A tribe of subtitled vampires strategically targets the northernmost town in the U.S., Barrow, Alaska, hunkered down for a sunless month, free rein for nocturnal bloodsuckers. The majestic clouds and snowscapes on the last day of light ignite hope for a sense of style, but the superhuman strength and speed …
Honest-to-gosh Western, a rare sight in the 21st Century, thick as fleas fifty years earlier, when the original 3:10 arrived. The remake is done in the decadent style of shades-of-brown realism, luxuriantly whiskered and shaggy-haired, yet preening and grandiose, with amplified passions, topographical sprawl, and an overblown (and significantly altered) …
A night and a day with a budding Lolita. Delphine Zentout, notwithstanding her majestic chest, is a credible fourteen-year-old -- no Norma Shearer playing Juliet. But what then? Ragged and draggy realism, laden with French worldliness: "Dip your wick three times in the same girl and forget it." Directed by …
The premise, pretty much deducible from the title, features three unmarried male apartment-mates in Paris who have to baby-sit an illegitimate infant (one of theirs) for six months. This same general situation came out funnier, sweeter, touchinger, everythinger, when it was done with John Wayne in Three Godfathers. The situation …
The first feature by François Truffaut has a claim to being the origin of the New Wave (it is not unchallenged in that claim); it is also the first, and by far best, of Jean-Pierre Léaud's appearances in the ongoing Antoine Doinel role. The first part -- the escapades around …
Can a healthy young heterosexual male keep a vow of celibacy for the duration of Lent? Can he get over his old girlfriend and make a true "connection" with a new one in that time? Can we care? Very youthy, very hip, very glib, very one-track-minded, very cocksure. Not very …
The hero is not what he is by reason of any philosophy, religion, or phobia: "It just never happened." But now his colleagues at the Smart Tech electronics store, cottoning on to his condition, are pitching in to cure him of it. Though not unsympathetic in treatment, the character is …
Four chums of a catatonic cuckold devise a plan to help him regain his manhood: abduct the offender so that the offended may exact revenge. An initial hint of stylishness yields to staginess, despite the flashbacks, the fantasies, and the illustrative footage from Cecil B. De Mille’s Samson and Delilah. …
After the pastoral interludes of The Long Riders and Southern Comfort, Walter Hill returns to the urban milieu of The Driver and The Warriors, but his decline since the latter pair continues nonetheless. One of the more obvious differences between them and the present work is the abandonment of an …
Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu details a squalid quest for an illegal abortion in the final years of the Ceausescu regime, and discloses, in passing, a good deal about a way of life, and in particular about the foundation stone of the black market. Altogether a strong film, in the mode …
Chronicle of the relationship of a young couple brought together at the office, a greeting-card company, through their shared taste for the music of the Smiths, among other things: “She likes Magritte and Hopper!” It is a maddeningly mixed experience, beginning (and continuing) with the two leads. A dimply Joseph …
High-concept romantic comedy about a love-'em-and-leave-'em ladykiller, a marine-park veterinarian in Hawaii, who tumbles for a brain-damaged blonde who can retain no short-term memories since her year-ago car accident and who is doomed every day to relive the day of the accident with no knowledge of intervening days: a scoop …