Faced with a depletion of virgins in the Transylvanian countryside, a pouty, worried Count Dracula is impelled, at the urging of his spit-and-polish valet, to take leave of his home in search of virgin blood ("But I can't leave my family down in the crypt," he whines). And so he …
Paul Morrissey's facelift of the old Mary Shelley tale -- now a deadpan charade of beautiful young people searching, scissoring, and stitching in the laboratory for more beauty yet. Backed by Carlo Ponti, Morrissey is for the first time a man of means (European forest and castle locales, elegant musical …
“Is it better not to live than to live and suffer?” Don’tcha hate it when a character, in this case a scraggly Columbia University professor (Sam Waterston), breaks the ice by spelling out a film’s thesis? Suffer we do as a cast of top name performers (Glenn Close, Kristen Stewart, …
This comedy, action, thriller from India is directed by Lijo Jose Pellissery.
Wonders and terrors of girlhood: a new house (with convenient eavesdropping access to the grownups' bedroom); an unbalanced mother; a sleepwalking neighbor; an imagined angel in the basement; babies; boys; and so on. The feature-film debut of writer-director Rebecca Miller, daughter of the Death of a Salesman man, is quiet …
Hardly a movie at all, more like a glossy picture-book supplement to Frank McCourt's best-selling memoir of growing up poor in Ireland. McCourt's prose has accordingly been whittled down to excerpted captions in service to the lavish illustrations. And very arty illustrations they are, too, predominantly in grim parsimonious gray-green …
Jane Campion's biography of her New Zealander countrywoman -- author Janet Frame -- was made originally for TV, and for showing in three separate parts at that. Had it been a feature-film project from the start, no doubt its proportions would have been totally different. The chosen narrative technique of …
Nutters in love -- in a phone booth, in a back alley, in a rainstorm, in candlelight, etc. But the world is against them -- these two heavily medicated innocents who follow the counsel of their guardian angel, Astral, communicating to them through the mystery phrases on the Australian Wheel …
Glamorizing biopic of baby-faced thrill-killer Carlos Robledo Puch (Lorenzo Ferro) whom, after spending more than forty-six years in jail, is the longest-serving prisoner in the history of Argentina. His life in crime began as a “house cat,” a burglar without a gun. You’re heard of a meet cute? Director Luis …
Halfway serious romantic drama from director Luis Mandoki, the man who gave us the completely silly Message in a Bottle, about a one-of-the-guys policewoman (Jennifer Lopez) and an enigmatic, gray-overcoated loner who identifies himself as just "Catch": part-zombie, part-simpleton, part-Montgomery Clift (Jim Caviezel). The nonserious half would have to include …
Jean Simmons is a fine actress, but a femme fatale she is not. Even a deceptively angelic femme fatale, much less a ball-busting dominator of Robert Mitchum. Memorable end, for her and for the movie. With Herbert Marshall, Mona Freeman, Jim Backus; directed by Otto Preminger.
First Olympus, then London. Will audiences fall for Angel?
Hard-boiled private-eye hokum, with a wire crossed into the Faust-Mephistopheles myth, resulting in a major power outage at the end, after getting by on dim bulbs till then. A black-garbed, bearded, be-ringed, pointed-fingernailed mystery man named Louis Cyphre (equals "Lucifer," get it?) hires a wisecracking Brooklyn gumshoe named Angel ("Of …