Ken Loach's suitably scruffy portrait of an English working-class Catholic family, the head of which is permanently on the dole, intermittently on odd (even illicit) jobs, trying to scrape together sufficient quid to do up his daughter proud for her one and only First Communion. The material most closely connected …
Kim Basinger as a heroine as put-upon as any in the novels of Zola: an ex-convict with an obese, sweaty, groping parole officer, a weak and whiny ex-husband, a six-year-old son who believes she is dead, and an underworld kingpin who insists she rob a bank for him. The high-tech …
Another literary adaptation of the Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvala team, this one set in the 1930s and 50s, and based not on a recognized "classic" but on a mere Booker Prize winner, by Kazuo Ishiguro. It does much of what we ask of a work of fiction. It sets up an enclosed world, …
Director Bruce Beresford, still up from Down Under, continues to try to crash the society of Faulkner, Welty, O'Connor, and the rest, as a chronicler of the Deep South -- in this case, working again with Alfred Uhry, author of Beresford's Driving Miss Daisy, deep in South Carolina. The sound …
English film with English subtitles. These are not just a gimmick; they are a real help; but they are also a distraction, in that they consistently deviate from the spoken words ("high blood pressure" comes out "hypertension"; "not nicked" becomes "not stolen"; "Don't you dare bloody go" becomes "Don't you …
A murder mystery with a better than usual set-up and a no worse than usual letdown. The backdrop of Japanese encroachment on American shores is sketched in ways ranging from witty to sinister to sleazy. Witty: the Peckinpah spoof (a swarm of ants in a dusty road, a dog exiting …
Concept film, albeit a modest concept: give driving instruction to Transylvanian-born poet and popular NPR commentator Andrei Codrescu, put him in a red Cadillac convertible, send him across America in quest of ready-made ironies, and watch his fans hitch a ride. He has some interesting encounters (a prosperous Sikh community …
Tardy takeoff on the already anachronistic Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Mel Brooks, trying to shoot his way out of a slump, keeps firing up the jokes, clanging bricks off the front of the rim or, just as often, heaving airballs. Among them are a "chorus" of rappers, a nomadic …
Nimble manipulation of futuristic clichés: the despotic militia, the underground resistance movement, and of course the archetypal deliverer, savior, rescuer -- the titular superhero who, siding here with the downtrodden and dispossessed, completely cleanses himself of past tincture of fascism. Robert John Burke replaces Peter Weller inside the suit of …
Kiddie comedy about a Major League minor, twelve years old, with unnaturally tight tendons in his mended shoulder, who helps pitch the Chicago Cubs to their first World Championship in living memory. (How this happens, when both the hero and his mentor are knocked out of commission on the final …
Small-bore independent film, underfunded, grainy, timidly acted, about a Tennessee refugee (Ashley Judd, an American Julie Delpy, young, fresh, inexpressive) who lights in Florida to begin her adult life, and to pen a voice-over daily diary in order to make up for the shortcomings of the actress: "So far, fun …
Reissue of the 1993 Japanese animated film directed by Kunihiko Ikuhara and based on the popular Sailor Moon manga series written by Naoko Takeuchi.
Remembrance of Things Past: the new neighborhood, the old gang, girls, baseball, and a junkyard dog called "The Beast," chained up just beyond the left-field wall. It's supposed to have the glow of tall tales and local legend. Instead it has the lusterlessness of bad and even dishonest memory. (Writer-director …
This French film carries heavy emotional cargo with it -- or rather it sends its cargo on ahead of it. The star-director, Cyril Collard, died of AIDS after completing it, a semi-autobiographical portrait of a promiscuous bisexual filmmaker who is HIV-positive. The scenes of Unprotected Sex (expression of faith in …