An ill-timed release, mere months after Whit Stillman's The Last Days of Disco. Written and directed by a starry-eyed Mark Christopher, it purports to grant us entree to the "real" Studio 54, as against Stillman's fictional "composite," and it predictably and conventionally gravitates more toward the "inside" and the "top" …
Paul McGuigan's unsavory anthology of three short stories by Irvine Welsh (author of Trainspotting), combining sordid naturalism and scabrous whimsy. God Himself plays a major part in the first story ("That cunt Nietzsche was wide of the mark when he said that I was dead"), and puts in cameo appearances …
A legacy-of-abuse tragedy with heavy psychologizing and moralizing -- altogether as chilly as its upstate New Hampshire locale during deer-hunting season. It showcases ferociously fine work from Nick Nolte as the figurehead policeman of a sleepy small town, not unlike the Stallone character in Copland, who convinces himself that a …
Japanese travellers to the Next World are detained in a nondescript institutional facility -- a mundane Purgatory -- where they must select one (and only one) memory from their lives to carry with them into eternity. A shaky premise (only one?) is shaken further by the prosaic documentary treatment: talking-heads …
Dark comedy of home security, emotional insecurity, double-dealing, paranoia. Heavy-handedly directed (by Evan Dunsky) and broadly acted by the male leads (David Arquette, Stanley Tucci). With Kate Capshaw and Mary McCormack.
The posthumous swan song of comedian Chris Farley gives no cause for mourning. It is neither good enough nor bad enough for that. Without any question, it constitutes a serious comedown for Christopher Guest, the director of Waiting for Guffman, though perhaps we should remind ourselves that the "mockumentary" on …
Mawkish and sledgehammering cycle-of-violence lesson around a high-school skinhead (Edward Furlong) and the older brother (Edward Norton) who has been his idol and mentor and who now comes out of prison a changed man. In flashback, Norton is afforded a broad platform and a lot of rope, and he spins …
The second fully computer-animated feature, and a significant advance. The illusion of three-dimensionality, with finely sculpted and shaded bodies in cavernous and engulfing space, is quite remarkable. And the nuanced facial expressions, to say nothing of the perfect synchronization of mouth movement and spoken word, suggest an evolutionary leap that …
Iranian film that follows up, rather than re-enacts, the factual case of twin girls who were kept locked at home with their blind mother for twelve years, never let out, until the neighbors alerted the Welfare Department. Because the principals play themselves, the film never loses its air of documentary, …
A high-school senior with an unhealthy interest in the Holocaust recognizes a fellow bus rider as a former concentration-camp commander. (The amazing coincidences don't stop there: the ex-Nazi will later share a hospital room with one of his Jewish prisoners.) The boy, a moral midget, offers his silence in exchange …
Just two months after Earth was threatened by giant comet in Deep Impact, it gets threatened again by giant meteoroid. Too near in time; too distant in tone. The total focus of our attention here, to say nothing of our hopes and our prayers and our desire to identify with …
Lavishly refurbished TV show, and an especially dated one at that: the supercilious British superspies of the late 1960s, illegitimate spawn of 007. Anything goes: a dead ringer for Mrs. Peel, an invisible man, a supervillain in command of the world's weather, anything but a spark of life, a lightness …
Before and after all else, this is simply a sequel, with some of the common symptoms of sequelitis: a swelling of the head, a puffing-up of the body, an overall putting-on of pounds. The critics' exaggeration of the original's modest charms can only have aggravated the situation. (The same director, …