“Hell is a sort of high-class nightclub,” wrote George Orwell, “entry to which is reserved for Catholics only.” This sentiment is on stark display in the work of novelist Graham Greene, whose adulterous relationship (with the very married Catherine Welston, a wealthy farmer’s wife) propelled him to scrutinize the mechanics…
Magnolia, the third film from writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson, is a brilliant piece of garbage — mesmerizing, but only because you can’t believe someone has the temerity to put so much into so little. Three hours and eight minutes long, and all it has to say at the end is…
Of the readers who bought four million copies, in no fewer than 30 languages, of David Guterson’s 1995 best seller Snow Falling on Cedars, many have likely been looking forward to the movie version. Others have probably been dreading it. For better or worse, this multifarious story about nativist bigotry,…
In the poster art for The Hurricane, Denzel Washington glowers, one bandaged fist cocked for a right to our jaw. He may play a boxer, but this isn’t a boxing movie; indeed, Washington spends nearly two hours caged in a cell. Yet this isn’t a prison picture either — more…
The spirit of Fellini hovers over Train of Life, the third so-called Holocaust comedy to come down the pike. Far superior to either Life Is Beautiful or Jakob the Liar, the French-language production has a silliness and a buffoonish humor reminiscent of Amarcord and Fellini’s Roma, yet somehow it feels…
Note: For the sake of being obnoxiously frank, this critic opts to divulge his favorites while pretending, in keeping with the season, to be hammered on spiked eggnog. Cheers! Honorable Mention: Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, directed by George Lucas and his kids. Gimme a light saber to…
1. The Cider House Rules No other film this year captures the complex, bittersweet nature of life so movingly. Michael Caine and Delroy Lindo are standouts in a terrific ensemble cast. Filled with grace, compassion, and humor, this is director Lasse Hallstrom’s best work since My Life as a Dog…
A watershed year. That’s the buzz around the film critics’ water cooler — or should that be popcorn stand? — as 1999, and the first century of film, comes to a close. You can hear the whispers as they turn to shrieks of ecstasy: Just like 1974! Such are the…
Film critics are by nature a sour lot, so it is with truly great pleasure I suggest that 1999 has been the best year for cinema — certainly for American cinema and even for the major studios — in my 15 years on the beat. I’m at a loss to…
1. The Blair Witch Project Both the hype and the inevitable backlash have died down, and what remains is still quite a movie — the horror film reinvented, and the faux documentary brought of age as a legitimate nonparody genre. 2. The Limey A standard revenge melodrama charged up with…
Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday lasts as long as a National Football League game — which would be no crime were the film anything more than nearly three hours’ worth of outtakes spliced together by a palsied editor with a hearing problem. Entire scenes are inaudible, the hip-pop collage soundtrack…
The Talented Mr. Ripley numbs as much as it unnerves. However, that’s exactly the type of thriller you might expect from Anthony Minghella, the writer-director who gave critics something to rave about and many a reluctant date something to snooze through with the Academy Award juggernaut The English Patient. At…
At first glance, Pedro Almodovar’s All About My Mother seems uncharacteristically grim for a filmmaker with such a demonic sense of humor. Within 10 minutes, the heroine’s 17-year-old son is hit and killed by a car, which propels her and the events of the film into motion. In the next…
Although he couldn’t have known it at the time, growing up in Baltimore during the 1950s would prove to be filmmaker Barry Levinson’s smartest career move. First in Diner, then in Tin Men, Avalon, and now Liberty Heights, he has drawn on the specific time, place, and culture of his…
It ain’t that hard to parody Star Trek’s original series; Lord knows it did a good job of that itself. And certainly, many have tried; Jim Carrey did on In Living Color (with the “Wrath of Farrakhan” sketch), Kevin Pollak has built an entire career on his William Shatner impersonation,…
Ah, what a miracle that Andy Kaufman was. So sublime his wit, so pioneering his spirit. Astonishing! A hero to be loved, adored, and emulated by all artists and performers for the rest of eternity. An opener of doors, a smasher-down of barriers, a glorious, luminous, intrepid spirit without whom…
Nobody is innocent in America, but there is one segment of the population that seems doggedly determined to deny its own ignorance, ugliness, and violence: the redneck. The sludge on the bottom of the melting pot, this offshoot of European ancestry continues, to this day, to foment racist terrorism, religious…
It is rare to find a movie that is as accomplished, multilayered, and rewarding as the novel from which it was adapted, but The Cider House Rules is such a film. Directed by Lasse Hallström (My Life as a Dog, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?), the film displays the kind of…
If there’s anything that could make me believe in a cruel and vengeful God (or in the existence of the Dark Prince himself), it’s the incredible success of writer-turned-director Chris Columbus. Columbus is, in sheer dollar terms, the most successful comedy director of all time, having been at the helm…
It’s too tempting to resist. You see, there’s a secret about Stuart Little that the fine folks at Sony don’t want to blow. It’s not that each one of the half-million computer-generated hairs on the mouse’s head is cute as the dickens. It isn’t that human stars Geena Davis and…
I sincerely hope Jodie Foster gets a chance to relax and unwind this holiday season, because the lady has obviously worked like a horse to instill her latest role with humanity and significance. As intrepid British widow Anna Leonowens in the huge and poetic new Anna and the King, Foster…
Have you ever endured a relationship in which your partner beat you up mercilessly just to be able to “heal” you and play the redeemer later on? Granted, that’s a weird question and perhaps one better explored by Akbar and Jeff in Matt Groening’s Life in Hell strip, but it…
