You can bet that at one point or another, some executive wanted the title of this long-awaited nonsequel to A Fish Called Wanda to be A Lemur Called Rollo (for the story does include such a character). While the latter wouldn’t have been the most commercial of titles, neither is…

Lars von Trier is, perhaps consciously and defiantly, one of the least commercial brilliant directors in the world. His best-known movie, the 1991 Zentropa, and his earlier The Element of Crime both open with hypnotic voice-overs, seemingly daring us to succumb to sleep before the credits are even over. Nonetheless,…

Ever since his first film, 1979’s Real Life, Albert Brooks has occupied his own little niche in American cinema. While his old buddy Rob Reiner quickly moved from the small, quirky, and wonderful This Is Spinal Tap to slick mainstream films, the 49-year-old Brooks (n. Albert Einstein) has released a…

New Line’s release of Jackie Chan’s First Strike is salvo number three in Chan’s invasion of America. (Miramax’s version of the 1991 Operation Condor, the last film on which the star also took a director’s credit, is due out in May.) Like its predecessors, Rumble in the Bronx and Supercop,…

Now and again, as I sit here on my power perch–having just praised some pleasing cinematic trifle with a mot so bon it could singlehandedly vault the producers into new tax brackets or having characterized some hack with invective withering enough to permanently brand his pathetic career like some Puritan…

Wes Craven, creator of the Nightmare on Elm Street series and writer-director of its two best entries (the first and the last), works whispering distance from the commercial Hollywood mainstream, just far enough to allow for more rude wit and less comfortable resolution than most studio product. His films open…

The stodgy works of Ismail Merchant and James Ivory, makers of Howard’s End and Jefferson in Paris, have encouraged the sad notion that costume dramas must be leaden and respectable. Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility helped rehabilitate the form; and now Patrice Leconte’s Ridicule ventilates the stifled form with yet…

It’s Thanksgiving 1972, and a year after returning to his upper-middle-class Texas home, Vietnam vet Jeremy Collier (Emilio Estevez) is still reeling from his war experiences. Living at home and listlessly taking a few community college courses, he has grown only more alienated from normal society. His mother, Maurine (Kathy…