Creditable retelling of an early chapter in Texas history ("As goes the Alamo, so goes Texas"), not as cumbersome as the John Wayne version of 1960, perhaps even a little cursory. Director and co-screenwriter John Lee Hancock humanizes the central figures -- Crockett, Bowie, Travis, Houston, though not the ogre-ish …
A heretofore unknown director, Sterling Van Wagenen, shows off a heart the size of a honeydew and a cinematic intelligence nearer a grape. In a dollhouse re-creation of Second World War-period New York, a traumatized French girl, methodically tearing up newspapers into tiny scraps, is coaxed back from the brink …
Dark comedy of home security, emotional insecurity, double-dealing, paranoia. Heavy-handedly directed (by Evan Dunsky) and broadly acted by the male leads (David Arquette, Stanley Tucci). With Kate Capshaw and Mary McCormack.
Unadventurous wilderness adventure about an uprooted Chicago Cubs fan and his younger sister who, escorted by a baby polar bear dubbed "Cubby," search the Alaskan mountains for their father, teetering helplessly on a precipice in his downed plane. (Yes, just to round out the "cub" motif, a Piper Cub.) Everything …
Comic nightmare on a family "tradition" whereby a son is expected to reimburse his father for every lira spent on his upbringing. (Due date: the day the son becomes a father.) Most of the action is set on the Paris-to-Rome night train, as the frantic debtor attempts to beg and …
Small-scale and stagy thriller about a standoff that results when ATF agents, tailing a Canadian gunrunner at the wheel of a stolen car, get thrown off the scent and pick up the wrong car, but still a hot car, occupied by three penny-ante criminals (Matt Dillon, Gary Sinise, William Fichtner) …
A novelist, needing to finish a book in thirty days to pay off a loan shark, dictates his prose to a stenographer-kibitzer, and both of them appear as characters in enactments of the text. (Dim echoes of Paris When It Sizzles, which had a better excuse for the enactments: they …
Rather a conventional historical epic by Eisenstein, about a 13th-century Teutonic invasion of Russia. (The patriotic trumpetry undoubtedly was more stirring in 1938, with Hitler situated right next door.) Much of the work seems quite handsome and intricate, and much seems lifeless and overcalculated. Everything else aside, the climactic battle …
Dreamlike narrative in monochrome, a stout, slow, ponderous old lady visiting her grandson at a dry and dusty military camp in Chechnya, questioning his mission: “You can destroy. When will you learn to rebuild?” A Russian art film from the dreaded Alexander Sokurov, challengingly dull, uneventful, amorphous. The lead actress, …
A new, updated, relocated Alfie — an Alfie for America, for the Bedhead generation, for the erectile-dysfunction era. He's still a Brit, and still talks straight to the camera, but now our lady-killer must be a chiselled Adonis (Jude Law) instead of a legitimate heir to Michael Caine (a Rhys …
Michael Caine as a bargain-basement Lothario with a heavy accent on cockney crassness, and with a cocksure understanding of where your sympathies and your scorn are supposed to fall. Like most movie ne'er-do-wells, particularly those who garner Oscar nominations, he melts into self-pitying sobs somewhere near the end. Directed by …
Will Smith's impression of the self-proclaimed "Greatest," Cassius Marcellus Clay. For entertainment purposes, it can't touch Billy Crystal's impression of him. (Though, for those same purposes, there can be no quibble with Jon Voight's Howard Cosell: a glued-on nose as phony as the hairpiece.) The two-and-a-half-hour skim through the prime …
Twisted and twisty psychological thriller, with a large cast of largely unsavory characters, and an almost farcical final act. The nervous, jumpy visual style lacks some of the solidness of the performances, especially the central one of Sandrine Kiberlain. Based on Ruth Rendell's The Tree of Hands. With Nicole Garcia …