Pretentiousness masquerading as profundity; self-indulgence masquerading as art. The Loss of Sexual Innocence, the dreadful new film from writer-director Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas, One Night Stand), joins the ranks of the worst films ever made. OK, it’s a statement that may, on the surface, seem harsh and heartless; but…

Lauren Hutton may not be the best actress in the world, but she sure has sex appeal. And she has a nice ability to mock her sexiness at the same time she is playing to it, which is a trick not every actress can pull off. In Just a Little…

David Mamet–famous for his in-your-face characters, brutal and frequently raunchy dialogue, and deliberate, staccato prose about, ya know, dat thing–would seem an unlikely choice to write and direct a screen adaptation of British playwright Terence Rattigan’s genteel drama about injustice. But the Pulitzer Prize-winning author (for Glengarry Glen Ross), whose…

Even English actresses of a certain age have a difficult time finding good roles, so it’s understandable that Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, and Joan Plowright might jump at the chance to star in Tea With Mussolini, Franco Zeffirelli’s new film about a group of English expatriates living in Florence during…

Director Garry Marshall (Pretty Woman, Beaches) has always tended toward unrealistically feel-good movies, and The Other Sister is no exception. Billed as “a love story for the romantically challenged,” it concerns a mentally handicapped young woman (Juliette Lewis) struggling for independence from her overprotective mother (Diane Keaton). With the exception…

Directed by Walter Salles (1995’s Foreign Land), the Brazilian film Central Station concerns the relationship between a homeless 9-year-old boy and the insensitive, acerbic woman who reluctantly agrees to help him find his father. Winner of the Golden Bear for Best Film at the 1998 Berlin Film Festival (as well…

Given the manipulative tendencies of many mainstream pictures, Stepmom easily could have slipped into a sticky morass of sentimentality and melodrama. Instead, it proves a genuinely affecting movie that approaches its adult themes with intelligence, maturity, and rare authenticity. The film stars Susan Sarandon as Jackie, a divorced mother of…

British actress Jane Horrocks is thrice-gifted: She can act, she can sing, and she can sing like Judy Garland–and like Shirley Bassey, Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich, and a host of other legendary performers. Horrocks’ ability to mimic the singing and speaking voices of these artists lies at the heart of…

Even students of English history may have trouble sorting out the palace intrigues and intra-governmental conspiracies that fill Elizabeth, the handsome new production about Queen Elizabeth I’s ascension to the British throne in 1558. With the bewitching Australian actress Cate Blanchett (last year’s Oscar and Lucinda) in the title role,…

Well, now we know why the term “bored to death” was invented. Meet Joe Black takes an interesting idea–Death assumes human form and comes to earth to learn about human existence–and reduces it to a flat, uninspired, interminably slow movie. Not only slow but long: a full three hours. Produced…

A riveting but darkly disturbing thriller, Apt Pupil isn’t easy to sit through. The subject matter itself proves deeply unsettling, while two brief acts of sadism are so horrifying as to be unwatchable. Yet this brutal film borders on the brilliant. Beautifully structured and edited, with a chilling central performance…

Leelee Sobieski is a mouthful of a name (40 years ago, studio moguls would have made her change it to something short and unassuming), but get used to it, because the young actress behind it is going to be getting a lot of attention. She almost single-handedly carries A Soldier’s…

How vulnerable children are! And how wounding life can be. The Thief, a Russian film set in the post-World War II Stalinist era, was one of five nominees vying for last year’s Academy Award as the Best Foreign Language Film. (It lost to Character.) Written and directed by Pavel Chukhrai…

The idea of destiny–especially the notion that two people are fated to meet and fall in love–is a load of crap, but a surprising number of people buy into it. Probably for that reason it has proven to be a fairly popular component in movie romances, City of Angels and…

The feature directorial debut of writer-director Theresa Connelly is a complete misfire. What is meant to be a somewhat farcical, but also fairytale-like, midsummer night’s sex comedy instead ends up a tedious, uninvolving affair, burdened with a slim premise, grating characters, and poorly realized humor. Clearly a heartfelt project for…

The Walt Disney Company has a smart and highly profitable business strategy: Re-release the studio’s proven hits every seven years or so, thereby reaching a new generation of kids–and making another tidy bundle of dollars in the process. Or the Mouse House just remakes its classic films–see, or don’t, last…

The winds that sweep across the Sahara kick up ferocious sandstorms. Dunes change shape by the hour, flying particles blind the eye, and all sense of direction and reason is lost. In such disorienting surroundings, reality and hallucination converge, and the most inexplicable, unimaginable events can occur. Passion in the…

“In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines, lived 12 little girls in two straight lines. They left the house at half past nine, in two straight lines in rain or shine. The smallest one was Madeline.” If these words don’t instantly conjure up captivating images of…

Rule number one: when crafting a thriller, make sure the audience can relate to, identify with, or empathize with at least one of the characters. Rule number two: the characters’ motivations must be clear. Fail in either area–or worse yet, both–and you end up with a film like A Perfect…

Gwyneth Paltrow gets another chance to show off her letter-perfect English accent in Sliding Doors, an engaging romantic comedy that employs a rather novel narrative device: After introducing the main characters and setting up the basic story, the film splits into two separate but parallel plot lines. It’s a twist…