Reunion tour of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young (average age, sixty-two and a half), hoping to conjure the spirit of their Vietnam protests and transfer it to the Iraq War. The new music isn’t top-flight, nor is the filmmaking (concert footage, archive footage, interview footage, plus “objective” reporting from an …
A collage of myths, stereotypes, facts, and artifacts of pre-Castro Cuba: the cigar factory, the sugar plantation, the yacht club, the night club, the golf course, the jai-alai and tennis courts, the cockfight, the gambling, the graft, the gold-braided army uniforms, the bare-shouldered women's fashions, the tile walls and floors, …
The well-drawn contrast between a child's world and an adult's world makes the early, time-biding stages more tolerable than in some horror movies. The problem, once the time-biding is over, is that the whole idea of a movie about a rabid dog seems irredeemably dull, even if that dog were …
Roman Polanski's scabrous black comedy set in a decaying Northumberland castle aswarm with chickens by day and owls by night, and swamped by an impossible tide. In spite of the setting, it has a very un-English feel. Polanski operates by his own indecipherable rules (making them up as he goes, …
Sober little comedy about the determined efforts of exiled Tibetan monks in India to watch the '98 World Cup final between Brazil and France ("France is the only country that loyally supports Tibet"). The story behind the screen is at least as compelling: the first film of Khyentse Norbu, a …
The central conceit, and little else, has been retained from an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story of the same name: a protagonist who ages in reverse. (The story of course was written and titled before the soundalike name of Benjamin Britten came to fame, and as long as they were …
Juvenile monkeyshines, scrimpingly animated, monopolistically voiced by Will Ferrell as the primate's adopted human, and accompanied by a posy of insipid songs. Based on the books by Margret and H.A. Rey; directed by Matthew O'Callaghan.
Werewolf update: Internet research, teen lingo ("This is pretty freaky shit"), computer-generated beasts, and self-mocking, or self-loathing, gags. The werewolf flipping the bird, with no one standing between itself and the camera, might well be doing it to the audience. With Christina Ricci, Jesse Eisenberg, Joshua Jackson, and Judy Greer; …
The loosely connected sequel to Val Lewton's Cat People is stiffer than its forebear, less smooth and supple in its movement. (Gunther von Fritsch was chosen to direct the project, rather than Jacques Tourneur, who had moved on to bigger things, and von Fritsch had to be replaced early in …
The modesty of means and of goals is much overcome by the passionateness of creative effort in this B-grade British horror film. The story pits an arrogant diabolist named Karswell (Niall MacGinnis) against a pooh-poohing American rationalist (Dana Andrews), who has a stiff drink in hand at every convenience. The …
The reunion of filmmaker Zhang Yimou with his one-time muse and leading lady, Gong Li, over ten years after their personal falling-out, post-Shanghai Triad, makes this film into a real "event," and the actress brings to it an inner fire to outglow even its molten-lava color scheme. In addition to …
Low-gear Woody Allen crime comedy, down a couple of notches from Small-Time Crooks, Manhattan Murder Mystery, Take the Money and Run. It concerns an ace insurance investigator who falls under the spell of a nightclub hypnotist and has no clue that the serial jewel thief he is looking for is …
Also known as Kill Baby Kill: Mario Bava's swift night journey through green, blue, and amber lights in a foggy country village, ridden with superstition and peopled with a vengeful withered countess in a crumbling castle, a billiard-bald burgermeister, a mesmerized Kate Greenaway child with a nutty-putty volleyball, an amusingly …
A somewhat risky title to set in front of someone who might have gotten a bit sick of the whole Pink Panther series, and who had assumed that the death of Peter Sellers would have brought about a deliverance. Ted Wass, who seems to be trying out for only the …