Ira Levin succinctly defined the stage thriller as “the one-set, five-character moneymaker.” That’s the basic design of Faithful, Paul Mazursky’s film of Chazz Palminteri’s play, adapted for the screen by and co-starring the author. Apart from a few expendable bit players, there are five characters and, except for a few…
At the end of Sgt. Bilko, there’s a gag title thanking the U.S. Army “for its total lack of cooperation” in the making of the film. Presumably, the Army felt it couldn’t very well officially sanction a movie in which the hero was a gleeful, unrepentantly corrupt master sergeant who…
A Coen brothers movie wouldn’t be a Coen brothers movie if it didn’t take a snide view of its characters, and the oddball filmmaking team’s latest, Fargo, is no exception. The lads dearly love a protagonist they can humiliate, and the contempt they show for Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy)…
The intense need of so many adopted children to connect with their biological families can be puzzling to those of us not in their shoes. Reengaging with the people who gave you up as a baby has the potential to damage one’s link with the people who then took you…
In Two Much, Antonio Banderas plays a financially strapped rascal of a Miami art gallery owner who poses as twin brothers–one brainy, one a smooth operator–in order to romance two rich, gorgeous sisters (Daryl Hannah and Melanie Griffith). His character’s name is “Arturo Dodge,” which may give you an idea…
If you’re planning to see Executive Decision, you may wish to stop reading this for now, as I’m going to reveal a significant plot development within the next couple of paragraphs. I don’t do this to spoil anyone’s fun–I don’t think it will–but because I think the twist isn’t a…
No genre should ever be written off completely. Just when you think there’s no room for any more hipster crime films of the Tarantino stripe, along comes Bottle Rocket, a crazy and wonderful little picture that reinvents caper comedy by bouncing its conventions off real life. This startling feature debut…
The birdcage has one of the better opening shots in recent movies. To the accompaniment of “We Are Family,” the camera comes hurtling in over the ocean at night toward a glittering Florida skyline, flies over the beach, straight up to the front door of the title nightclub, and then…
Canadian director Patricia Rozema’s sweet lesbian romance When Night Is Falling begins with the heroine, Camille, coming home to find her lovely little dog missing. She goes looking for him, and finds his pitiful, limp form lying in an alleyway. Unable to bear the thought of burying him yet, she…
Joe (Michael Maloney), a long-out-of-work London actor, is so hard-up to feel good about his career that he decides to take a sort of last stand against failure. He borrows a small stake from his agent (Joan Collins) to stage a low-budget Christmas production, starring himself, at a church in…
While watching Unforgettable, the third feature from that startling spinner of contemporary noir director John Dahl, I thought of the same cheap crack that every film critic in the country will make if unimpressed by the film: It’s forgettable. Indeed, it is not especially memorable. Certainly it isn’t upto the…
Julia Roberts plays the title role in Mary Reilly, roughly the bazillionth film to retell Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.Hyde (see the related story on page 62). This one, from a novel by Valerie Martin, takes this apparently inexhaustible tale from a woman’s point…
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde began life when Robert Louis Stevenson, living in Edinburgh and broke, wrote the story as a potboiler. It’s said that the original draft so horrified his wife that he burned it and then–in a fit of commercial savvy–rewrote it. He structured the story as a…
Although his film career prior to Richard III has consisted largely of forgettable supporting roles in films such as The Shadow, The Keep and Last Action Hero, Sir Ian McKellen has been one of the leading lights of the British classical stage since the early 1960s. Acclaimed in most of…
Jackie Chan is the Richard Clayderman of movie stars–he’s popular all over the world, and a cult favorite even in this country, but for the mainstream American audience he needs a letter of introduction. For Clayderman, that letter was the TV ads for his albums; for Chan, star of dozens…
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…
