Even the press kit is up-front about it: Whatever It Takes is less a film than a product of marketing research and demographic considerations. It might as well have been written on a bar graph, so fetishistic is it about making sure it appeals to teens and their parents –…
Such a Long Journey is set in Bombay in 1971, shortly before the war between India and Pakistan. Gustad Noble (Roshan Seth) is as middle-class as they come: A bank teller for 20 years, he works hard to support his wife, Dilnavaz (Soni Razdan), and children. But such is the…
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…
Here on Earth, the new teen romance, should do wonders for the reputation of veteran director Arthur Hiller. Not that Hiller had anything to do with the film, mind you — which wouldn’t do wonders for his rep. No, Hiller is the man who, back in 1970, directed the inexplicably…
It’s again that time of year, when we gather to praise Bart Weiss for keeping afloat the Dallas Video Festival against all odds (the odds being, in this case, a city in which culture means Mark Cuban). In its 13th year, the DVF has yet to make Weiss a rich…
In director Jem Cohen’s films, especially earlier efforts such as 1987’s This Is a History of New York and 1992’s Drink Deep, he manages to tell a story without letting on exactly what story he’s telling. Meaning: He’s definitely saying something, but it’s up to the viewer to decipher what…
The film is called Erin Brockovich, but it might as well be titled Julia Roberts. Never before in the actress’ erratic career has a film been so custom-made for her; it’s as though a screenwriter has been replaced by a seamstress who knows Roberts’ every curve. No matter that she…
The gun is a coward’s weapon — always has been, always will be. Likening it to the sword is like equating rape to romance. However, for reasons that can only be attributed to collective insanity, Hollywood absolutely loves to romanticize the gun, serving as an adjunct advertising agency for the…
“You are here to heal, so start healing!” announces a plucky nurse (Linda Bassett) to a grumbling trio of wounded men convalescing under her care in a crowded London hospital room. Dramatically, the scene marks as good a place as any to focus on writer-director Jasmin Dizdar’s complex and truly…
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…
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…
It’s a brave thief who reveals his booty to the man from whom he stole it. But Jim Jarmusch could not resist showing his film, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai to Seijun Suzuki, the 76-year-old Japanese director whose 1967 film Branded to Kill is echoed throughout Ghost Dog…
Roman Polanski begins this interview by asking the questions — about last names, countries of origin, family members murdered by the Nazis. After all, as much as any landmark film (Chinatown or Rosemary’s Baby) or connection to tragedy (the 1969 murder of his wife Sharon Tate by members of Charles…
The creationists are going to have a field day with this one. Oh, it’s not as though it’s possible to spoil the plot: The trailers for Mission to Mars reveal everything but the end credits. It would be near impossible to step foot into the theater without knowing the story,…
Calling the subject matter of Errol Morris’ latest documentary, Mr. Death, “unpleasant” is like referring to the lavatory on a tuna boat as “lightly scented.” The director who brought us the zany Americana of Fast, Cheap and Out of Control and the lukewarm Stephen Hawking snoozer, A Brief History of…
Three decades after Rosemary’s Baby, two decades after The Tenant, and after a series of five non-horror films, Roman Polanski returns to the supernatural thriller with The Ninth Gate. What could be more promising? Regardless of what one thinks about Polanski’s personal life or legal status, the man is clearly…
Titus, Julie Taymor’s gorgeous film version of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, with Anthony Hopkins as the doomed title character, may be the most opulent release of the season…and also the most perverse, on nearly every front. It’s easy to see why there has never been a feature version of this tragedy…
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…
Garry Shandling does not have a face for the big screen. He has a mug that seems to spread to the edges of the theater; it’s like an approaching storm front, a sky full of billowing clouds roaring in from the north. And it’s a face built for two emotions:…
The first thought one has while watching The Next Best Thing is, “Was Madonna always this bad an actress?” It’s a question that soon fades from consciousness, to be replaced by, “Was Rupert Everett always this bad an actor?” Then, a little later, arrives this query: “Was John Schlesinger always…
In the closing years of the 20th century, lowbrow white America finally learned to enjoy an ironic laugh at itself, led by Hollywood’s cheerful mockery of the culturally challenged working class. Outside the system, John Waters had this stuff pegged from the get-go, but the American grotesqueries of the original,…
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,…
