Director and co-writer Catherine Breillat’s French twist on the Danish film Queen of Hearts has got your cycle of abuse right here. We open on the face of a trembling teen as she recounts her sexual history to Anne (a handsome and supremely put-together Léa Drucker), the lawyer who will …
Typical Henry Jaglom gabfest, fragmentary, improvisatory, self-conscious, mostly vacuous. The setting this time is the country retreat of a three-generational theatrical family, where the whole clan and acolytes (including a Hollywood luminary played without much illumination by Jaglom's wife, Victoria Foyt) have gathered for a final bash before the estate …
A timeless story comes to life, faith finds new depth, and the power of belief becomes real.
Five Iowa grad students, of liberal persuasion, start up a tradition of inviting assorted reactionaries to Sunday dinner in order to poison them. A black comedy that struts its color as if it were fire-engine red. Stagy; stiffly directed (by Stacy Title); coarsely photographed. With Annabeth Gish (what a waste!), …
Bernardo Bertolucci's big splash. It has been so overdiscussed that nearly every incident seems familiar even as it's happening. And so, the focus of attention is narrowed to where it mainly belongs — the extravagances of Bertolucci's juicy romantic style, his inexplicable bursts of camera movement, gushes of music, rich …
What Martin Scorsese and company (scriptwriter Paul Schrader, quite prominently) appear to be up to at the most basic level is something that storytellers have been getting up to since the birth of the oral tradition: retelling a standard-repertory myth and altering it in the telling. (In this case using …
Take a look at evolution and extinction from the perspective of the rocks and minerals that came before humanity and will outlast us. With scientists and thinkers like Lynn Margulis and Marcia Bjørnerud as guides and quoting from the proto-Sci-fi texts of J.H. Rosny, Deborah Stratman offers an array of …
Canadian-made documentary on the world’s largest human migration, the annual trek of 130 million migrant workers from their urban sweatshops to their rural roots, for the Chinese New Year. An uncommonly well-crafted documentary, more attentive than most to basic cinematic concerns such as composition and rhythm, but still heavily reliant …
Too much of the melancholy that is supposed to be inspired by the extinction of the unicorns is inspired instead by the proliferation of Saturday-morning-TV-level animation. A triumph, of sorts, for reality. Scripted by Peter S. Beagle, from his own novel; co-directed by Arthur Rankin, Jr., and Jules Bass; with …
A wealthy stag finally settles on a trophy bride, and three lifelong friends join him in Vegas for a senescent bachelor party. The Hangover with Depends. Michael Douglas tries, Kevin Kline succeeds, De Niro can barely summon the strength needed to hold a permanent scowl, and Morgan Freeman - engulfing …
Based on a single chapter from Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, the merchant ship Demeter is chartered to carry private cargo—fifty unmarked wooden crates—from Carpathia to London. Strange events befall the doomed crew as they attempt to survive the ocean voyage, stalked each night by a merciless presence onboard the ship. …
Yes, yes, it's better photographed than the average concert movie, and it's better recorded, and the music itself is on the whole better. And so what? It's still a concert movie, as opposed to a movie movie. (A couple of bonus numbers, "The Weight" and "Evangeline," are staged in a …
Yes, yes, it's better photographed than the average concert movie, and it's better recorded, and the music itself is on the whole better. And so what? It's still a concert movie, as opposed to a movie movie. (A couple of bonus numbers, "The Weight" and "Evangeline," are staged in a …
A group of urbanized Aborigines in Sydney, Australia, is defended on a murder charge by a white attorney who, by a lucky coincidence, happens to be plugged in to the Aboriginal concept of "dream time" and whose investigation of the case, and of his unique psychic powers, brings him to …