A movie starring Paul Newman, Susan Sarandon, Gene Hackman, James Garner, and Stockard Channing ought to be a whole lot better than Robert Benton’s Twilight. It’s one of those “autumnal” movies about a private detective who is too old for the game but still goes through the motions. Benton, in…
Dangerous Beauty presents a 16th-century Venice filled with statesmen who hop from bed to bed without fear of “bimbo eruptions.” That’s because the courtesans aren’t bimbos, and they aren’t hidden: Everyone from the admiralty to the bishopric patronizes them. Having developed their minds along with their erotic skills, they’re boon…
His eye trained on the manic collision of Catholicism and consumerism, Pedro Almodovar has made some of the most lively, genre-bending films of the last two decades. The commander of a visual style that emphasizes bright primary colors and bold geometry, he’s in love with the glittering surfaces of pop-culture…
The science-fiction works of the late, great Philip K. Dick haven’t been served particularly well on screen. The most recent adaptation, Screamers, was junk; Total Recall had its moments, but was less ingenious by half than the short story it was based upon. Blade Runner, of course, was brilliant, but…
Back in the ’60s and ’70s, when its animation unit was in the doldrums, the Disney studio made a number of live-action “family” comedies (No Deposit, No Return and Freaky Friday, for instance) that were, within their limited ambitions, genuinely funny. The studio’s latest film, Krippendorf’s Tribe, is very much…
Bruno Barreto is the heir apparent of Brazilian cinema; he’s known on these shores for the lush romanticism of the Sonia Braga travel brochures Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands (1977) and Gabriela (’83), and in his own country for teen fluff like ’81’s The Boy from Rio. With the…
Palmetto is a film noir set in a torpid seaside Florida town. It’s based on the James Hadley Chase novel Just Another Sucker, and when we first see Harry Barber (Woody Harrelson), he fits that moniker exactly. He looks dazed and confused–a sucker incarnate. Suckers are, of course, integral to…
The Only Thrill, directed by Houston native Peter Masterson, is a conventional, sentimental movie that nonetheless hits where it aims. The film, which otherwise would be competent but unremarkable, is distinguished by two memorable actors–Sam Shepard and Diane Keaton–and by the chemistry that grows between these two principals as the…
In these paradox-ridden times, producers on the hunt for cutting-edge fantasies look back: They visit their boyhood or girlhood rooms and ransack their old books and videos, or peruse their studio’s property list for works that scored well in other media. In the mid-’90s, the English company Working Title made…
A colleague confided that he feared The Winter Guest because he didn’t want to watch Emma Thompson talking to her mom for two hours. This perfectly summarizes the kind of trap Alan Rickman’s directorial debut could’ve laid for art-house patrons: Hire one respected English actor to oversee a film starring…
Ludovic, the fiercely determined young hero(ine?) of writer-director Alain Berliner’s half-hilarious, half-tragic feature debut Ma Vie en Rose (My Life in Pink), proves how age, culture, and time all conspire to decide the difference between being feminine and being effeminate. Sure, he likes to wear frilly dresses and wants to…
Dennis Rodman’s life is an open book–it’s just not clear at this point how many people are left who care to read it. Rodman’s arrogance is unparalleled and far too well documented: He’s the, um, author of two autobiographies; he briefly had his own show on MTV, if you call…
Normally when he’s on tour publicizing his movies, writer-director Alan Rudolph likes to plan his day around tying one on. Relieved from the responsibility of writing, handling actors, and working with the cinematographer–but with the added stress of a hectic international travel schedule–he likes nothing better than to knock back…
John Woo has generated plenty of American disciples in the decade since his Hong Kong action films began playing film festivals in the West. Even before he began his Hollywood career with 1993’s Hard Target, bits of his action shtick started showing up in the work of savvy young filmmakers,…
Set in 19th-century Australia, this tale of two gamblers–Oscar, a failed minister, and Lucinda, a glassworks owner–is too wispy to be an art thing and too heavy to be a toy. Its key symbol is a tiny glass teardrop. The “Prince Rupert drop” cannot be smashed with a sledgehammer, but…
As The Apostle’s title character, E.F. “Sonny” Dewey, writer-director Robert Duvall never stops moving and never speaks in a voice lower than a roar. He runs in place, dances when standing still, hollers even when he whispers; he literally vibrates. Sonny’s a true tent-revival preacher, spitting brimstone threats and heavenly…
In the new Great Expectations, directed by Alfonso Cuaron and scripted by Mitch Glazer, the teeming world of Charles Dickens’ 1861 novel is very loosely updated and transposed to Florida’s Gulf Coast and Manhattan. It wouldn’t be accurate to call this film an adaptation–at its best, it’s more like a…
Thanks to The Grave, acclaimed at the ’96 Sundance Film Festival, and Hollywood’s need to produce new indie stars, Josh and Jonas Pate have been anointed by some as the new Coen brothers. What the Pates share with the Minnesota natives behind Fargo and Barton Fink is a good eye…
There hasn’t been a good doper movie since 1978’s Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke, and even now, it reeks of yesterday’s smoke, smelling like a weedhead who hasn’t done laundry in a decade; Up in Smoke’s good for a contact high, but its buzz is gone. In 1993 Richard…
One of the conceits to which every critic must be genetically predisposed is the idea that, at the end of the day, his or her opinion actually matters. That some unknown phantasm at a nonspecific coffee shop sits immersed in said critic’s latest ill-advised screed, imbibing every word as if…
Martin Scorsese’s Kundun is a deeply ceremonial experience. It’s like watching a serene pageant of colors, rituals, and costumes. It’s about the Dalai Lama–recognized as the 14th reincarnation of the Buddha of Compassion and the spiritual and political leader of Tibet–from his childhood in 1937 through the Chinese invasion in…
After Santa’s overstuffed sack of Oscar qualifiers is disgorged onto screens in December, the studios have little left in their pipelines for January. With all the brutal competition from the big-ticket films, Hollywood has established a tradition in recent years of dumping lost-cause features during the first few weeks of…
