A too deeply submerged mystery movie by Michael Crichton. It's evident immediately that something funny is going on, but it takes exasperatingly long to find out just what. Mind-control through TV commercials turns out to be Crichton's primary bone to pick -- a well-picked bone, of course, long before he …
Albert Brooks, director, writer, star, returns to top form, and for the first time since his first film, Real Life, literally portrays "himself," though one would hope not altogether accurately. The idea of the film is self-evidently an inspired one. The U.S. State Department, hoping to win the hearts and …
Case history of a singles'-bar swinger, chronicled in full from Irish Catholic virginity to Sexual Revolution martyrdom. Richard Brooks, the writer-director, crams the movie with teasers of various types and of dubious merit. He noncommittally offers up several large clues to the heroine's self-destructive, self-debasing nature, plus, for added "psychological …
For Shakespeare's Richard III, to be exact. But this is Reader's Digest Condensed Shakespeare, Cliff Notes Shakespeare, classroom Shakespeare: acted-out highlights of the text, annotated with scholarly commentary (Gielgud, Branagh, Vanessa Redgrave, Derek Jacobi, and assorted academics who require some identification), cast rehearsals, man-on-the-street interviews, and the private discussions and …
A New York hustler, down ten thousand dollars to angry mobsters, takes his roommate, confidant, and conscience to Las Vegas to try to dig himself out of the hole. Not quite a character study -- it doesn't probe that deep; nothing more, really, than behavioral mimicry. And Jon Voight, who …
A documentary through a series of intimate sessions with psychics and their clients, from writer/director Lana Wilson.
An optometrist offering free eye-exams slowly infiltrates the mob chain of command to confront and hold accountable the men responsible for the brutal murder of his brother. What sounds like a pitch for a second-rate HBO series is in reality the first of two intended companion pieces to Joshua Oppenheimer’s …
Respectable directing debut by the veteran screenwriter of The Interpreter, Minority Report, Out of Sight, Get Shorty, Malice, etc., Scott Frank. Suffering brain damage in a car wreck four years earlier, still having trouble with his memory and his "sequencing" and his "disinhibition," writing memos to himself like the protagonist …
A cute-baby comedy with a twist: the voice of Bruce Willis, that weak and easily strained instrument, supplies the inner thoughts of the infant, starting in the womb ("Hey! Yo! Let's get a little apple juice down here, huh?"). One cannot say with total certainty that it was absolutely impossible …
Seamy as distinct from seamless blend of live action and animation, following in the footsteps (or the cattle trail) of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Space Jam, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, et al. Under the direction of Joe Dante, a dependable maker of messes, it pays homage to the …
A nifty idea botched by writer, director Rian Johnson's (Brick) unnecessarily dense plotting. (A calculatedly confusing storyline does not a good movie make.) Tickets should come with a road map (or a comic book adaptation) wrapped around them to help guide audiences through this. In a dystopian universe that resembles …
A documentary that explores the relationship between golfer and caddy. Bill Murray narrates and Jason Baffa directs.
Odd-couple cop comedy. Dan Aykroyd's bouts of ratiocination are somewhat remindful of classic detectives in the Ellery Queen and Sherlock Holmes mold. But those bouts are actually only one bout. (The second such bout is a joke.) His fits of split-personality — doing the voices of Popeye, Pee-wee Herman, the …
The youngest son in an Italian family struggles with whether or not to come out of. Italian comedy film directed by Ferzan Özpetek, who also co-wrote the script with Ivan Cotroneo. Starring Riccardo Scamarcio, Alessandro Preziosi, Nicole Grimaudo, Lunetta Savino, Ennio Fantastichini and Ilaria Occhini.