Charlton Heston as a modern-day Egyptologist, who, if he had spent less time with library book and pickaxe and more time watching mummy movies, would have had better sense than to violate a tomb inscribed "Do not approach the Nameless One, lest your soul be withered." Some very good moments …
A dose of humanistic treacle to do with the temporary revival of catatonic patients through the experimental administration (this is in 1969) of the wonder drug L-DOPA. ("Dr. Sayer!" "What is it?" "It's a fuckin' miracle!") The plural of the title is not solely because there is more than one …
Director Sam Mendes travels the sunnier side of Revolutionary Road, travels it, together with a playful, lovey-dovey, loosey-goosey couple expecting their first child and looking for a spot to put down roots, to Phoenix, to Tucson, to Madison, to Montreal, to Miami, evoking little sense of place anywhere outside of …
An awfully oversized title for the adventure of a starry-eyed innocent in the jaded world of British repertory theater, post-WWII. Between the accents, the argot, and the circumlocutions, it's a bit tough to penetrate. And even for theater people, the performances are unbearably theatrical. Georgina Cates, Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman, …
Screwball comedy, screwed down more tightly than most, about a divorced couple who take the long way around to realizing how good they had it. By the beautifully crafted finale, the only things standing between them are an unsecurely closed door and a napping cat. And as long as you …
Carlos Saura returns once more to the Spanish Civil War, this time in the company of Almodóvar's pet actress, Carmen Maura, perhaps in hopes of increasing his bookings abroad. Along with her, he adopts a more extrovert manner than comes naturally. And a more extrovert subject too: a vaudeville troupe …
Peace plan for feudal Japan: train an elite team of ten, eager, youthful assassins -- nine men and one fetching female in knee-high socks and thigh-length terry-cloth bathrobe -- to wipe out every warlord in the land. (As a final training exercise to prove their mettle, the ten are required …
Raggedy-ass re-enactment of the making of Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, the 1971 blaxploitation blip by Melvin Van Peebles. There's certainly a behind-the-scenes story to tell (and writer-director-star Mario Van Peebles, Melvin's son, has a highly personal angle), but the slapdash dramatizations and pseudodocumentary interviews hardly help the credibility. With Rainn …
Quaint animal tale, freshly, ripely illustrated by prior documentarian Chris Noonan, about an orphaned porker who, taken in tow by a sheepdog, revolutionizes the business of herding when he introduces reason and politeness into it. Sometimes the cuteness gets overaggressive, but the absence of any obligatory child actor minimizes the …
A/k/a The Bambino. A/k/a The Sultan of Swat. A/k/a George Herman Ruth. A from-the-beginning biographical approach (the abandonment at Saint Mary's Industrial School for Boys, the breaking of the chapel window by batted ball, etc.), plus some child-in-a-candy-store psychological analysis. John Goodman starts out too old (and too fat) for …
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 …
Before and after all else, this is simply a sequel, with some of the common symptoms of sequelitis: a swelling of the head, a puffing-up of the body, an overall putting-on of pounds. The critics' exaggeration of the original's modest charms can only have aggravated the situation. (The same director, …
Gabriel Axel's film, from a story by Isak Dinesen, treats of two spinsterly sisters devoted to Good Works on the Jutland Coast near the end of the last century, of how they came to have a French maid, and of how the maid, after fourteen years of gratuitous service, came …
Gabriel Axel's film, from a story by Isak Dinesen, treats of two spinsterly sisters devoted to Good Works on the Jutland Coast near the end of the last century, of how they came to have a French maid, and of how the maid, after fourteen years of gratuitous service, came …
A kind of nature documentary that looks at the human species the way another documentary might look at apes: a human-nature documentary, if you like. The French filmmaker Thomas Balmès follows four newborns from far-flung corners of the globe — a Namibian, a Mongolian, a Japanese, an American — from …