Feminist hell. The wife of a Talmudic scholar in the extreme-Orthodox section of modern Jerusalem has given him no offspring after ten years of marriage. And: "The only task of a daughter of Israel is to bring children into the world." Divorce is mandated. (Surely not womandated.) In a subplot, …
Takeshi Kitano forsakes the crime genre for a deadpan road comedy about a mere reprobate (idler, gambler, brawler) who guides a small boy on a summer-vacation search for his long-lost mother. In his on-screen persona, Beat Takeshi, he is still a bit of a roughie if not a full-fledged toughie …
Gruesome but unconcernedly lighthearted monster movie featuring a thirty-foot Asian crocodile who has somehow migrated to backwoods Maine. The dialogue, by the TV writer-producer David E. Kelley, has some snap and crackle, and Bridget Fonda is especially funny as a paleontologist who has no field experience but is not hesitant …
The comedy that scandalized Mexico! Mexico, if the ad copy can be believed, must be easily scandalized. A heavy-handed satire of the ruling political party, set discreetly -- to soften the blows -- fifty years in the past and in a puny backwards pueblo. The blows will make themselves felt, …
The title refers not to the night before today, but to the last night ever. At midnight, the world is scheduled to come to an end, never mind how or why. That's simply a given. The characters all accept it. There is no struggle against the inevitable. There is only …
Overblown anecdote about a shipboard foundling (found at the turn of the century and hence christened "1900") who never leaves the transatlantic liner throughout all his days, despite an untaught pianistic prowess, in styles ranging from Late Romantic to Impressionist to boogie-woogie ("When you don't know what it is, it's …
Barry Levinson goes back to Baltimore, back to the setting of his Diner and Avalon, back to the Fifties, back to the bygone days of school prayer, segregation, and striptease with pasties, in order to remember what it was like to find out that the whole world was not Jewish. …
Overserious, underfunny prison comedy about a pair of bickersome New York blacks who are railroaded on a murder charge in Mississippi in the early Thirties. (Director Ted Demme, who made the independent Monument Avenue, will not have to turn in his Concerned Citizen card.) Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence begin …
A John Sayles film, not to be confused with (much less to eclipse) the same-named Vietnam-era soap opera about POW wives, directed by Mark Robson. This one starts out with the standard Sayles pitch, strong on human interest, supported by sociological and geographical interest, and delivered with the familiar blend …
Modestly budgeted revenge tale (somewhat thin, hollow, tinny sound) about a British ex-con, just out of prison after a nine-year hitch, who comes to L.A., tossing around uncomprehended slang such as "nicked" and "scarpered," to look into his daughter's death. The resurrection of the Terence Stamp character from Kenneth Loach's …
A crime farce about separate but not necessarily opposing groups of felons on a chain-reaction collision course in London's East End. And a prime piece of evidence of the music-video-ization of movies. Everything in it is just for show, most of all the convoluted, contrived, and confusing plotline. Even with …
A crime farce about separate but not necessarily opposing groups of felons on a chain-reaction collision course in London's East End. And a prime piece of evidence of the music-video-ization of movies. Everything in it is just for show, most of all the convoluted, contrived, and confusing plotline. Even with …
After the extravagant acclaim for Leaving Las Vegas, Mike Figgis appeared to take leave of his senses with One Night Stand, and he appears to have still not found his way back to them, with this jumbled think-piece in which a black Adam and blond Eve roam around a butterscotch …
Addressed to "Dearest," signed by "Yours," and found between the cushions of a bookstore sofa, the typewritten billet-doux triggers an older-woman-younger-man affair, and other misunderstandings. The locale is called Loblolly-by-the-Sea, an accurate indicator of the general level of tweeness. Blythe Danner, without any old-age makeup, plays the mother of Kate …