Depression-period romance, written and directed by Robert Towne, in a largely dark, nocturnal, unsunny Southern California, a star-crossed affair between a gringo and a Chicana, or more disparagingly a "dago" and a "spic," an impoverished young novelist taken under the wing, at long distance, of H.L. Mencken (whose voice in …
Even if you knew nothing else about it, the title alone would prevent you from getting sucked in by the film's opening image, a silhouette of a horseback rider on the crest of a hill at sunrise, an evocation of a complete screen mythology and a prompt of happy moviegoing …
From French writer-director Daniéle Thompson, a comedy of discontent, a comedy of attempted self-transformation, a light entertainment with darker undertones. The way station for three principal intertwined plotlines, on the titular swanky boulevard in the 8th Arrondissement of Paris, is the Bar des Théâtres, a "microcosm" composed of the coming-and-going …
Communication problems the world over. An American tourist is struck by rifle fire in Morocco, arousing erroneous worries of terrorism. An illegal-alien nanny drags along the two towheads in her care to a Mexican wedding, and runs afoul of the Border Patrol on their return. And a horny pantyless deaf-mute …
Formulaic computer cartoon rounds up a group of pop-acculturated, smart-mouth, bipedal farm animals who all look like kitsch knickknacks from a souvenir shop, a menagerie of cream pitchers, salt shakers, piggybanks, paperweights, and toothpick holders; rubber, plastic, ceramic; felt-covered, feathered, frosted. The focal figure is a bovine party animal who …
Sharon Stone, pushing fifty, takes her femme fatale act to London, along with her sandblasted face and helium-inflated boobs. There is an exculpatory spirit of self-parody in it, but then there already was, in the 1992 predecessor. The thing about any sort of parody, self- or otherwise, is that it …
Ana Geislerova is the Czech beauty, who’s in trouble with an incarcerated car-thief husband and, after she moves in with her mother, a creepy stepfather. A possible solution is to meet one of the car thief’s victims, a distinguished older gentleman with a vineyard in Tuscany and the nicest guy …
And also, as night follows day, Belchfest: an underground Olympics of drinking games held annually in Munich under the cover of Oktoberfest. From the Broken Lizard comedy troupe (Jay Chandrasekhar, director as well as trouper), this is lowest-common-denominator stuff — notwithstanding the esoteric allusions to Das Boot — and its …
Paul Verhoeven goes back to his native Holland, back, that is, from his Robocop and his Basic Instinct and his Showgirls and his Starship Troopers, back to the subject of Soldier of Orange, the Second World War, the Nazi occupation, the Dutch resistance. A beautiful Jewish chanteuse, dislodged from her …
James Ellroy's theory of the case -- the unsolved murder, disembowelment, and bisection of Hollywood wannabe Elizabeth Short in 1947 -- as expounded in 325 dense pages of fiction, fitted on screen into the film noir boilerplate: the laconic first-person narration of a two-fisted cop (Josh Hartnett), the moody solo …
Writer-director Craig Brewer wriggles at the far edge of the socially acceptable, and he does so with some of the fearlessness of the exploitation filmmakers of the Sixties and Seventies: the title itself distinctly echoes Blacksnake, the contribution of Russ Meyer, "King of the Nudies," to the racial discourse. Except …
Serviceable action-adventure despite frequent interruptions for sermonettes on human rights and capitalist wrongs. The ripped-from-the-headlines story (yesterday's headlines: civil war in Sierra Leone, 1999) features the stock figures of a self-interested soldier of fortune, in league with slaughterous rebels and unscrupulous jewellers, an engagé foreign correspondent, and a hapless native …
For anyone who heretofore hadn't encountered the character on HBO, Borat Sagdiyev will need an introduction. He is one of the personas of British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen on Da Ali G Show, a Kazakh TV reporter dapperly dressed in a dove-gray suit, bristlingly mustachioed, blissfully sexist, superstitiously anti-Semitic, and …
It is difficult to locate the director of Smithereens and Desperately Seeking Susan in this multicharacter romantic comedy (original title: The Boynton Beach Bereavement Club) that targets an audience of seniors and is accordingly toothless and bland. Rather than "targets," perhaps we should say "patronizes." Susan Seidelman, the director in …