Well, somebody sooner or later had to cross the Australian continent. And somebody sooner or later had to make a movie about them. This is it, a hundred and twenty-seven years later, to be exact. The first scene, with a topiary maze illusionistically opening up onto the Outback, is daring …
The first blast of Kon Ichikawa's double-barreled anti-war attack. Where Fires on the Plain (1959) was to take the carnal approach (with its literal and metaphorical cannibalism), this one takes the spiritual, with its penitent Japanese infantryman voluntarily leaving the world of the living and joining that of the dead …
Under Pontecorvo's benevolent but often wishy-washy leadership, the natives on a Portuguese island colony arise in revolutionary fervor. This solemn historical pageant is thrown somewhat out of whack by the hefty presence of Marlon Brando, a willing martyr to Western decadence in the fragrant role of a mercenary Britisher. The …
The Coen brothers revisit their favored stupidity theme: Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, Fargo, The Big Lebowski (that one above all), O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the secondhand Ladykillers, at least the Llewellyn Moss protagonist in No Country for Old Men. Back to the well once more. The placement of this …
First announced under the title of An Alan Smithee Film, it then turned into an actual Alan Smithee film: Alan Smithee being the official Hollywood pseudonym of any director who, for any variety of reasons, has withdrawn his name from a project. Arthur Hiller (who appears in the outtakes at …
Directorial debut of the screenwriter of Babel, 21Grams, Amores Perros, Guillermo Arriaga, firm in the belief that no story is so hokey it can't be saved by being fractured, shattered, reassembled out of order. (The connection between two widely separated time zones would have been easier to make if not …
The Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film of 1994. Not too hard to see why. Russians penitent about their Communist history (the purges of the Thirties, in specific) are bound to be warmly embraced in the West. On their knees and under the lash is how Westerners like them best. …
Nothing that occurs at the inhospitable, blurrily photographed summer house is more horrible to see than Karen Black's and Oliver Reed's uninhibited reactions to what occurs there -- her grotto-mouthed screams and his sweaty, convulsive shudders. With Bette Davis and Burgess Meredith; directed by Dan Curtis.
Daniel Stern the executive producer assigns Daniel Stern the actor a role that blends the Daniel Stern of City Slickers with the Daniel Stern of Home Alone: an innocent fugitive from justice who takes refuge as an imposter scout leader on a camping expedition in the mountains. Quite a workout …
A Labour Party pamphlet come to life (or partway thereto), concerning a case of sexual harassment in a Liverpool boutique, and the lengthy aftermath. Pretty believable, but pretty dreary, too, and not all the fault of Mrs. Thatcher. With Glenda Jackson, John Thaw, and Cathy Tyson; written and directed by …
Touted as a feminine answer to In the Company of Men. Two women at opposite ends of the corporate pecking order -- a stressed exec and a sassy apprentice, who between them do a good deal of drinking and telephoning -- visit a kind of revenge on a hapless male …
Two grown men, Newman and Redford, having fun just like kids, never minding the hard times undergone by bank robbers in the Old West. A fey and frilly Western, sometimes nostalgic and sometimes mythic, and swamped with winsomeness. Directed by George Roy Hill.
The title, besides being the name of an Irish folk song, is a fitting appellation for the young protagonist once he becomes an employee in a butcher shop: a square-faced little carrot-top with the mischievous look of a ventriloquist's dummy. This problem child of an alcoholic father and a suicidal …
If you can accept Demi Moore as a blonde, maybe you can accept her also as a barefooted Carolinian clairvoyant (and meddling matchmaker) transplanted in Greenwich Village. Or maybe not. Her accent is all over the map; and with her new hair, new face, new chest (makeup? plastic surgery? what …
Two engaging young actresses, Natasha Lyonne and Clea DuVall, in an unengaging, smug, heavy-handed, lead-footed satire set at a homosexual-deprogramming facility (girls wear pink, boys blue) called True Directions. With Cathy Moriarty, RuPaul Charles, Bud Cort, Mink Stole; directed by Jamie Babbit.