True story of The Last Woman to Be Hanged in England, a "nightclub hostess" (read "tart") named Ruth Ellis, who shot her high-born lover in the mid-1950s. Although the sympathies of the filmmakers are quite certainly anti-capital punishment and pro-feminist (the screenwriter is Shelagh Delaney of A Taste of Honey, …
Stodgy stage play (by Brian Friel) about five spinster sisters in County Donegal in the depressed Thirties, and their addled older brother fresh from missionary service in Uganda. There is a lot of talk about dancing, Africa, paganism in general, and about getting away. Some of them eventually do. (Get …
World-champion ballroom dancer Pierre Dulaine returns to the city his family was forced to leave in 1948 on a mission: to get Israeli Jewish kids and Israeli Palestinian kids to dance together. "When a human being dances with another human being, something happens," he attests at the outset. "You get …
The village still holds many mysteries. Piece by piece of mystery is revealed, including the terror of the most feared entity, namely, Badarawuhi.
The Happy Hooker Meets Torquemada. And Fanny Hill rompishness bows to Joan of Arc righteousness. It's Venice, toward the end of the 16th Century, and the only way for a common girl to get ahead is to learn the womanly art of downing a banana in one gulp. (Sure beats …
Dull title. Duller movie. And that's despite a vocabulary that gravitates toward "rat-fuckin' cocksucker" and "fuckin' cunt motherfucker," and despite a Cassavetes aesthetic of raw raging emotion photographed in a closeup cinéma-verité style. Abel Ferrera, the director, would appear to be one of those eternal sophomores (or eternal Henry Millers) …
Ice Cube, a Bay Area teacher, returns to his roots in South Africa, only to land in a rubbish pile of carjackers, racist thugs, dope peddlers. Elizabeth Hurley, the Estée Lauder girl, turns up as a crackhead stripper: "I like dahncing." Neither has much of a grasp of the job …
A full recital of misgivings about the casting would run the risk of descending to John Simon-esque rudeness. Let it suffice that John Malkovich is not altogether persuasive in the part of an infamous and irresistible roué that Michelle Pfeiffer is only slightly more persuasive as the demure embodiment of …
New to Netflix: a television-tempered thriller in which the winds of mystery act as a vacuum to reasoning. Katie (Camila Mendes), a caregiver four months on the job, arrives at work to find her 88-year-old charge (Elliott Gould) dead in the attic. Before the meat wagon arrives, Katie and her …
Catholic-school hellions in the 1970s. Peter Care's handling of alienated youth falls somewhere between Larry Clark and John Hughes, though it's not a fixed position: there's an uncertainty of tone and intent. Todd McFarlane's animated sequences, bringing the kids' superhero fantasies to fruition, tend toward flattery, but the performances of …
Perhaps there is something to be said for passionate amateurs. Writer-director-producer-composer John Rad's labor of love about a woman who starts hunting dangerous men comes to a few more big screens than it did during its original 2005 release.
Freud may be out of fashion, but he shouldn’t be boring. Freud (Viggo Mortensen) and Jung (Michael Fassbender) and their patient who became a brainy disciple and colleague, Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), trade analytic ideas and furtive, sado-masochistic feelings. Knightley bravely uses her beauty, even jutting out her jaw a …