A renaming and reworking by Atom Egoyan of the French film Nathalie by Anne Fontaine. Despite the pedigree (Egoyan, if you need reminding, has signed such tony items as Ararat, The Sweet Hereafter, Exotica, among others), this would fit comfortably on the Lifetime Movie Network: a suspicious wife sics a …
The last and probably least of Eric Rohmer's Six Moral Tales. Rohmer always had to guard conscientiously against the tendency to shed weight, and here, in the tale of a bright-blue-eyed office worker's erotic caprices, he has trouble even keeping his feet on the ground. With Bernard Verley, Zouzou, Beatrice …
The traditional French semi-autobiographical first film, set untraditionally in colonial Africa (Cameroon). Claire Denis, the debuting director, had worked as an assistant to Wim Wenders (and received here some support from his production company), and she has something of his placidness and detachment. She also has something of his effortless …
Another art-house food film: an agnostic chocolate-maker opens her Little Shop of Temptations during the Lenten fast. Director Lasse Hallstrom follows his discreet pro-choice propaganda (The Cider House Rules) with a smug, complacent, liberal-minded broadside against the smugness, complacency, and narrow-mindedness of a French-Catholic provincial village circa 1959. The motley …
Catholic boys' school as a foretaste of hell: a sadistic teacher, a secret society among the Seniors, an extracurricular chocolate sale that soon becomes all-consuming. It's not believable for an instant, but it has a loony logic that catches you up and pulls you in. The direction by Keith Gordon …
The Nicholas Sparks romance machine rumbles on. This time, the meet-cute comes when his dog impregnates hers. Ross Katz directs; Benjamin Walker and Teresa Palmer star.
Where Joseph Wambaugh, the policemen's friend and mouthpiece, wants faithfully to represent his former partners on the force, Robert Aldrich wants to employ those same characters metaphorically to represent something bigger. Which is, the average slob. He uses the policemen's daily debasement in the L.A. nightworld to strip them of …
Black comedy, a bit too openly pleased with itself, a bit too hell-bent on quirkiness, revolving around a confessed sex addict and his demented mother, played (respectively) by Sam Rockwell and Anjelica Huston. The broadest smiles, the nearest things to audible laughs, are apt to be elicited by the tourist-trap …
Performance film starring stand-up comedian Chonda Pierce, aka the Queen of Clean.
"As real as it gets." A standup comic deals with death. Documentary directed by Rick Altizer.
Yang Qing (One Night in Supermarket) brings his stylish style to a heist pic. You gotta watch out for those unhappy bank employees. They get ideas. In Mandarin with English subtitles.