Mutiny thereon. You might presume that if someone were going to bother to make a third version of the famous and infamous events aboard H.M.S. Bounty, they must have thought of something to do with it that their predecessors hadn't thought of something akin to Brando's dandified interpretation of Fletcher …
Laboriously contrived rom-com action thriller, laboriously directed by Andy Tennant, wherein a pair of hostile exes, he a skip-tracer and she a bail-jumper, re-bond while solving a murder and dodging a hit man en route to the hoosegow. Not a good showcase for the assets of Jennifer Aniston, apart from …
Those who had been backing Doug Liman as a vital new maverick director (Swingers, Go) will have their work cut out for them on this one, a middle-of-the-road adaptation of the Robert Ludlum best-seller about an amnesiac spy, previously made as a two-part TV miniseries starring Richard Chamberlain and Jaclyn …
The Bourne sequel. Admittedly, the basic premise of an amnesiac spy who remembers none of his assignments but all of his training is intrinsically ridiculous, internally illogical. (His unusual handicap -- groping along a fogbound Memory Lane -- never seems to slow him down, never lets his scheming adversaries get …
The Bourne absurdum. It isn't just that Part III in the adventures of the amnesiac superspy adds more ridiculousness. It's that, at these lengths, the ridiculousness multiplies exponentially. More ridiculousness, that is, and more and more ridiculous. (The sentimental soft spots found in Parts I and II are here concentrated …
Hollywood satire so out of touch with reality, so willfully ignorant of actual practice, that it nullifies itself as satire. The idea is that an Ed Wood-caliber producer could shoot a superstar blockbuster, Candid Camera-style, without the superstar's co-operation. (He calls it cinéma nouveau. The film itself is called Chubby …
Michael Moore's engaging and enraging documentary on gun culture in America, and by extension violence, homicide, and the climate of fear in America. Dishevelled as ever in his baggy clothes and collection of ballcaps (one of them emblazoned with "Writer"), usually unshaven, a definitive schlump, he is still his own …
Richard Kelly's blow-up of a Richard Matheson short story titled "Button, Button" is a would-be cult film from the writer and director of the already-been cult film Donnie Darko. Commingling space exploration, Arthur C. Clarke, Jean-Paul Sartre, body-snatched zombies prone to nosebleeds, and mid-Seventies period trappings, it's an overelaborate and …
Tale of erotic obsession from first-time director Jennifer Chambers Lynch, daughter of director David Lynch (Twin Peaks, etc.). The protagonist, a masterful surgeon but a stammering, stumbling idiot when it comes to his object of obsession, tries to hold on to her by amputating both her legs (Twin Stumps, so …
Middle-aged nerd (pocket pen set, daily uniform of white dress shirt and black slacks) loosens up after a chance encounter with an outgoing dropout in a Davy Crockett costume. John Turturro's robotic posture and movements have the physical expressiveness of a silent-cinema clown, and his dance, when he really cuts …
A flip piece of science-fiction misogyny. In the stereotyped wastelands of post-WWIII, man's best friend is still his dog, and woman is still his Garden of Eden undoer. (The dog's interior monologues and telepathic dialogues sound like a canine counterpart of Morris the Cat -- a dry wit, jaded, bored.) …
In the context of a powder-puff parody of Thirties musicals, Ken Russell's harsh, unflattering, ghoulish lighting becomes interesting for its abrasive, corrosive effect. And Twiggy's movie debut is almost as notable as her publicity made claim -- delicate, halting, sweet, charming, and utterly unspoiled by the efforts of her director. …
This, the sixth in Eric Rohmer's series of "Comedies and Proverbs," continues to minister to the Rohmer faithful and does nothing to attract new converts. A sense of déjà vu will start to materialize almost immediately. Everyone is young, slim, attractive, wears bright colors, and talks prosaically and incessantly. Everything …