Open-minded examination of the coverage of the Second Gulf War on the Al Jazeera satellite channel. The spokespeople for the Arab news station represent their own viewpoint very well; and as the only critical analysis of their work comes from the likes of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (in press-conference footage), …
The pervasive seediness is pretty well taken care of, in short order, with the haircuts, mustaches, bulbous features, and plastic raincoats of the anti-heroes, these superstars of surveillance, and also with the somber, tinkling musical score of David Shire. The disdainful, sedentary camera directions of Francis Ford Coppola serve chiefly …
The pervasive seediness is pretty well taken care of, in short order, with the haircuts, mustaches, bulbous features, and plastic raincoats of the anti-heroes, these superstars of surveillance, and also with the somber, tinkling musical score of David Shire. The disdainful, sedentary camera directions of Francis Ford Coppola serve chiefly …
Double meaning: the sister of a convicted murderer has complete conviction in his innocence. He may be a ne’er-do-well, but he ne’er did as bad as that. The true case, a DNA exoneration case, serves as an advertisement for the Innocence Project, with a specific plug for Barry Scheck, glamorized …
There are still a few signs of Sam Peckinpah's former authority: the crisp color, the flashy but superficial use of cross-cutting and slow-motion, and one particularly photogenic chase over powdery, unpaved roads. Otherwise, the big-name director is reduced to little more than a glorified traffic cop in this banal interpretation …
There is an oddly unfinished quality about this Mafia comedy, as if director Susan Seidelman had lost interest or control or had got distracted by something else. (Possibly something, in specific, starring Meryl Streep and Roseanne Barr. Something called She-Devil.) Whatever the case, there are scenes here that never get …
Robert Altman tarries a while longer in the Deep South, idly tracing the stereotypical loopiness of the natives. If the movie lacks the pervasive weather of The Gingerbread Man, it is thickly atmospheric all the same, settling into the locale as into an overstuffed easy chair: Holly Springs, Mississippi, at …
Most of it takes place in an out-of-the-way London restaurant nestled at the end of a wind-whipped and smoke-strewn cul-de-sac patrolled by a pack of scavenging dogs: an image of desolation that suggests the most recent visitor thereabouts might well have been the Luftwaffe. The actual best customer and part …
Las Vegas fairy tale, from first-time director Wayne Kramer, full of hand-me-down ideas about the old-school gangster who still believes in busting kneecaps to keep order, the failed showgirl and the tail-for-sale, the poor-man's Sinatra and "the next Harry Connick, Jr.," the changing economic landscape: "There comes a time to …
True story poured into a comedic jello mold. It tells of the first Jamaican bobsled team, who in 1988 qualified for the Calgary Olympics, and went on from there, outside the scope of the movie, to pitch Miller's Lite. You come out of the theater knowing less about the sport …
A Roger Rabbit for the underground-comics consumer. In other words, the graphics are uniformly ugly, except for maybe the Vargas Girl called Holli Would, who is no worse than cocktail-napkin conventional. And the premise is a thorough mess: "interworld travel" between Las Vegas, Nevada, and the comic-book metropolis which an …
An anomaly, maybe an antilogy: a Sylvester Stallone film for critics. Written and directed by James Mangold (of the low-budget independent Heavy), it is a Sidney Lumet-style expose of police misconduct, in which the action star sets out as a resigned sideline-sitter, an overweight wannabe cop, hampered with one bad …
By-the-book buddy comedy about black and white NYPD partners whose apparently unrelated cases involving Mexican drug runners and a stolen baseball card conveniently dovetail. The sneering and snarling bad guys are played murderously straight, but they’re still funnier than the smirky white (Bruce Willis, on automatic pilot) and buffoonish black …
The police set up a stakeout in a suburban residence, and the comic machinery starts to creak and groan: the crusty cop goes all gooey inside, and the timid family man regains some respect. Handsome photography by Gerry Fisher (handsomer than warranted), and Jack Palance, while looking as if he …