High-grade Hitchcock knockoff by Stanley Donen, with Cary Grant on hand to supply pedigree. Audrey Hepburn, composer Henry Mancini, cinematographer Charles Lang, designer Jean D'Eaubonne, and the city of Paris all add their share of glamour. With Walter Matthau, James Coburn, George Kennedy.
Anglophilia on the rampage. The factual story concerns two rival British runners, one a Christian (and a charmer of an actor: Ian Charleson), and the other a Jew, who appear to be heading toward a showdown in the 1924 Olympics until Fate (not always the best plotter) finds a way …
Tim Burton's consolation prize for losing out on the Lemony Snicket concession (surely that had his name written on it) is a remake of the fractured fairy tale by Roald Dahl, a spindly little framework freighted with production values, CG imagery, and dark dense bordello color, like some scrawny four-foot …
A poor little rich boy, drummed out of every private school in a reachable radius, shows up undiplomatically for his first day at public school in a blazer and tie, toting an attaché case, glad-handing like a Presidential candidate. But after a beating or two, he attains his uppermost goal …
The overhaul of the late-Seventies TV series is, in essence, M:I-2 plus T&A.; The Mission: Impossible element comes clear in the opening sequence when, by and by, the Steadicam gives up roving the aisles of an airborne jetliner and settles down in front of an African-garbed LL Cool J, who, …
What would probably like to be thought of as a big goof, or alternatively a big boner, must instead be regarded as a big botch. The bigger-headedness that results from the big hit of 2000 is not an attractive feature, and in truth none of the three Angels -- Drew …
Sentimental, even goopy, ghost story about a promising young yachtsman whose near-death car wreck leaves him with the ability to See Dead People, most particularly and regularly, every day at sunset for a game of catch, the adoring younger brother who perished in the passenger seat. (The first time he’s …
Didactic poli-sci lesson on How the System Works, entertainingly illustrated by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and director Mike Nichols. The titular war is the one between the Soviets and the Afghans in the Reagan era, and Charlie Wilson is a nonfictional Texas congressman (played with supreme complacency by Tom Hanks) who, …
The title is colorless on purpose. But by the end -- and quite precisely in the meaningful curtain line -- it acquires a richness of shade and tint. The heroine will by then, in the common phrase, have shown her true colors. An old-fashioned, grandly romantic WWII espionage thriller (vaguely …
Shot-on-video indie, written and directed by Eric Byler, takes an interest in the unstereotyped private life of a taciturn Asian-American auto mechanic ("Specializing in German cars"), an area of existence into which Hollywood hasn't much inclination to shine a klieg light. It uncovers mystery and intrigue within its mundanity. Jacqueline …
E.B. White's barnyard children's story, a friendship fable about the promise of a spider to save a spring pig from the smokehouse. Sweet sentiment soured by the cacophonous Cultural Diversity of the animal voices (British sheep, Southern cows, African-American geese, New York City rat, Julia Roberts spider, and so on) …
Satyajit Ray pursues his interest in Women's Issues into the past century, with an autobiographical Tagore story about a neglected wife's gradual attachment to a scholarly cousin (the Tagore figure). The pursuit, as usual, is a cautious and circumspect one, maybe a little too much so, and the wife as …
A distinguished name in movies: Arthur Ripley's The Chase, 1946; Arthur Penn's The Chase, 1966. Until now. The chase itself — cop cars after a hijacked BMW — wastes no time getting started; and the quick zooming, panning, cutting visual style is designed to encourage the viewer to follow the …
Conventional service comedy about two Navy Shore Patrolmen, a gravel-voiced veteran named Rock (Tom Berenger) and a swaggering young scammer on his final day before discharge (William McNamara, a ringer for Ricky Nelson), who are assigned to transport a double-D-cup prisoner (Erika Eleniak) bent on escape. The biggest joke of …
The third installment, after Clerks and Mallrats, in the "New Jersey Trilogy" of Kevin Smith, and easily the most ambitious and daring of the three. This is especially measurable in Smith's efforts to broaden his range into areas of the sincere, the sentimental, the downright sappy -- suspiciously similar to …