James L. Brooks's bow to popular opinion. His movie started out as a musical, and went barreling ahead as one, until it was tried out in front of preview audiences. Their resistance to it was such that all the musical numbers got thrown out, except for the one of the …
The death of one animal (a faithful dog) and the arrival of another (an invading rat amid the tasteful, immaculate environs of a California bungalow) signal a change in the life of composed, content (complacent?) Chardonnay connoisseur Carol (a luminous yet thoroughly terrestrial Blythe Danner). First there's a new pool …
If only the whole thing were as good as its credits sequence: a roving spotlight carving out white crescents on a black screen, picking out retro Forties lettering in a film noir font. It sets a mood; the movie doesn't sustain it. A second collaboration between the star and the …
Backstage comedy, set a century ago in New York City, though most of the characters have quaint Italian names (Tuccio, Flavio, Pallenchio, etc.). It manages to be alternately overstated and obscure, burlesque and arty. Star and director John Turturro, as in his Mac, gives a big part to his off-screen …
Sylvain Chomet adapts and animates a never-filmed Jacques Tati story depicting a Tatiesque magician who goes from France to Scotland, where stony Edinburgh is lovingly cartooned. The whimsical wit and magical moments are barely developed from soft ideas. A brief glimpse of Tati’s classic Mon Oncle reminds us what is …
An evident filching and ineffectual rewording of a Tennessee Williams title, for use on a blue-collar comedy by Luis Buñuel. The movie overall -- except for the staging of a neighborhood religious pageant, which demonstrates a perfect understanding that such amateur theatrics needn't be exaggerated in order to be hilarious …
This murder mystery by Francesco Rosi is pure make-believe, but it is like a skeletal version of the director's based-on-fact investigations (Salvatore Giuliano, The Mattei Affair, Lucky Luciano) -- the bare bones without the distinguishing features. The abundance of detail that Rosi unearths when he is excavating an actual case …
What shall we name the baby? Italian. Directed by Francesca Archibugi.
Corvette (Keke Palmer) is a struggling clothing designer living in an abandoned chicken restaurant. She leads the "Velvet Gang"—a trio of professional "boosters" who steal and resell designer clothes. When a high-fashion mogul plagiarizes Corvette's designs, the gang launches a massive heist that sparks a working-class movement. Starring Keke Palmer …
WARNING: Colorization has been shown to cause blindness and violent insanity among lab rats. Coming soon: the desaturated version of The Long, Long Trailer.
Star vehicle. More precisely, a bicycle built for two, and pedaled across two types of terrain, George Cukor's and Alfred Hitchcock's. To put it as dauntingly as possible: Nick Nolte and Julia Roberts, in the roles of rival reporters on a train-wreck story, are required to be Tracy and Hepburn …
Didactic love story, heavier on the "didactic" than on either the "love" or the "story." A real-life situation, of two lost souls colliding on the rebound from romantic break-ups, is discernible, but just barely, beneath all the psychodrama, the socio-sexual polemics, and the nonlinear narrative technique. Most of the action …
A buttoned-up and stuffed-shirted Jewish attorney drops out into hippiedom. As might be expected, Hollywood seems less in touch with subcultural beings (Leigh Taylor-Young) than it does with mainstreamers (Peter Sellers, with a flattened American accent, and Joyce Van Patten, both of whom are quite funny). Directed by Hy Averback …