Sledgehammer blows of feminist fury — from India, of all unlikely places. Dirty talk and bloody violence galore, in a "true story" spanning from 1968 — and one of the longest pre-credits sequences on record — to an up-to-date coda. For foreign-film buffs acquainted with Indian cinema chiefly through the …
Rock-and-roll fantasy, as narcissistic as they come, about a women's-prison pickup band called Bandits ("Band plus tits") who fly the coop at the Policemen's Ball. Made in Germany, but no less commercial for the subtitles. With Katja Riemann, Jasmin Tabatabai, Nicolette Krebitz, Jutta Hoffmann; directed by Katja von Garnier.
A crime-does-pay comedy, told in flashback, following the transparent bluff that the two bank robbers known as the Sleepover Bandits (Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton) have now been shot dead. Their getaway driver's sideline as a would-be Hollywood stuntman provides a dead giveaway to the "surprise" ending. Mid-spree, they pick …
Slack, poky, capricious, meandering improvisation on an American crime novel by Dolores Hitchens, one of the more -- one of the many -- ephemeral efforts from the salad days of Jean-Luc Godard. (Or, as he is credited here, Jean-Luc Cinema Godard.) To see this film today is to understand perfectly …
Mod Squad for the Eighties, except that there are now five of them (like the fingers of a hand, see). The executive producer, Michael Mann, is the executive producer of Miami Vice; and the director, Paul Michael Glaser, used to be one or the other of the title characters on …
Squeaky-clean teen musical culminating in a battle of the high-school rock bands. The music competition proves to be a bit less intense and thorny than the romantic competition, but nothing, either way, that can’t be smoothed out amicably by the final curtain. In the hands of director Todd Graff and …
To be specific, the Alexandria Police Ceremonial Orchestra, an octet costumed in robin’s-egg blue, visiting Israel for the inauguration of an Arab Culture Center, but taking a wrong turn to a sound-alike destination in the middle of nowhere, spending a night, getting to know the locals and vice versa, bridging …
A candy-colored Inside Show Biz musical, directed by Vincente Minnelli. The private jokes, the campy parody, and the cheerful cynicism give the movie its air of knowingness; but the disruptively dazzling musical numbers are never brought together into a stable framework or consistent style. With Fred Astaire as an aging …
A loosen-up lesson taught by two former groupies, one now the strait-laced wife of a Phoenix attorney, the other still a disciple of Sex, Drugs, Rock-and-Roll. (Or if not drugs, at least cigarettes and rum-and-Cokes.) The comic contrivances cannot compel attention as much as the documentary concern with Goldie Hawn's …
Bangkok tedious, too. An introspective hit man (“I’d like to meet someone, but it’s tough when you live out of a suitcase”) trains a pickpocket as his successor, and moons over a beautiful mute pharmacist, on his last big job before retirement. The Pang Brothers’ English-language remake of their own …
Australian stock-market thriller (if that's not an oxymoron): a lot of looking at computer screens, or at the faces of people looking at computer screens. The tricksy plotting is a little like David Mamet without the ear and without the rhythm. David Wenham, Anthony LaPaglia, Sibylla Budd; written and directed …
“Based on a true story,” or anyway on a true bank job, the knockover of Lloyds Bank, Baker Street, London, 1971. The filmmakers, headed by the veteran Australian-born director Roger Donaldson and screenwriters Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, have taken advantage of the cloak of mystery that still surrounds …
Kooky-kinky crime comedy about a modern-day Billy the Kid who holes up with his loot in Room 222 at the Heartbreak Hotel and entertains a monotonous parade of weirdos. Lisa Bonet takes first prize, if not the cake, as a scrupulously honest, sotto voce, tattooed call girl. With Patrick Dempsey, …
Ticklingly unkind portraiture of a couple of ghetto vulgarians from Atlanta (gold teeth, bear-claw nails, etc. ), soul-food waitresses plopped down improbably in Beverly Hills. The obligatory development of plot, character, Honest Sentiment, crowds out the fun. The title (FYI) abbreviates Black American Princesses. With Halle Berry, Natalie Desselle, Martin …
A sort of street-corner doomsday tirade, though strictly nonverbal, and very much in the mode of Koyaanisqatsi. (The title, according to the press notes, is a Sufi word meaning "blessing" or "breath" or "essence of life.") Half an hour or so of big-wide-wonderful-world footage is followed by over half an …