An Arabian Nights tale detoured into a Norse saga. (A little off the beaten path, too, for the author of the original novel, Michael Crichton.) Lots of gore, but lots more hair. John McTiernan's careening Steadicam slips and slides over every possible point of interest. The release was delayed so …
The world's No. 1 hitman, contemplating retirement, going soft, refusing to kill innocent bystanders, developing an amorous attachment to his latest "mark," has been targeted for elimination by the ambitious, amoral No. 2. (Where are these rankings published? Soldier of Fortune magazine?) Something so silly ought to be more fun. …
Antonio Banderas vs. Lucy Liu, rival undercover agents in a storm of fireballs, crumpled cars, thudding and shrieking rock music. But they're not "versus" for long; they team up against a common foe (common as dirt), a good deal for Banderas, because Liu was chilling him with her superior cool. …
When a renowned private investigator is murdered, his protege takes on the case. As her investigation unfolds, she is forced into a dangerous alliance with his killer to uncover the town's grisly secrets and bring justice to its victims. Directed by Jon Keeyes, starring Alice Eve, Shelley Hennig, Olwen Fouéré, …
Robert Rodriguez's big-budget Hollywood followup to his teensy-tiny El Mariachi: a faked folk tale, with a bubbling-over level of mirth, to do with an angelic avenger (the preening, posturing Antonio Banderas) who lugs around a private arsenal inside a guitar case. In spite of the newfound gloss, it still seems …
Brian De Palma, as ever, exhibits abundant mechanical skills and equally abundant delight in their application. It would be fruitless to wonder what kind of career he could have had if he possessed even half a brain. Here he constructs, from a script of his own, a self-conscious film noir …
Four directors. Four cinematographers. Four editors. And four separate stories, spun out consecutively on New Year's Eve in the Hotel Mon Signor, threaded together with the twitchily inventive comic performance of Tim Roth as the gung-ho new bellhop. His is as much a full-body job as the bellboy of Jerry …
Belated contribution to Fridamania. The same-named 1984 film by Paul Leduc, while timelier, was too low-profile to discourage additional spotlight-seekers and altar-worshippers. So now we have a new chiselled Frida Kahlo (Salma Hayek), an almost Manneristically elongated one, to grace the cover of the paperback reprint of Hayden Herrera's definitive …
Belated contribution to Fridamania. The same-named 1984 film by Paul Leduc, while timelier, was too low-profile to discourage additional spotlight-seekers and altar-worshippers. So now we have a new chiselled Frida Kahlo (Salma Hayek), an almost Manneristically elongated one, to grace the cover of the paperback reprint of Hayden Herrera's definitive …
Steven Soderbergh’s latest attempt to subvert popular genre expectations results in an adequate 007 action/adventure picture. Mixed martial arts champion Gina Carano has the tough, tight look and smoldering dispassion the genre demands, but not even Meryl Streep could add depth to this. It’s easier to swallow than the average …
Bille August's treatment of the Isabel Allende novel (with most of the "magical realism" weeded out) might almost be a treatment of a Danielle Steel or Sidney Sheldon novel: a glob of sentimental (i.e., universally accessible) Leftism about love across the class divide, the belated enlightenment of a stick-in-the-mud, hope …
Say this much for Anne Rice: she takes her vampires seriously. Even religiously. Not, however, docilely. Neil Jordan's screen treatment of her cultish novel rummages through the received lore as though trying on skirts and blouses, deciding against this one and for that one, and branching out experimentally into unexplored …
Pedro Almodóvar's fans, assuming the existence of these, should be delighted to find out that this early (1982) effort is a virtual seed-packet of ideas that sprouted up in his later and wider-circulated efforts. (Exhibit A: it would appear to be here, and not in Law of Desire, that Almodóvar …