Like a 1930s MGM literary adaptation, this movie begins with an unattached hand opening a tattered copy of D'Annunzio's L'Innocente on a background of crushed velvet, and leafing through it at the rate of a phenomenal speed-reader, or else at the rate of the typical modern reader's impatience with D'Annunzio. …
Female vampire, French, gamine, Peter Pan coiffed, finicky in her tastes, takes advantage of a gang war to gorge her appetite (i.e., "eat Italian"). John Landis, back in the mood of his American Werewolf in London, turns out a movie of mild horror and milder humor (the fondness of Mafiosi …
When Abel learns that his 60-year-old mother Sylvie is about to marry a man in prison he freaks out. With the help of his best friend, Clémence, he will do whatever it takes to protect her. But meeting Michel, his new stepfather, may well offer him a new perspective. French …
A masochistic movie. Your typical Dedicated Professional, Supportive Husband, and Drop-Dead Adonis is visited by a waking nightmare of crooked cops and twisted cons. A real nail-biter for those who regard Tom Selleck as they would a son. (Will that nasty cut on his cheek ever heal?) A real thumb-sucker …
Jack Clayton's superbly, subtly, suggestively atmospheric rendition of the Henry James ghost story, The Turn of the Screw, with steady help from the wide-screen black-and-white photography of Freddie Francis (then at the brink of a new career as a director of grade-B Hammer horrors). Deborah Kerr's portrayal of the spinsterly …
aka Aftermath and Afterbirth. C’est la guerre — it’s the war. Isn’t it always? World War II is over, but the Russians made the most of their march toward Berlin, with one batch stopping off for a three-day rapefest at a Polish Benedictine convent. Multiple pregnancies ensued (plus at least …
Leftist arm-twister, slickly done, about an unspeakably cute kid in civil-war-torn El Salvador ca. 1980, not so much a character as a poster child, who becomes "the man of the house" in his father's absence, and awaits conscription in the military on his twelfth birthday. Some of the random gunfire …
Sangwon (Kim Minhee), an actress recently returned to South Korea, is temporarily staying with her friend, Jungsoo (Song Sunmi), and her cat, Us. Elsewhere in the city, the aging poet Uiju (Ki Joobong) lives alone, his cat having recently passed away. On this ordinary day, each of them has a …
The Israeli Six-Day-War as seen through the documentary lenses of the Christian Broadcasting Network and CBN and Biblical Productions.
One of the rare late-period Godard films to be circulated commercially over here. Why this one? Virtually -- or maybe we should say virtuously -- void of narrative (something to do with memory, history, and a fictitious filmmaker's inchoate project on love and the ages of man), arid, abstemious, prickly, …
That this insipid sex comedy has run into censorship imbroglios in its native Canada and in Chicago (why on earth?) is a riper joke than any of those contained within the movie's borders. The chronicle of the sexual education of a young Hungarian immigrant has some pretensions, to be sure; …
True story of Christian missionaries Nik and Ruth Ripken's encounter with the fallen world, abroad and at home.