Documentary-style drama about the real-life, high-risk team of photojournalists (two Pulitzers amongst them) working in the final days of Apartheid South Africa. There is a good deal of romanticizing over the plight of the photographer, at least in his most guerilla form, and the film raises some ethical questions regarding …
A loosen-up lesson taught by two former groupies, one now the strait-laced wife of a Phoenix attorney, the other still a disciple of Sex, Drugs, Rock-and-Roll. (Or if not drugs, at least cigarettes and rum-and-Cokes.) The comic contrivances cannot compel attention as much as the documentary concern with Goldie Hawn's …
Bangkok tedious, too. An introspective hit man (“I’d like to meet someone, but it’s tough when you live out of a suitcase”) trains a pickpocket as his successor, and moons over a beautiful mute pharmacist, on his last big job before retirement. The Pang Brothers’ English-language remake of their own …
Australian stock-market thriller (if that's not an oxymoron): a lot of looking at computer screens, or at the faces of people looking at computer screens. The tricksy plotting is a little like David Mamet without the ear and without the rhythm. David Wenham, Anthony LaPaglia, Sibylla Budd; written and directed …
“Based on a true story,” or anyway on a true bank job, the knockover of Lloyds Bank, Baker Street, London, 1971. The filmmakers, headed by the veteran Australian-born director Roger Donaldson and screenwriters Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, have taken advantage of the cloak of mystery that still surrounds …
Kooky-kinky crime comedy about a modern-day Billy the Kid who holes up with his loot in Room 222 at the Heartbreak Hotel and entertains a monotonous parade of weirdos. Lisa Bonet takes first prize, if not the cake, as a scrupulously honest, sotto voce, tattooed call girl. With Patrick Dempsey, …
Set on a remote island off the west coast of Ireland, lifelong friends Pádraic (Colin Farrell) and Colm (Brendan Gleeson) find themselves at an impasse when Colm unexpectedly puts an end to their friendship. A stunned Pádraic, aided by his sister Siobhán (Kerry Condon) and troubled young islander Dominic (Barry …
Ticklingly unkind portraiture of a couple of ghetto vulgarians from Atlanta (gold teeth, bear-claw nails, etc. ), soul-food waitresses plopped down improbably in Beverly Hills. The obligatory development of plot, character, Honest Sentiment, crowds out the fun. The title (FYI) abbreviates Black American Princesses. With Halle Berry, Natalie Desselle, Martin …
A sort of street-corner doomsday tirade, though strictly nonverbal, and very much in the mode of Koyaanisqatsi. (The title, according to the press notes, is a Sufi word meaning "blessing" or "breath" or "essence of life.") Half an hour or so of big-wide-wonderful-world footage is followed by over half an …
Another controlled outpouring of lyricism, a dribble here, a splash there, from the maker of The Color of Paradise, Majid Majidi. The first half -- or more -- is filled with the sights and sounds of a construction site in urban Iran, with no gussying-up through photographic frill or musical …
In their heyday, studios employed dozens of comics, screenwriters, and animators, whose job it was to take an active interest in cranking out absurdist comedy. Most of them did so without overstepping the characters they worked so hard to create. Television had long ago reached the point where crazy comedy …