Custom-made platform for the ingratiating Isabel Rose (who co-wrote the screenplay with director Robert Cary), as a small-time, starry-eyed cabaret singer who styles herself after the Golden Age goddesses of the silver screen: Rita Hayworth, Audrey Hepburn, whoever suits her mood. She comes in for plenty of sympathy, some of …
A stilted history lesson on the ethnic cleansing of Armenians by Turks during the First World War ("Do you know what Adolf Hitler told his generals to convince them that it would work? 'Who remembers the extermination of the Armenians?' "), this is evidently a subject close to the heart …
Paul Schrader recounts the life and death of Bob Crane (1928-78), ephemeral star of TV's Hogan's Heroes, obsessive womanizer (exploits he would copiously document in photographs and on primitive video), and unsolved-murder victim. This is a story of the Dark Side in which the lightweightness of the main character (very …
A black-market-nuclear-bomb scenario played for laughs. Or anyway Chris Rock plays it that way, while the rest of the cast plays it more or less straight. Rock, a Madison Square Garden ticket scalper and Washington Square chess hustler (like Laurence Fishburne in Searching for Bobby Fischer, like Samuel L. Jackson …
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. …
Love of literature, love of music, love of the opposite sex, survive amid the repressive rigors of a Maoist "re-education" camp in the lush green mountains, and open up the wider world to a local village girl. Mostly sweet; a hint of bitter in the years-later epilogue. Dai Sijie directs …
A loosen-up lesson taught by two former groupies, one now the strait-laced wife of a Phoenix attorney, the other still a disciple of Sex, Drugs, Rock-and-Roll. (Or if not drugs, at least cigarettes and rum-and-Cokes.) The comic contrivances cannot compel attention as much as the documentary concern with Goldie Hawn's …
Australian stock-market thriller (if that's not an oxymoron): a lot of looking at computer screens, or at the faces of people looking at computer screens. The tricksy plotting is a little like David Mamet without the ear and without the rhythm. David Wenham, Anthony LaPaglia, Sibylla Budd; written and directed …
Melville's scrivener, and passive resister, transported into the present day and into a candy-colored burlesque. He remains recognizable, but loses much of his famous "humanity." David Paymer hits the right notes, at the right volume, as his bewildered boss. With Crispin Glover, Glenne Headly, Maury Chaykin, and Joe Piscopo; directed …
Modest little WWII submarine drama takes a while to reveal itself as a ghost story: "I'm telling you, there's some bad hoodoo on this boat." The modesty persists, even then, except in amount of perspiration. A couple of eerie underwater sights: a school of stingrays buzzing a team of diving-suited …
The long-sought answer to the question of what ever became of Debra Winger, absent from the screen for seven years since the forgettable Forget Paris. Seems she married Arliss Howard, her co-star in the little-seen and badly named Wilder Napalm, and consented to play a part -- unflamboyantly -- in …
A ruthless film producer steals a kid's English composition and transforms it into his next blockbuster: a dose of Hollywood self-loathing for the whole family. There's no harm in it, surely, and plenty of pep. Paul Giamatti, in the part of the producer, slathers the relish on the hot dog. …
The all-purpose title tells little about a slender, strenuous comic caper adapted from a novel by Dave Barry: a lengthy eighty-odd minutes. (Its release was postponed after the attacks of September 11, 2001, owing to worries over the black-market nuclear bomb smuggled aboard a jetliner: heh-heh.) The opportunities are spread …
Offbeat, roundabout love story. It starts out as a kinky light comedy about a Russian mail-order bride in provincial England who proves to speak only one word of English ("Are you a giraffe?" "Yes"), and who uncovers an instructional stash of S&M porn in the bedroom closet. Then, near the …