Holy moley! Yet another version of Hamlet? Will they never stop? Ah, well, at least Michael Almereyda’s new adaptation is one of those really different takes on the venerable play. While the last two widely seen versions — the 1990 Mel Gibson/Franco Zeffirelli film and the four-hour-plus 1996 Kenneth Branagh/Kenneth…
About nine years ago, in a humble Redondo Beach nightclub, urbane British folk singer Billy Bragg reappraised 20th-century politics — as is often his socialist wont — by means of an intriguing correlation. Might it be, he postulated, that contemporaries Leon Trotsky and Harlan Sanders were not merely striking doppelgängers,…
To begin, let us discuss puking. You know, upchucking, barfing, yacking, Technicolor yawning, blowing cookies, driving the porcelain bus, screaming at one’s shoes, and, for you Aussies, chundering.Always unpleasant — and yet usually a great relief to a queasy gut — a nice vomit can be provoked by just about…
I never imagined the day would come when I would cringe to see Ralph Fiennes on screen. Not only is he shamelessly good-looking, but, whether playing the brooding, remote figure doomed by love in The English Patient or the bloodless commandant of a Nazi death camp in Schindler’s List, he…
In the new Jim Carrey farce, Me, Myself & Irene, the rubber-faced comedian plays a meek Rhode Island state trooper named Charlie whose aggressions are so pent-up that they finally have to break out in the form of a second personality called “Hank.”Where Charlie silently endures potty-mouthed curses from little…
The title of the 1971 Gordon Parks detective movie Shaft worked as a double-entendre — when it presented Richard Roundtree’s “black private dick” John Shaft as a superstud at whom women of every race threw themselves, it wasn’t hard to believe. The joke changes when the name is given to…
So, when was the last time you shared a woman with your dad? No, not your mom — don’t be gross. You know, just some woman that you and your dad both dug, who perked you up a bit. It’s probably been a while, huh? What? Never? Really? Well, that…
It’s the year 3028, and man . . . is an endangered species! (Haven’t we heard that somewhere before, like last month?)But this time around, the threat is a little more intimidating than those effeminate, Xenu-worshiping Conehead psychologists in platform boots. The villains in Fox’s new animated spectacular Titan A.E…
Before we see anything in Croupier, the new film from director Mike Hodges and screenwriter Paul Mayersberg, we hear the grainy whir of the ball spinning around the rim of a roulette wheel. When the image of the wheel appears, the sound drops out, to be replaced by the affectless…
Blink — or, more likely, doze — and you will miss it, this tiny, beautiful oasis in the middle of an otherwise barren wasteland. For a moment — a precious, frustrating moment to be treasured in a movie that flaunts its disposability — Nicolas Cage reminds us how good an…
Merchant/Ivory Productions has long been America’s quintessential purveyor of classy “literary” films. At its best, the team of director James Ivory and Ismail Merchant has given us A Room With a View (1986) and The Remains of the Day (1993); at its worst, Slaves of New York (1989) and Jefferson…
The moody, feverish images that fill Running Free are so exquisite they almost make up for the film’s disastrous auditory misstep: the decision to cast Lukas Haas as the voice of Lucky, the chestnut foal that narrates this unusual adventure story. A cross between Nicholas Roeg’s Walkabout and Jean-Jacques Annaud’s…
I’ve heard ex-smokers talk about the after-dinner jones, how they hunger for that ritual cigarette, the sweet inhalation of tar and nicotine that tops off a great meal in a way nothing else can. So they settle for the other half of their ritual, a fine brandy or the slight…
Early on in Mission: Impossible 2 (or M:I-2, as the confident Paramount now calls it), hero Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) complains to his boss about his new assignment: “It’s going to be difficult.””It’s not mission difficult, Mr. Hunt,” the boss icily replies, “it’s mission impossible. “Difficult’ should be a walk…
Shanghai Noon is hardly as enervating as its trailer, which has such dreary sight gags and woeful jokes that it begs you to stay far away from any theater in which this film is screening. (Sample: A horse that stays by sitting . . . just like a dog.)But don’t…
“Industrial-strength boredom” is a vicious term to unload on anybody — friend, foe or former actress. Considering the lingering discomfort it inspires, one must beware of its impact, even around a seemingly invulnerable producer returning to the screen to melt our hearts in yet another variation on the emotional doppelgänger…
Dinosaurs used to be cool. In 1969, if you had asked me what I thought was the best movie ever made, I would likely have told you that it was Valley of Gwangi, in which a group of cowboys find a gully full of leftover dinosaurs, animated by Ray Harryhausen,…
Despite the title East Is East, the big message of this flavorful domestic memoir is really that West is West. In the tug of war between East and West for a soul, East, the film suggests, may hold out for a while through a combination of nostalgia, pride, national resentment…
When stars get popular enough (or win enough Oscars), they begin to get to call their own shots. Thus we have The Big Kahuna, the debut release of Kevin Spacey’s production company. Kahuna also marks the film debut of stage director John Swanbeck and screenwriter Roger Rueff. And, boy, can…
Woody Allen is back on screen in Small Time Crooks, a bittersweet comedy that in many ways could have been lifted straight from the ’30s. For the most part, it’s Woody Allen Lite, which is not at all a bad thing. While one doesn’t want to penalize Allen for his…
“I came to it late on–17” says Jimi Mistry of acting, and makes his interviewer feel roughly the age of a mummy. The young Brit, who did “most of my growing up in Manchester” before attending the Birmingham School of Speech and Dramatic Arts, made his film debut in 1996…
Digital video is poised to become a major factor in commercial filmmaking, and Time Code, the new feature from Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas), could be used as a commercial for the process, which is its greatest point of interest. The movie is not so much an intriguing story as…
