Homosexual filmmaker Gregg Araki (The Living End, Totally F***ed Up) goes hetero, though not exactly "straight," in an épater les bourgeois abomination about an on-the-road ménage-à-trois motel rooms, junk food, belches, tough talk ("Don't get your uterus all tied in a knot" and "I'm so pissed at you I could …
A winning performance in a losing cause: the humorous, bright, protean Sandra Oh as the modern, free-spirited, unmarried (and unaccented) daughter of traditional Chinese immigrant parents, in Vancouver, B.C. All very familiar, except for Oh. With Stephen M.D. Chang, Alannah Ong, Frances You, and Callum Rennie; written and directed by …
Mostly tired vampire spoof, but pleasantly so, contentedly so, not ill-humoredly so. The fast-moving and soon-ending storyline confines itself to the various versions of the Bram Stoker prototype, and doesn't wander off on discursive side trips. The cast has plenty of fun with the accents, British, German, and Lugosian (Peter …
The Hammer horror factory already had the thought (in 1971) to re-do the R.L. Stevenson tale as a sex-change thing: Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde. Of course that version didn't have the thought to do it funny. But then this version had only the thought, not also the ability. Tim …
Pleasant enough, modest, hummock-sized tall tale about a pair of English cartographers stopping in a Welsh village during the Great War, measuring the local pride and joy -- the first mountain in Wales -- as sixteen feet shy of an official mountain, and getting detained there while the villagers pile …
A women-in-control sex film. In control of the film, that is: a three-parter directed by (in order) Lizzie Borden of the U.S.A., Monika Treut of Germany, Clara Law of Hong Kong. Bold in both talk and action, but shallowly showoffy more than purposeful. And so, embarrassing more than liberating. The …
Another lawyer joke, or litigable libel: casting "supermodel" Cindy Crawford as a Miami civil attorney. (Champion of downtrodden Cubans, she doesn't even know how to pronounce the name Juantorena, though she can pass muster jogging on the beach at sunrise, or during two shower scenes, one sex scene, one on-screen …
Wong Kar-wai's eye-straining stylistic experiment in the bulging effects of wide-angle lenses. A worthy followup to his Chungking Express, sharing with it the structure of interwoven plotlines, the subject matter of yearning youth, and the attitude of cutesy insouciance. In short, it's lesser Wong, as compared, let's say, to Days …
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 original Father of the Bride -- meaning the 1950 one, not the 1991 one -- had a better name for its sequel, Father's Little Dividend. But dividend has three syllables in it, and its definition doesn't denote sequel, so.... Besides which, Part II isn't a literal remake of the …
Quaintly Hardy-esque period piece, from an H.E. Bates novel, about dog-paddling humans tossed about by the waves of fate. More specifically, a friendless lass, having just buried her stillborn bastard, receives shelter under the same roof with three strapping brothers -- trouble for sure. Fine-point photography by Peter Sova; sparsely …
Michael Corrente's directorial debut. More pointedly, his application for the post of The New Martin Scorsese. Guys called Nicky and Ralphy and Joey and Bobby and Frankie, cruising the mean streets of Providence, Rhode Island. One of them, with just a soupçon of bathos, reaches for another world as embodied …
Another run-through of the deathless Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot legend, cripplingly shackled on its run by the casting of Richard Gere in the part of Lancelot -- a smarty-pantsy, ants-in-his-pantsy Lancelot, with a glide in his step, a dip in his knee, a swivel in his hips, a twitch or a wink or …
On a minimalist, abstract, cloistered set (invaded at one point by a passing siren), Carlos Saura stages a sort of flamenco jam session or all-star variety show, representing a full range of styles and moods, sometimes taxing in its exhaustiveness, more often exhilarating. Conspicuously missing is Antonio Gades, the dancer …
Canine reincarnation tale. A highway fatality is reborn in the fur of a Golden Retriever, who experiences vivid but fragmentary flashbacks to his past life. When he finds his way back to his former family, a Ghost-like situation seems to be in progress, with a dubious business partner moving in …