Rudimentary Rangers-and-rustlers, modelled on Tombstone at least as far as the prefatory narration (James Coburn in place of Robert Mitchum), the opening slaughter of innocents by an outlaw band, and the Doc Holliday cough of the head Ranger (Dylan McDermott). The Holliday erudition, meanwhile, has been transferred to a green …
Unrecognizable remake of a thrifty little William Castle haunted-house thriller -- now noisy, busy, sloppy, and ugly. With Tony Shalhoub, Embeth Davidtz, Matthew Lillard, Shannon Elizabeth, F. Murray Abraham; directed by Steve Beck.
High-class French suspense film. The "suspense" label is used advisedly, because the suspense, such as it is, never rises much above tepid. Tepid suspense, all the same, is still suspense. Suspense tends to stop being suspense only when overheated beyond the bounds of the human. The reliable gauge of it, …
Change of locale, and of cuisine, for Eat Drink Man Woman: now Los Angeles, and Mexican. An appetite has been found, or created, for food films, and they've got to be kept coming even if they have to start being remade. The change here works well enough, despite the broad …
What begins as a passable Woody Allen knockoff, all the way to the old-time jazz accompaniment, gets increasingly silly and labored as it widens its social sphere to Mississippi and Idaho. Star-studded cast (Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, Garry Shandling, Nastassja Kinski, Andie MacDowell, Jenna Elfman, Charlton Heston) and …
A slicker, mainstreamier Bad Lieutenant, tagging along on an interminable work shift with a crooked L.A. narc. Even if you are prepared to believe the worst of the police (even if, perchance, you were a member of the O. J. Simpson jury), it's a stretch to believe that any cop …
Portrait of a family falling apart in modern Tehran. Life-sized, informative, unemphatic, cleanly photographed, offhandedly humorous, and eventually overly melodramatic. Directed by Rakhshan Bani-Etemad.
Cameron Crowe follows up his most "personal" work, the semi-autobiographical Almost Famous, with the umpteenth Hollywood remake of an art-house import, Alejandro Amenábar's science-fiction brain-twister, Open Your Eyes. The most personal ingredient here, aside from the selection of oldies on the soundtrack, appears to be the latex mask worn by …
These flat and arid two and a half hours -- a slow build to a silly end -- are pretty compact for Jacques Rivette, the septuagenarian French director whose record for a single movie stands at thirteen hours. They are nonetheless sufficiently diffuse and undisciplined for any other director. Nice …
An experimental feature shot in live action (by Richard Linklater) and then painted over via computer (by, or under, Bob Sabiston): neither fish nor fowl, though certainly fishy and possibly foul. The undulating, sloshing animation on top of the already unsteady camerawork is very hard on the eyes. And any …
Poky odyssey of self-renewal for a laid-off Tokyo office worker. Well-made but unenthralling, despite the wacky supernatural element of a village vamp who fills up periodically with water and must "vent" it ("It's not like it's urine") by shoplifting or screwing: she leaks, she gushes, she sprays. With Koji Yakusho …
Romantic-comic piffle in which the control-freak title character breaks the cardinal rule of her profession and tumbles for a would-be groom. In these circumstances, Jennifer Lopez is able to switch on all her charms and wiles without worrying whether she is violating her character (a woman overlooked by men) or …
A Taipei wristwatch vendor reluctantly sells his own timepiece to a Paris-bound tourist, creating a distant connection between them, at least as far as the film's structure is concerned. A wry little tale, of uncertain import, but beautifully photographed (by Benoit Delhomme) in scintillating color, with an absolutely stationary camera …
Mexican horny-teenager comedy tells of two buddies, one affluent and one not, who, to their astonishment and delight, are able to entice the ripe Spanish wife of a bumptious philanderer to accompany them on a trek to an imaginary beach named Heaven's Mouth. En route, she offers a sexual tutorial …