What is it with filmmakers and mental retardation? It seems as though use of the differently abled as a central theme ranks second only to troubled childhood when it comes time to make a “personal” film. The connection between the two is fairly obvious: the artist as gentle innocent besieged…

Is America ready for the Hong Kong action style? Certainly there are many fans of the more balletic, guns-and-martial-arts, fly-through-the-air movies that have inspired everyone from Quentin Tarantino to the Wachowski brothers. Yet Hollywood still seems to have had trouble marketing the concept. Yes, John Woo gets high-profile projects, but…

What if fate has something horrific in store for you, and you can’t escape it? It’s an idea that has been around for a long time, from Oedipus Rex to The Twilight Zone. Cinematically, we tend to prefer the idea that destiny is going to be a positive force (Star…

Hollywood may be crass when it comes to cloning success, but it’s not alone. Take the British Isles, for instance, ever since the success of a certain working-class comedy about unemployed louts turned male strippers. It seems as if there’s been a law put into effect that every comedy out…

You’ve had to feel sorry for the Scottish Board of Tourism when the nation’s film industry started to do robust business. Normally a successful film industry would be great for a country’s image, but in the case of Scotland, it seems, well, counterproductive. After all, most of the films depict…

If you think the prevailing attitude toward sex in the United States is often archaic, consider that of late 1960s Ireland, as depicted in Agnes Browne, the new movie directed by Anjelica Huston. When asked by her best friend, Marion (Marion O’Dwyer), whether she misses “it,” the recently widowed Agnes…

Willie Morris’ autobiographical novel, My Dog Skip, is a nearly perfect piece of bedtime reading for children — and their parents. Each chapter is virtually a self-contained anecdote; the descriptions of World War II-era Mississippi are lush and dreamlike; and the escapades of the central canine character, depicted as smarter,…

It’s hard to blame Kirk Douglas for choosing so formulaic a vehicle as a comeback film, especially after fighting back from a devastating stroke almost four years ago. Certainly no one can fault him for wanting to act again, to prove he’s still got it. However, the question is: Can…

It ain’t that hard to parody Star Trek’s original series; Lord knows it did a good job of that itself. And certainly, many have tried; Jim Carrey did on In Living Color (with the “Wrath of Farrakhan” sketch), Kevin Pollak has built an entire career on his William Shatner impersonation,…

“A Joel Schumacher film.” Among a certain breed of filmgoer — say, anyone for whom theaters provide something other than shelter — there may no more frightening four words in the English language. Ever since he killed Batman, Schumacher’s name has become the equivalent of a swear word on many…

Eight years have passed since Terminator 2, otherwise known as the last Arnold Schwarzenegger movie worth a damn. Since then, he has appeared in one half-decent actioner (James Cameron’s wink-wink True Lies), one pale imitation of a pale imitation (Eraser, which is what its script was written with), and a…

Be forewarned: In the continuing quest to get people to pay attention to their films by any means necessary, the marketing wizards at Artisan Entertainment have been misrepresenting Felicia’s Journey to an even greater extent than they did The Minus Man. No doubt hoping to attract a young male demographic,…

In the eyes of the general public, Michael Mann is still best known for Miami Vice. He has received a great deal of critical acclaim for films about serial killers, Mohicans, and bank robbers. So who would have guessed that his most engrossing and suspenseful film to date would be…

Harmony Korine’s directorial debut, Gummo, was like a hard smack to the face of contemporary cinema. Relentlessly nonlinear, filled with disturbing imagery, and impossible to synopsize, it caused many viewers to wince in pain and persuaded even more to walk quickly past its poster — of the slightly misshapen head…

Based on his directorial debut, there are three things we can safely say about Antonio Banderas: He’s an actor’s director, meaning he can pick a good cast and coax great performances from them; he knows how to make a good image and where to point the camera; and he has…

The fact that Drive Me Crazy is actually based on a novel (How I Created My Perfect Prom Date by Todd Strasser) is a sad comment on the state of contemporary young-adult fiction. The story’s not entirely dreadful, but the fact that a script created from a shuffled deck of…