There’s plenty of French star power in The Closet (Le Placard). This comedy must have been a fairly big deal in the Land of the Heavy Sauce; it stars Daniel Auteuil, Gérard Depardieu and Thierry Lhermitte, and was written and directed by Francis Veber. In U.S. terms, this is roughly…
Back in her early teens, Reese Witherspoon proved herself a terrific actress in her big-screen debut, Man in the Moon, in 1991. Since then, she’s done first-rate work in critical hits like Pleasantville, cult faves like Freeway and Election and underrated gems like Best Laid Plans. So how is it…
Easily the best performance in the last year’s wheezy The Legend of Bagger Vance was by the drawly, plainspoken J. Michael Moncrief, a boy with an old man’s face, as the local kid who idolized Matt Damon and helped Will Smith caddy. The same character, as an adult, also narrated…
Kiss of the Dragon — the latest vehicle for martial arts star Jet Li, a mainland Chinese talent who became a superstar in Hong Kong and has since succumbed to the blandishments of Hollywood — has a little of the best (and a lot of the worst) of Hong Kong…
Even more than the recent Depression-era comedy O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the turn-of-the-century drama Songcatcher is an absolute treasure-trove of old-timey, traditional folk music. Set in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Appalachia in the year 1907, the film follows city-bred musicologist Dr. Lily Penleric (Janet McTeer) as she traverses…
For almost two decades, Stanley Kubrick wanted to make a film based on Brian Aldiss’ 1969 short story “Super-Toys Last All Summer Long,” about a robot child named David who wants only to be “real” so Mummy and Daddy will love him. The late director of 2001: A Space Odyssey…
Sexy Beast, the debut feature from British director Jonathan Glazer, is a riveting, scary and often funny foray into a traditional American genre: the gangster film. Like the western, the gangster film has always been predominantly American turf, but — unlike with the western — every decade or so the…
Those expecting Himalaya to focus upon the beloved traveling carnival ride known for its liberal use of Def Leppard (“Do you wanna go faster?”) are in for a few surprises. For one, this sensuous, exotic film is more like an issue of National Geographic come to life, rich with cultural…
If internal combustion ever becomes obsolete — that is, if the auto industry ever allows internal combustion to become obsolete — whatever will the movies do? Hoofbeats are dramatic, the chug of a steam engine is suspenseful, and the roar of a gasoline-powered vehicle stirs the blood of the self-respecting…
Now here’s a tricky one. Start with a busload of familiar and appealing stars, shacked up together for a couple of weeks in a house in the Hollywood Hills. Assign them their mission: to emulate themselves — sort of — while dutifully reminding us that human relationships can be complicated…
Having recently stolen Shrek as a talking donkey, Eddie Murphy is back in the multiplexes again this summer, this time as a man who can, presumably, talk to donkeys. In the course of Dr. Dolittle 2, in which he plays a veterinarian who can, you know, Talk To The Animals,…
The current release of French director Nicole Garcia’s Place Vendôme — which was nominated for 11 César Awards when it debuted in France three years ago — is yet another sign that the drop-off in French imports that has plagued U.S. screens in recent years is reversing: This is roughly…
In a year inundated with massive movies, it’s a pleasant surprise to note that a truly spectacular adventure has arrived in the form of a Disney cartoon called Atlantis: The Lost Empire.Gushing aside, let us now consider the Atlanteans, the mythic race whom co-directors Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise (Beauty…
It happens every year about this time. Having waited several months, we, the moviegoing public (a good proportion of us, anyway), get all psyched up for the big summer “event” movies. High concepts! Larger-than-life heroes! Great special effects! We go in, and more often than not many of us come…
When he was in his 30s, Ivan Reitman made comedies like a young man. His early movies, among them Stripes and Meatballs and Ghostbusters, were messy, cocky, charming, daffy and restless; they did anything for a laugh, even if that meant dousing John Candy in mud or Bill Murray in…
Lakeboat is a film adaptation of one of David Mamet’s earliest plays. It’s set on one of the title vessels, the broad, flat-bottomed freighters that traverse the Great Lakes, and the characters are the tough-talking crewmen. But it’s not a sailing adventure. It’s the opposite of a sailing adventure.There’s no…
Remember glee? Perhaps not, given our penchant in recent times to chuck giddy hearts aside in favor of being stupid, obnoxious and mean. But hey, it’s all right, because the fizzy, caffeinated beverage known as Baz Luhrmann seeks to re-create this elusive emotion for all of us, in the form…
Pearl Harbor isn’t really a movie at all, but a highlight reel prepared for a Jerry Bruckheimer career retrospective. The film is as impressive and as empty as any the producer has ever made, most of which seem to have been cut and pasted into it. There’s Top Gun: Two…
Time and Tide — the latest action picture from producer/director Tsui Hark, one of the world’s great entertainers — is a compendium of many of the best (and a few of the worst) traits of Hong Kong action cinema. It’s relentlessly visceral, making you feel as if you’ve been shot…
Like nearly all Merchant/Ivory productions, The Golden Bowl, their latest book-to-film adaptation, is a feast for the eyes, with choice real estate, exquisite interior design and dazzling costumes all bathed in a golden light that not only enriches the colors but helps to give the settings a sense of depth…
The somber figure of Ingmar Bergman no longer looms over the film world like a guilty conscience, but the great Swedish director has spawned enough artistic descendants to keep us supplied with thorny philosophical and ethical questions for decades to come. Faithless, the second film that actress Liv Ullmann has…
Kids might well be amused by the frenetic pacing of Shrek, the latest computer-animated film from DreamWorks, which moves so quickly it’s nearly a blur, though they need not get the jokes to enjoy frolicking in the muck (and the maggots) with a green, snaggle-toothed ogre who wants only to…
