The City of Lost Children begins with one of the more creepy dream sequences I’ve ever seen in a movie. A child sits in a crib in a glowingly lighted room that’s decorated for Christmas in warm Victoriana. Sure enough, Santa emerges from the fireplace; and then, seconds later, another…
Jimmy the Saint is a suave, gentlemanly reformed gangster trying to make it as a legit Denver businessman. His firm records on video–in something like the manner of a dating service–the final advice and messages of its aged or ailing clients, so that they can continue being of use to…
Except for Arizona as a setting, the current film Broken Arrow has little in common with the like-titled movie of 1950, that wonderful James Stewart-Jeff Chandler Western directed by Delmer Daves. The only other point of agreement might be their inversion of the reactionary values of their respective genres–Daves’ film…
It doesn’t take long for Actors Theatre of Phoenix to offend women, the religious, conspiracy theorists and believers in extraterrestrials during its current production of Some Things You Need to Know Before the World Ends (A Final Evening With the Illuminati). Coming across like a bad version of The Hunchback…
Georgia has been racking up the raves, and I wish I could more wholeheartedly join in. There’s no disputing that it has some forceful, occasionally even harrowing, passages, or that the performances of its lead actresses are very fine at times. But there’s something too self-assured about the film–the central…
As with Philadelphia and Salvador, the title of director Michael Hoffman’s film Restoration is meant to have a double meaning. The setting of the film is England during the 1660s–the Restoration period. But the film is also about the restoration of the hero’s soul. Said hero is Robert Merivel (Robert…
Chances are you’ve never heard of John Pierson, but if you make a point of reading the Film section, chances are you’d enjoy his book. Pierson has spent the last decade working in the independent-film industry, under the job title “producer’s representative.” This roughly translates as “the guy who gets…
The novel Cry, the Beloved Country, written by a white South African schoolteacher named Alan Paton, was published in 1948, the year apartheid became official in South Africa. The story concerns two elderly fathers, one Zulu and one white, who become linked by tragedy–the former’s son is charged with the…
With the exception of the Western, the vampire movie may just be the most durable of all genres. It’s produced everything from cinematic masterpieces like Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr (1932) and F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) to indelible pop-culture classics like Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931) to lesser interpretations without number. Just…
Sometimes it’s difficult to decide which is more annoying–a fluffy Brit period piece or a depressing Brit period piece. Carrington, to its credit, isn’t fluff. It’s a tough, solid piece of work, intelligently written and directed by Christopher Hampton. It’s also excellently acted. In most respects, it’s hard to fault…
Writer-director Tim Robbins’ Dead Man Walking is about a man awaiting execution, and the suffering and hope and reconciliation connected to his crime. The heroine, Sister Helen Prejean (Susan Sarandon), is a New Orleans nun who counsels Matthew Poncelet (Sean Penn), a death-row inmate at Angola State Prison. Despite a…
Terry Gilliam, director of the apocalyptic scifi thriller 12 Monkeys, is a conflicted figure. He has the sense and sensibility of a grand English eccentric, yet he’s American. He is full of wonder and mystical awe, yet he also seems a sociological pessimist. His work mixes a childlike humor and…
Filmmaker Jason Bloom has nothing but the highest praise for the star of his first feature: Pauly Shore. On the basis of his award-winning student film, Irving (“a black comedy about a Jewish vampire”), Bloom was brought aboard a feature project called BioDome, a spoof inspired by Biosphere2. “We planned…
Ted the Bellhop (Tim Roth) is having a rough first night at the decrepit-looking old L.A. hotel where he works. It’s New Year’s Eve, and he’s the only bellhop on duty. In one room, a coven of chic Wiccans is preparing for some sort of pagan ceremony. In another, a…
It’s no exaggeration to say that Kenneth Branagh has made Shakespeare a player in the movies. Branagh’s two Shakespearean films as adapter/director/star–a rousing Henry V and a sunny, blissfully humane Much Ado About Nothing–transcended the Classics Illustrated style of Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet. Branagh’s films were in no way…
Time once again for the film reviewer’s grand annual act of arbitrary self-indulgence–as opposed to his petite weekly acts of arbitrary selfindulgence: the Top10 movies of the year. Every year, about this time, we bemoan what a dismal year it was for movies, and yet, every year, tallying up what…
Waiting to Exhale has a phony gloss that makes it feel faintly retro. All those impeccably dressed actors ambling around Phoenix locations like Arizona Biltmore, declaiming their emotions in smooth ‘n’ silky tones–it’s rather like a two-hour commercial for Martini & Rossi. Based on a popular novel by Terry McMillan,…
Throughout Oliver Stone’s Nixon, the title character, played by Anthony Hopkins, interacts a la Forrest Gump with historical figures like JFK and Mao. Stone’s view of Richard Nixon is a negative-image version of Gump–a darker misfit traveling through the American scene in this century’s second half, turning history topsy-turvy. The…
It’s been a good year in the movies for Jane Austen, and who deserves it more? A month ago, we had a good, workmanlike version of her final novel, Persuasion; and, by far the best Hollywood comedy of the year, Amy Heckerling’s Clueless is a free adaptation of Emma. Austen’s…
Jumanji, in the film of the same name, is a magical board game in which each roll of the dice conjures up some new terror from the Jungian jungle of childhood imagination. Once you have commenced play on the seductive-looking board, you must continue to the end, despite the attempts…
Father of the Bride Part II: Directed by Charles Shyer; with Steve Martin, Diane Keaton, Kimberly Williams and Martin Short. Rated PG. Is it my imagination, or do the soundtracks of every movie from Touchstone Pictures include a faux-Leon Redbone vocalist crooning “The Sunny Side of the Street,” or some…
In Wild Bill, wildness has taken its toll on Bill. As played by Jeff Bridges in this shifting fever-dream from director Walter Hill, Bill, though not yet 40, is a grumpy old man–mean, dim, unimaginative, indignant over his legend. He’s a short-fused galoot, and a more-or-less heartless killer. Yet he…
