Andrzej Wajda's French-Polish co-production is quite a triumph of mise-en-scène. There is quite a lot to triumph over, too. The history lesson chewed over here has that dutiful and drudgy quality of a freshman fixture on the college curriculum, with none of the imaginative liberties taken in, say, La Nuit …
Unassuming, unassertive little feminist comedy about a Mexico City phone operator (by day) and competitive ballroom dancer (by night) whose Platonic dance partner of six years vanishes without a word. She goes hunting for him in Veracruz, finds new friends and a romantic fling instead. Maria Rojo is a winning …
For this Irish fantasy from the Disney studio, they've shown the good sense to hire John Ford's cameraman (on The Quiet Man, among others), Winton Hoch; but they've asked him to shoot hardly anything more picturesque than the grizzled mug and decaying lower teeth of Albert Sharpe. The movie is …
Pretty flimsy even for a comic book. The gotta-have-a-gimmick superhero has been blinded in a childhood run-in with some biohazardous substance (in a quarter-hour prologue), and his handicap causes him to develop his remaining senses to the point where he can swing around the skyscrapers like Spider-Man, dodge projectiles of …
An event for women, to help them not only live their life, but also love their life.
One thing to be said for a Wes Anderson film, and it's no small thing, is that it bears an individual stamp. A stamp as flat as a postage stamp, as emphatic as a rubber stamp. (Whap, whap.) A well-known commodity after Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tennenbaums, The Life …
Inflammatory cop drama set against a backdrop of the well-documented racism in the LAPD. It begins, indelicately enough, with the infamous Rodney King tape, and the bulk of the action takes place while awaiting the verdict in the Simi Valley trial of the arresting officers. (The conclusion of the action …
Dark, without a doubt, and dank, and steamy, and simultaneously futuristic and antiquated, and currently in the grip of pasty aliens who can reshape reality at will. (At the will of the scriptwriters, that is, not at their own.) An impressive production to a certain degree; an oppressive one to …
Tolkien-esque fantasy, designed by British illustrator Brian Froud, co-directed by Jim Henson (creator of the Muppets) and Frank Oz (voice of Miss Piggy, Yoda, et al.), and enacted by a new breed of puppet for which there is as yet no convenient label. The major designing effort has gone toward …
Tolkien-esque fantasy, designed by British illustrator Brian Froud, co-directed by Jim Henson (creator of the Muppets) and Frank Oz (voice of Miss Piggy, Yoda, et al.), and enacted by a new breed of puppet for which there is as yet no convenient label. The major designing effort has gone toward …
Illuminating documentary, shot in suitably sooty black-and-white, about homeless squatters in a New York subway tunnel. (Shades of the cannibalistic Undergrounders in the cult British horror film, Raw Meat, a/k/a Death Line.) The sense of subterranean space and spatial relationships is a bit vague, but the camera is well at …
Pretty girls go into a creepy old house, complete with a creepy old lady, dead flowers in the garden, a spooky cat, and visions of a young girl in an old-fashioned nightdress. Who needs English?