Classroom daydream of a teacher's revenge against his students for robbing him of his ideals. Kevin Reynolds, the idealist who directed Waterworld, deplores the situation in fancy, frilly camerawork suggestive of a wandering mind and of doodles in the margins. The title, by the way, is police code for homicide, …
A simulacrum of a Good Life film in the French style, such as might have been made by one of the Claudes -- Lelouch or Sautet -- about the impromptu fling of a TV-commercial director (Wesley Snipes) and a rocket scientist (Nastassja Kinski) and its consequences, a wisp of a …
Classy French costume adventure very much in the Cartouche mode (from the same director, Philippe de Broca), with an enchantingly myth-like plotline, plenty of swordplay, literate dialogue, tasteful color, a fine leading man in Daniel Auteuil, but not, alas, a musical score by Cartouche's Georges Delerue. (Big swells, instead, of …
Also known as Armor of God II, a Jackie Chan showcase (directed by him, too) from circa 1990, dusted off, trimmed down, English-dubbed, and re-released with a retooled soundtrack. It's something to do with a hunt for Nazi gold in the African desert. Silly, tiresome, but the quick-as-a-bug Chan inspires …
Expert piece of moviemaking, expert piece of storytelling, using gambling as a metaphorical gateway to the larger themes of chance, fate, the great unknown, religion, love, leaps of faith of all kinds. The story, from a contemporary novel by Peter Carey, follows two widely separated but converging paths in the …
A mostly creaky, wheezy vehicle for Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, a definite upgrade over the Grumpy Old Men junkers, equally loaded down with a cargo of geriatric jokes: "There's no such thing as too late. That's why they invented death." For their present pairing they are brothers-in-law -- the …
Misnamed Australian romantic comedy -- the heroine's purple prose is explicitly between hard covers -- about the mating dance of a trashy writer and a tony jeweller. Plenty of surprise turns, and some unlikely sources of humor (a crippled leg, a gashed tongue), along with a lot of broad stretches …
The sum of The Bridge on the River Kwai plus The Big Doll House plus, possibly, Sister Act (or possibly Mr. Holland's Opus). But seeing that those last two quantities are negatives, we should more properly speak of remainder, not sum. And the remainder would itself be a minus: humanist, …
Stick-thin Nicole Kidman and stuck-on-himself George Clooney pound the trail of hijacked nuclear warheads from Russia to the United Nations, leaving little time for sexual sparring and flirting, and leaving almost nothing for anyone else in the world to do. The filmmaking celebrates and emulates brisk efficiency (sometimes slipping into …
Animated feature about a retired pop singer turned actress whose sense of reality is shaken when she is stalked by an obsessed fan and seemingly a ghost of her past. Directed by Satoshi Kon, starring the voices of Junko Iwao, Rica Matsumoto, and Shinpachi Tsuji.
Agreeable enough romantic comedy. The complications -- the materialistic young woman behind the Gulden's Mustard advertising campaign ("Number Two ... And That Ain't Bad") invents a fiancé in order to advance herself in the firm -- fall into place without undue force, and Jennifer Aniston (of TV's Friends) works proficiently …
Some interesting experimentation with split-screen images, images-within-images, and images of differing dimensions -- but that sort of interest dries up fast. Writer-director Peter Greenaway (The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, et al.) gives us a sort of love story and a sort of revenge story, though "story" …
"From respected surgeon to mob doctor to FBI snitch" -- the story in the words of the protagonist. Aspirations toward the hip and the cool get only as close as the bogus. David Duchovny, Timothy Hutton, Angelina Jolie; directed by Andy Wilson.
French actress Brigitte Roüan's second directing effort could conceivably be as provocative and controversial as advertised if you can convince yourself to stifle your yawn and rise to the bait: the amour fou of a married older woman for a footloose younger man. Roüan remains an energetic and expressive actress, …