Cultural-exchange item from China. On the receiving end, it demonstrates that trendy cinematography can freely cross the Pacific and that the doors of Mainland China are wide open to it: the gently teetering Steadicam, the oozing light, the muted color, the soft focus, the powdery atmosphere, etc. Half the time …
Old-style, meticulously plotted and paced private-eye case steers perilously close to parody (Robert Mitchum's wry first-person narration, the bluesy horn solo on the soundtrack, Charlotte Rampling's Bacall impersonation). But Dick Richards's steady-handed direction holds it to a course so straight and sure that it achieves instead a kind of fundamentalist …
Or Marie Antoinette: The Last Four Days. The storming of the Bastille and the final days before the French Revolution as seen from inside the walls of the Palace of Versailles form the basis for the latest feature from French director Benoît Jacquot (A Single Girl, The School of Flesh). …
WWII adventure from John Milius, about an American deserter who becomes a tribal leader in Borneo and is conscripted by the British to battle the Japanese. Based on a novel by Pierre Schoendoerffer, himself a filmmaker, and an artist of finer sensibility -- a sort of junior Conrad -- than …
At the outset, Todd Haynes carries us on a crane over a Peyton Place-y town square (or square town) and into the glossy world of the 1950s "women's picture." It is mildly amazing how straight he plays it, or anyway how deadpan, although there are nonetheless as many laughs as …
A boy and his Lab, shipwrecked and cast ashore in wolf-cougar country. Soppy, but almost perversely underplayed, chiefly by Jesse Bradford (deeper into puberty than in King of the Hill) and by Dakotah, the dog, projecting a melancholy soulfulness of Bogartian proportions. With Bruce Davison and Mimi Rogers; directed by …
The able-bodied performances of Alan Bates, Peter Finch, and Terence Stamp, and the crisp, bracing, atmospheric images of Nicolas Roeg do a gloriously good job of bringing the Thomas Hardy classic to life. They do a better job of it than, for example, the old MGM studio used to do. …
Whatever quantity of soap froths up Thomas Vinterberg's presentation of Thomas Hardy's novel, it does nothing to fade out the lush colors that stain his gorgeous depiction of the author's English countryside. A lean and dimpled Carey Mulligan plays Bathsheba Everdene, a woman comfortable with solitude who still finds herself …
Documentarian Rachel Dretzin brings to the screen Andrew Solomon's NYT best seller that examines the experiences of families in which parents and children are profoundly different from one another in a variety of ways.
Above and beyond all else, around and through all else, the Coen brothers have assembled here a timeless document on their native state, Minnesota. On its notorious winters. On its snow shovels and its ice scrapers (implement of an uproarious temper tantrum). On its parkas and mittens and gloves and …
Eighteenth-century costume piece about a pair of symbiotic siblings, a castrato vocalist and a very minor composer: one sings what the other writes. Director Gerard Corbiau (The Music Teacher) violates what ought to be a cardinal rule of musicals: if you're going to use lip-synching, don't use closeups. (The blending …
A right-makes-might revenge tale about a war hero who returns to his home soil, hangs his Silver Star on his scarecrow, and is forced back into combat by big-town mobsters. The first half dawdles through 1940s period details, and the second plunges into 1970s gore. Gary Conway, Angel Tompkins; directed …