Plump and rubbery computer animation prefaced by a refreshingly retro (ca. 1960) two-dimensional title sequence. Safely recommendable to any child up to the age of five, and less safely as his age increases. The whole premise of a parallel universe of monsters making nightly forays into our own universe, bottling …
Germany's donation to the cinematic food drive seems unlikely to have received distribution without its appeal to the salivaries. And indeed, despite the pasty complexion of the film, the visual appeal of the dishes can match any screen menu outside of maybe Babette's Feast. Yet it has more to offer …
Baz Luhrmann's razzle-dazzle reconstruction of Gay Paree on Australian sound stages and inside computers. Nothing, no matter how overdesigned, overdressed, and overdecorated, is held onto for an adequate appraisal. Everything is handled as a hot potato. And the easy-come-easy-go juggling act takes on a rough resemblance to post-Satyricon Fellini filtered …
David Lynch's The Straight Story, we are hereby reassured, was the aberration; the twisted story is the one for him. In this case it's a braided story, besides twisted, of the intertwined fates of two women, one light and one dark, a starry-eyed, starry-sweatered Hollywood hopeful from Deep River, Ontario, …
The inebriating box-office success, two years past, of Stephen Sommers's The Mummy would hardly have encouraged him to take a soberer approach in its sequel. So the least, and probably most, to be said for the followup is that it provides some competition for its forerunner as the worst mummy …
It hadn't been that long (eight years) since somebody (Stephen Herek) endeavored to do a youth-appeal version of the Dumas classic. But now someone (Peter Hyams) has thought to add the element of Hong Kong-style anti-gravity fight choreography. A rather puny inspiration, and a rather poor one on the face …
Christine Lahti's first movie. As a director, that is. At feature-length. Not that that persuades her to pace herself. Overemphasizing and overexplaining her points with wide-angle and computer-graphic distortions (the English teacher's vampire fangs, the high-school bimbo's ballooning lips), she pretty much punches herself out before she ever arrives at …
Piece of fluff about a French sportswriter, an average Jean, who's having a hard time coping with his wife's occupation: the autograph hounds, the nosy acquaintances, the handsome co-stars, the kissing scenes, the nude scenes, the ten quarts of water per day and the commensurate trips to the bathroom. Very …
More of Ken Loach's elbow-rubbing with, and back-rubbing of, the working classes, this time South Yorkshire rail workers caught in the crunch of changing times, as privatization and profit motive overhaul the British rail system in the mid-Nineties, and subvert the team spirit. Not much shape to it, but the …
Emptily entertaining caper film, from Argentina, about two small-time scammers who join forces for a big score: a counterfeit sheet of postage stamps purportedly from the Weimar Republic. As tricky as Mamet, if not as sharply written or directed (by Fabián Bielinsky, in his feature debut). The final payoff -- …
The Bosnian conflict in a nutshell, or more like in a foxhole. Two mortal enemies take turns getting the drop on each other in a trench in the neutral zone, while one of their wounded comrades lies immobilized on a booby trap. U.N. peacekeepers and international news reporters, speaking in …
Another teen movie. A crass, tacky spoof after the fashion of Scary Movie, but really just a pot calling a kettle.... With Chyler Leigh, Chris Evans, Jaime Pressly, Mia Kirshner, Randy Quaid; directed by Joel Gallen.
Run-of-the-mill black comedy (remember when there wasn't a black-comedy mill? when black comedy was a mark of individuality?) about a dentist whose well-ordered existence is disrupted by high-risk sex, illicit drug traffic, and murder. Steve Martin cannot help but lighten it with a tone of just-kidding. And an uncredited Kevin …
Superdeluxe remake of a Rat Pack lark of 1960: a happy-go-lucky, jolly-good-fellows, high-tech, clean-as-a-whistle casino heist, with a star-studded cast (Clooney, Pitt, Damon, Julia Roberts, Andy Garcia, Carl Reiner, Elliott Gould, Don Cheadle, Bernie Mac, Casey Affleck, Scott Caan). There are sellouts, to be sure, and then there are sellouts, …