit on the indie film festival circuit. Written and directed by Anurag Mehta and starring his brother Aalok, American Chai doesn’t have anything especially new…
What’s most surprising about Nine Queens, a wry if awfully derivative caper come-on from first-time feature director-writer Fabián Bielinsky, is how easily it suckers you into its swindle. After all, you know from jump that something’s up. You’ve sniffed out this con before in the films of David Mamet and…
To the woman who broke Adrian Lyne’s heart all those years ago: Stop what you’re doing right this minute. Drop everything, pick up the phone and call him. Apologize profusely for cheating on him. Tell him it’s all your fault and you’re a worse person for leaving him. Offer him…
Last month GQ ran a disquietingly flattering profile of Joe Roth, who, in January 2000, quit his gig as Walt Disney Studios chairman to “revolutionize the industry” (GQ’s words) by forming his own studio. With a billion bucks on loan from men with money and bridges to burn–among them News…
The most remarkable thing about Bart Weiss, founder and director of the Dallas Video Festival, is not his patience or taste but his empathy for filmmakers and audiences alike. He knows there will be plenty of films, both short and long, screening in the 15th Annual Dallas Video Festival that…
Kick a boy enough times, and he’ll become a man. The question is, of what sort? In his long-awaited feature portrait of the comic-book hero, Spider-Man, director Sam Raimi brings forth a kaleidoscopic answer full of hope and verve. Flashy enough for kids and insightful enough to engage adults, the…
Ten years after The Scandal–and its negative effect on the size of his audiences and his power and independence–Woody Allen broke his longtime avoidance of the Oscar telecast with his pro-New York stand-up shtick at this year’s ceremony. The positive audience response suggested that all is forgiven, the industry still…
Actor Arliss Howard’s debut as a director explodes with brave ambition while falling a little short, perhaps, on traditional narrative sense. So be it. If devotees of the cinematic art were willing to slide down a tunnel into John Malkovich’s head a few years back, there’s no reason to balk…
In the late ’50s, the head of a Brooklyn street gang (Stephen Dorff) must fight off attacks from a neighboring gang run by a junkie (Balthazar Getty), who is fronting for a drug dealer (Norman Reedus) fresh out of prison. At the same time, our hero’s brother (Brad Renfro) is…
Kicking around the film-fest circuit since 2000, this football film (soccer, actually, but we are in Scotland) is the quintessential sports film, complete with a ragtag team of small-timers sniffing the big time, an aging vet (Jackie McQuillan, played by feature-film newcomer Abby McCoist) seeking redemption on and off the…
There is more than a little of A Beautiful Mind’s John Nash in Tom Jericho, the hero of Michael Apted’s World War II-era romantic thriller. Both men are brilliant mathematicians, breaking military codes for the government while hovering on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Nash, of course, was a…
Poor William Randolph Hearst. The snapping dogs of Hollywood just won’t leave the guy alone. It’s been barely 60 years since a little epic called Citizen Kane portrayed the great newspaper tycoon as a ruthless dictator who degenerated into an emotional basket case, and already there’s more bad publicity in…
During the past half-century, countless filmmakers great and obscure have stood in serious debt to The Bicycle Thief. But, for my money, no one has borrowed so cleverly or shifted the weight of Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 masterpiece so gracefully as young Wang Xiaoshuai, whose Beijing Bicycle embodies the spirit…
The USA Film Festival, now in its 32nd year, may never again be the powerhouse fest it was at its inception–which is not to damn it, since there are several excellent offerings this year, but merely to accept a rather delightful reality. At its inception, there was no Sundance, no…
Written and directed by Bart Freundlich, this project deserves commendation for its psychological cogency and compassion, but it loses significant points for its lazy story and complacent delivery. Basically, we have a mannish boy named Cal (Billy Crudup, Almost Famous) who’s a modestly successful New York architect but decides to…
The thoroughly unlikable heroine of Stephen Herek’s cautionary comedy about striving and satisfaction is a vain, actressy TV blonde (vain, actressy Angelina Jolie) whose driving ambition is to move up from Seattle’s inane morning news-and-talk show to a major network’s inane morning news-and-talk show. But first, a typical Hollywood curveball…
A likable British convict (James Nesbitt) plans an ingenious escape that involves cons (Lennie James, Timothy Spall, Bill Nighy), the prison’s psychologist (Olivia Williams) and the staging of Nelson!, an awful musical biography of the well-known admiral written by their dotty, musical-comedy-obsessed warden (Christopher Plummer). Complications, of course, abound, with…
Once-renowned Iranian filmmaker Bahman Farmanara (Prince Ehtejab) had not made a picture since 1979, when his third film was banned by the post-Revolutionary Censor Board. Now, 23 years later–after moving to North America for a decade, then returning to Iran–he is back making movies. Smell of Camphor so closely mirrors…
The perpetrators of the new Sandra Bullock vehicle, Murder by Numbers, could be hauled in on any number of charges, including plagiarism and child abuse. But their most obvious crime is first-degree dullness, giving us a thriller without thrills and a mystery devoid of urgent questions. This merely bloody piece…
Say this about World Wrestling Federation Entertainment head honcho Vince McMahon: He knows what his fans want. Few movies have ever been as specifically tailored to an existing audience as The Scorpion King, in which McMahon’s prize champion, The Rock, portrays The Rock wearing a loincloth and going by the…
