In these paradox-ridden times, producers on the hunt for cutting-edge fantasies look back: They visit their boyhood or girlhood rooms and ransack their old books and videos, or peruse their studio’s property list for works that scored well in other media. In the mid-’90s, the English company Working Title made…
A colleague confided that he feared The Winter Guest because he didn’t want to watch Emma Thompson talking to her mom for two hours. This perfectly summarizes the kind of trap Alan Rickman’s directorial debut could’ve laid for art-house patrons: Hire one respected English actor to oversee a film starring…
Ludovic, the fiercely determined young hero(ine?) of writer-director Alain Berliner’s half-hilarious, half-tragic feature debut Ma Vie en Rose (My Life in Pink), proves how age, culture, and time all conspire to decide the difference between being feminine and being effeminate. Sure, he likes to wear frilly dresses and wants to…
Dennis Rodman’s life is an open book–it’s just not clear at this point how many people are left who care to read it. Rodman’s arrogance is unparalleled and far too well documented: He’s the, um, author of two autobiographies; he briefly had his own show on MTV, if you call…
Normally when he’s on tour publicizing his movies, writer-director Alan Rudolph likes to plan his day around tying one on. Relieved from the responsibility of writing, handling actors, and working with the cinematographer–but with the added stress of a hectic international travel schedule–he likes nothing better than to knock back…
John Woo has generated plenty of American disciples in the decade since his Hong Kong action films began playing film festivals in the West. Even before he began his Hollywood career with 1993’s Hard Target, bits of his action shtick started showing up in the work of savvy young filmmakers,…
Set in 19th-century Australia, this tale of two gamblers–Oscar, a failed minister, and Lucinda, a glassworks owner–is too wispy to be an art thing and too heavy to be a toy. Its key symbol is a tiny glass teardrop. The “Prince Rupert drop” cannot be smashed with a sledgehammer, but…
As The Apostle’s title character, E.F. “Sonny” Dewey, writer-director Robert Duvall never stops moving and never speaks in a voice lower than a roar. He runs in place, dances when standing still, hollers even when he whispers; he literally vibrates. Sonny’s a true tent-revival preacher, spitting brimstone threats and heavenly…
In the new Great Expectations, directed by Alfonso Cuaron and scripted by Mitch Glazer, the teeming world of Charles Dickens’ 1861 novel is very loosely updated and transposed to Florida’s Gulf Coast and Manhattan. It wouldn’t be accurate to call this film an adaptation–at its best, it’s more like a…
Thanks to The Grave, acclaimed at the ’96 Sundance Film Festival, and Hollywood’s need to produce new indie stars, Josh and Jonas Pate have been anointed by some as the new Coen brothers. What the Pates share with the Minnesota natives behind Fargo and Barton Fink is a good eye…
There hasn’t been a good doper movie since 1978’s Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke, and even now, it reeks of yesterday’s smoke, smelling like a weedhead who hasn’t done laundry in a decade; Up in Smoke’s good for a contact high, but its buzz is gone. In 1993 Richard…
One of the conceits to which every critic must be genetically predisposed is the idea that, at the end of the day, his or her opinion actually matters. That some unknown phantasm at a nonspecific coffee shop sits immersed in said critic’s latest ill-advised screed, imbibing every word as if…
Martin Scorsese’s Kundun is a deeply ceremonial experience. It’s like watching a serene pageant of colors, rituals, and costumes. It’s about the Dalai Lama–recognized as the 14th reincarnation of the Buddha of Compassion and the spiritual and political leader of Tibet–from his childhood in 1937 through the Chinese invasion in…
After Santa’s overstuffed sack of Oscar qualifiers is disgorged onto screens in December, the studios have little left in their pipelines for January. With all the brutal competition from the big-ticket films, Hollywood has established a tradition in recent years of dumping lost-cause features during the first few weeks of…
In 1997, both the big studios and the independents got stuck in their respective sewers of cliche–conflagrations, computer graphics, and crazy comedies on the one hand; on the other, dysfunctional families, kooky proles, and drop-outs. Some of the most highly promoted and lauded films from either the big-studio or indie…
In his 1993 book Sarajevo: A War Journal, Bosnian journalist Zlatko Dizdarevic reported on an 11-year-old boy who was waiting in line for water when snipers killed his mother and father: “After the shooting, this boy started to fetch and pour water over the bodies of his dead parents. He…
Where would Irish filmmakers these days be without The Troubles? In just the past couple of years, we’ve seen The Crying Game, In the Name of the Father, Michael Collins, Some Mother’s Son, and now The Boxer, the latest collaboration between director Jim Sheridan, screenwriter Terry George, and Daniel Day-Lewis…
In Hollywood, writer-director Garson Kanin’s wonderful book of film-biz reminiscences, Kanin tells of a mortifying incident in the career of John Forsythe. In the early ’50s, the young actor, while working on a film, entertained his colleagues with a Bogart impression. When the great star visited Forsythe’s set one day,…
When was the last time the audience applauded a trailer and the movie lived up to it? Independence Day enticed millions with its preview shot of the White House blown to smithereens, but that film was a dumb, elephantine sci-fi pastiche. The trailer for Wag the Dog, a far more…
While not a movie year to go down in infamy, 1997 was still mostly full of hype and holler. If the annual yield is judged by how many great films came out, 1997 was a loser. If you factor in the number of films that brought fresh talents and fresh…
With 1994’s Exotica, Egyptian-born Atom Egoyan clinched his claim to being Canada’s leading director. His new film, The Sweet Hereafter, a Cannes hit based on Russell Banks’ celebrated novel, should solidify his hold on that problematic title. Egoyan’s work, in general, is small-scale enough to seem arty and plain enough…
The new Gus Van Sant film Good Will Hunting is like an adolescent’s fantasy of being tougher and smarter and more misunderstood than anybody else. It’s also touchy-feely with a vengeance. Is this the same director who made Mala Noche and Drugstore Cowboy? Those films had a fresh way of…
