Edna Ferber-esque epic about a French rubber baroness in colonial Indochina, her adopted native daughter, and the all-in-white, liquid-eyed Naval officer who enflames them both. Long, rubbishy, bombastically scored by Patrick Doyle, and increasingly engaging once we go into the lovers-on-the-run stretch. Many scenic marvels, not least the ageless Catherine …
Psychic thriller concerning a clairvoyant named Claire whose precognitive dreams of a series of child murders develop into a telepathic correspondence with the killer. The basically trashy material is spruced up with fairy-tale allusions (Claire is the illustrator of a children's book entitled Grimm's Fairy Tales -- yes, singular Grimm), …
Kathleen Quinlan, in a blessedly unsentimental and unsymbolic characterization, is a pretty tough nut, possessed by a secret society of demons and sworn to serve as their protectress; and Bibi Andersson, who owns a pair of pale -green eyes that are a perfect match to Quinlan's, is the heroic nutcracker, …
Gene Garrison (Gene Hackman) is a successful college professor, who has a rocky relationship with his dad, Tom (Melvyn Douglas). He believes that his father has never truly accepted him and worries about how his plans to move to California and marry his girlfriend may affect his relationship with his …
Substantially the same story as Capote a year earlier, an uncomfortable proximity that brings to mind the competing Columbuses of 1492: Conquest of Paradise and Christopher Columbus or the competing Earps of Tombstone and Wyatt Earp. A second account, written and directed by Douglas McGrath, of the birth pains of …
The tale of two undercover moles, a police officer (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) assigned to infiltrate a ruthless triad by posing as a gangster, and a gangster (Andy Lau Tak-wah) who becomes a police officer in order to serve as a spy for the underworld. The duo finds themselves locked in …
Cold-blooded murder, dug up from the files of True Crime and transformed into black comedy, directed (by Francis Girod) and acted (by Michel Piccoli and Romy Schneider) with elegant deadpan equanimity. Because of that, it's a little unexciting; but the gory climax, also because of that, is rewarding in a …
A thoroughly pedestrian adventure that might have been better titled Hell is Lots and Lots of Other People.. At least, that's the belief of the billionaire bad guy in Ron Howard's latest adaptation of Dan Brown's series featuring symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks). What to do about overbreeding humanity? Well, …
Overboiled based-on-a-true-story cops-and-druglords pic that aspires to portray the strain that acting bad has on good people, and to convey the tension that arises from pretending to form friendships with folks you’re trying to bust. One or two scenes do elicit a wince — co-star John Leguizamo makes the most …
The biggest problem here is right there in the title, taken from a little girl's cutesy term for her bipolar father's condition: it pretties up the nightmare. Writer-director Maya Forbes wants you to feel like you're being shown the difficult truth of a family wracked by mental illness. But the …
The first love of physicist Richard Feynman (not counting science), a childhood sweetheart doomed to an early tubercular death while her new husband helped build the A-bomb. There is plenty of sweetness; plenty, thanks to the main character, of eccentricity (his bloodhound experiment to detect the scent of his beloved …
While staying at an isolated island resort, James (Alexander Skarsgård) and Em (Cleopatra Coleman) are enjoying a perfect vacation of pristine beaches, exceptional staff, and soaking up the sun. But guided by the seductive and mysterious Gabi (Mia Goth), they venture outside the resort grounds and find themselves in a …
Steven Soderbergh, working from fact, details an impenetrable case of corporate skullduggery blown open by an ambiguous black-hatted whistleblower: a kind of anti-Hitchcock suspense comedy, grudgingly putting any cards at all on the table, keeping the surprises coming only by keeping us in the dark, flouting the Master's tried-and-true method …