Negligible Woody Allen effort. The fact that Allen the actor is nowhere in the cast is no doubt part of the problem, but chiefly because his substitute, Kenneth Branagh, is a problem unto himself. (The Purple Rose of Cairo managed to become one of Allen's best films without his on-screen …
Warmly photographed, slushy road movie revolving around a motherless urchin who gets under the skin, onto the conscience, and into the heart of a dishonest stranger, together setting out in search of the boy's unknown father. The Brazilian locales add some grit. But not enough. With Fernanda Montenegro and Vinicius …
The opening-credits sequence alone, a closeup of hands at work on mending a shoe, is more enriching than most entire movies. And the following hour and a half are loaded with no less solid information on life today in Iran, its streets, its shops, its schools, its houses. The plot …
Wayne Wang's you-are-there coverage of the final days of British colonial rule in Hong Kong, a story of crushingly heavy symbolism: there's the dying Englishman (Jeremy Irons), the beautiful kept woman from the mainland (Gong Li), the scarred local with an illusional past and a cloudy future (Maggie Cheung). Part …
David Riker's black-and-white vignettes on Latin American immigrants in New York: thin slices of neo-neo-realism, smothered in a gloppy gravy. Sincere but awkward.
Although it buries the acknowledgment deep in the closing credits and has changed its name in hopes of establishing a separate identity, this is more or less a remake of Wim Wenders's Wings of Desire, a crest in the current wave of angelmania. A full-color remake, to be sure, and …
John Travolta takes the part of a cocky, cynical personal-injury attorney ("I can appreciate the theatrical value of several dead kids") who cannot be shamed into pursuing a class-action suit against a small-town tanning factory and environmental polluter until he can connect the defendant to some deep pockets: Peter Pan …
A cuckold, too chicken to take revenge first-hand, kills himself in such a manner as to frame the lover for murder. (The ungrieving widow is no help: "Leave me out of this.") Black-ish, noir-ish crime comedy calls to mind the Coen brothers, or their Fargo at any rate, if only …
Four temps form a square of friendship in a hostile office environment. Some well-observed minutiae, but the minutes do indeed crawl. Toni Collette, Parker Posey, Lisa Kudrow, Alanna Ubach, Bob Balaban; directed by Jill Sprecher.
This tortuous revenge tale, the filmmaking debut of stage director Des McAnuff, is an adaptation of one of Balzac's better-known novels, but it would seem that the umbrella title of his oeuvre -- la Comédie Humaine -- has been interpreted a little lopsidedly, with the stress on literal comedy at …
A talkie. And not much else. The nonstop talker is one Timothy "Speed" Levitch, free spirit, political subversive, raving lunatic, and part-time tour guide on a Gray Line double-decker in Manhattan, reeling out a tangle of verbiage ("I was re-emerged into my own naiveté") in a Porky Pig voice. He's …
Stodgy stage play (by Brian Friel) about five spinster sisters in County Donegal in the depressed Thirties, and their addled older brother fresh from missionary service in Uganda. There is a lot of talk about dancing, Africa, paganism in general, and about getting away. Some of them eventually do. (Get …
The Happy Hooker Meets Torquemada. And Fanny Hill rompishness bows to Joan of Arc righteousness. It's Venice, toward the end of the 16th Century, and the only way for a common girl to get ahead is to learn the womanly art of downing a banana in one gulp. (Sure beats …
Dark, without a doubt, and dank, and steamy, and simultaneously futuristic and antiquated, and currently in the grip of pasty aliens who can reshape reality at will. (At the will of the scriptwriters, that is, not at their own.) An impressive production to a certain degree; an oppressive one to …
The second sequel picks up not from the previous one in 1988, which dealt with the heavy-metal phenomenon, but rather reverts to the slightly passé punk-rock subject matter of the first documentary in 1981. Except that it deals less with the bands (though Final Conflict and Naked Aggression grab a …