Low-rise soufflé concocted of a family holiday on the Riviera. The action takes the form of a change-partners sexual cotillion in which the committed heterosexuals slightly outnumber the overt or borderline homosexuals, yet command much less attention from co-writers and co-directors Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau, the team responsible for …
You might well have expected that a movie called The Cotton Club would actually be about the Cotton Club. But no. The movie is not so much about it as around and about it. One of the main characters owns the place. A couple of others work there. Others of …
No advance screeners were issues for Francis Ford Coppola’s 139 minute director’s cut of The Cotton Club. (That’s 20 minutes longer than the original cut that in 1984 the studio pressured Coppola to sign off on.) Of late, the director appears to be devoting time to potchkying with the classics; …
Ismail Merchant, the producing half of the Merchant-Ivory team, takes a turn at directing: a mid-Fifties period piece about a dark-skinned, self-deluded Anglo-Indian nurse ("My father was an officer in the British regiment"), who takes over the care of an undernourished Anglo baby, insinuates herself into the household, undermines the …
A widower from Japan travels to England with his estranged son to fulfill his late wife's dying wish. Directed by Patrick Dickinson, starring Lily Franky, Ryô Nishikido, and Tae Kimura.
An escapee from the loony bin, passing himself off as resident psychiatrist thereof, gets to sit in for a radio psychologist on leave of absence: an "idea" comedy with nothing much to back the idea up -- nothing beyond putting Dan Aykroyd in the starring role (where Chevy Chase or …
"I've seen it all, counselor," intones worldly-wise dealmaker Brad Pitt. "It's all shit." This is very close to the point of The Counselor. Pretty shit, pricey shit, exciting shit, lovable shit, even enduring shit - but still shit. The counterargument, to the extent that one is offered, is so brief …
Far-ranging reassessment of the nuclear threat in the age of terrorism, an effective means of sleep prevention. The concluding call to arms, or rather call to no arms, produces much agreement yet little reassurance. Directed by Lucy Walker.
Stefan Ruzowitsky’s Holocaust survival tale, loosely based on fact, tells how “the world’s best counterfeiter” (the long, long face of Karl Markovics) eases his existence in a Nazi concentration camp by suppressing his scruples and aiding the German war effort, speedily mastering the British pound, but then dilly-dallying over the …
Somewhat rushed retelling of the Dumas revenge story. Granted, there's a good deal of story to be gotten through, and the speed might be hoped to counteract the snags: the details of the tunneling in the Chateau d'If are not altogether credible (the dirt is disposed of in the chamber …
The target of a sinister plot, young Edmond Dantes is arrested on his wedding day for a crime he did not commit. After fourteen years in the island prison of Château d’If, he manages a daring escape. Now rich beyond his dreams, he assumes the identity of the Count of …
The problem is a real one: the plight of the modern-day Midwest farmer in the face of government foreclosures. But the portrait here is hinged entirely on a romantic notion of 19th-century frontier individualism that we cannot believe has come into the present day, or much past Willa Cather's day …
Cult filmmaker Mickey Reece stars as emerging country music star Troyal Brux, who resembles '90s-era Garth Brooks in this a bizarre re-imagining of musical icons, Country Gold. Featuring gags loosely based on real life events, the fantasy comedy pays tribute to the legacies we leave behind when, during one wild …