Fitfully amusing Dirty Harry adventure (the fifth), with some vigorous digs at TV newscasters, film critics, heavy metal, and horror films (well, every film must feel superior to some other). The most sustained fit of amusement: a Bullitt-type chase scene over the hills of San Francisco, with the pursuer being …
The Hughes twins, Allen and Albert, can't wait to show you their eerie images of black gunmen in mimelike whiteface, but (flashback to 1968) it's a long and long-winded route to return to that point. The first half-hour, tracing the evolution of a decent young Bronxite from milkman to numbers …
With this, David Cronenberg comes very near to "straight" psychological drama, and -- excepting only one nightmare scene, from which the dreamer awakens before it becomes too disgusting -- gets quite far from his icky-gooey horror mode. And any horror aficionado who honors the name of Val Lewton (I Walked …
Four guys, three girls, a battalion of Nazi zombies at a snowbound cabin in Norway. (Grieg's "Hall of the Mountain King" behind the pre-credits sequence.) Played decreasingly straight, and always played self-consciously. Directed by Tommy Wirkola.
Curiously cold occult thriller -- and not because of its wintry setting, which is an actual asset. "Curiously," because there is adequate attention paid to the peculiar burdens of clairvoyance, beginning with the pain of its acquisition and the accompanying loss of a fiancee and gain of a limp, chronic …
Proof that the London stock exchange can inspire a movie as unexciting and unclear as the New York one (Rollover, Wall Street). Solid professional job by Derrick O'Connor as a booze-swilling and coke-sniffing old burn-out. Rebecca DeMornay, a sixty-watt soft-white glow amid the grim young men and chilly VDTs, is …
Bill Couturié's documentary compilation of archive footage and oral readings of letters from the Vietnam front lines. The only serious false notes in it -- the too discriminatingly hip selections of goldie-oldies are not seriously false -- are the suavely "professional" speaking voices of the narrators (Robert De Niro, Michael …
First-time director and cinematographer (rare combination) Shona Auerbach builds a façade of realism over an interior of mush. The title figure (Jack McElhone) is a nine-year-old deaf boy who never speaks, yet narrates the action (in an all but unintelligible Scots accent) in the form of letters to his absent …
Cynical piece of Christmas capitalism concerning a cynical con man who, sentenced to one year of steady nine-to-five employment, lands a postal job in the Dead Letter Office and starts to answer God's mail. The con man predictably regains some idealism. The filmmaker, Garry Marshall, no less predictably retains his …
Forced comedy-mystery about a lady police detective investigating a series of murders in which the victims are stabbed in the back with identical awls and promptly respond to their wounds by dribbling identical blood down their chins. The mere idea of a female detective is not such a surefire delight …
Wartime romance beginning in the spring of 2001 (you know what’s coming) and stretching up to the present, staggeringly basic and banal in its specifics, turning on a senseless withholding of information for the sole purpose of contrived misunderstanding and revealed nobility. It issues from a novel by Nicholas Sparks, …
Roman Polanski comes as close here to his avowed ideal of the one-character movie as he has come since his feature debut, Knife in the Water: three characters. His third feature, Cul-de-Sac, came close also, and the isolated seaside surroundings of this one, coupled with Ben Kingsley's shaven pate (almost …
The American remake, a scant three years after the British version, is tantamount to a summer-stock production in Cleveland, a black comedy made over into a black comedy, or more distinctly a dark comedy made over into an African-American comedy. Beyond the casting of Chris Rock, Martin Lawrence, Tracy Morgan, …
The title is too harsh. The comedy doesn't die, it just labors, as a funeral at a country estate turns to fiasco and farce, beginning with the delivery of the wrong cadaver and escalating with a bottle of mislabelled hallucinogens. Matthew MacFadyen, Keeley Hawes, Alan Tudyk, Daisy Donovan, Rupert Graves, …
Elixir-of-life fantasy about the rivalry between an aging actress and best-selling dietician. There's something Twilight Zone-y about the blend of black comedy and Sunday sermon, as well as about the anecdotal narrative. There is nothing Twilight Zone-y about the Silly Putty special effects -- as costly and seamless as they …