Dirk Bogarde and Jane Birkin in a film by Bertrand Tavernier? Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? Regretfully, Daddy Nostalgia, which sounds terrific on paper, is slow as molasses to watch. Tavernier's own father was dying as the film was being made, but the director chose to approach the subject of mortality at an oblique angle and the results are false and boring. Birkin's chara…
Dance with a Stranger made Miranda Richardson a star and ignited the career of director Mike Newell. Released midway through the Thatcher years (1979–91), the film was typical of its era in that it cast a harsh gaze on the early 1950s, while clearly reveling in their ambiance. Ruth Ellis (Richardson) is the tough-as-nails (translation: walking wounded�…
Underwhelmed by 1988's Dangerous Liaisons with Glenn Close and John Malkovich? Then check out Roger Vadim's 1960 version of the 1782 novel by Choderlos de Laclos. Jeanne Moreau and the late Gerard Philipe star in this sexual tug of war between a ruthless husband and wife who get a bang out of tormenting their respective victims. Her target is an unsophisticated young man played by Je…
Director Pedro Almodovar simmered in Madrid for a full decade while doing extra film jobs, making Super 8 movies and working for the telephone company. He made eleven movies between 1980 and 1995, of which 1986's Matador is the fifth and 1984's Dark Habits is the third. Dark Habits is the work of a still maturing artist. Sexual obsession is one thing, but Catholicism is a far more pr…
A two-and-a-half hour war movie set in a German submarine? Eh! So I passed on Das Boot in 1981. Then I read that it was being re-released in 1997 in a three-and-a-half hour version, and I even heard GUYS grumbling about it at that length. But the restored Das Boot was playing half a block away from my flat for what seemed like forever, so I went to the Bridge Theatre in the spring of 1997, determi…
Sexist horsefeathers this, but I had yet another argument (with a guy) who went ballistic when I said so.
Daughters of the Country is an intriguing series of four films beautifully produced by Norma Bailey for the National Film Board of Canada. The series spans the years 1770 through 1985, and each episode focuses on how a strong female character learns to deal with the clash between Native American and outside cultures. In the first episode, the title character, “Ikwe,” leaves her Ojibw…
At 113 minutes, Daughters of the Dust deserved a context for its narrative.
Day for My Love features the most adorable four-year-old child (Sylva Kamenicka).
Produced by Steven Soderbergh, Greg Mottola's The Daytrippers follows a family as they try to patch up the ailing marriage of the older daughter, Eliza (Hope Davis).
No matter what your high school graduating class, most last-day-of-school movies have a universal appeal. We are all familiar with the rituals and the pain that follows them. In my case, I hung out with a guy whose parachute didn't open, danced with a guy who died too young of cancer, went to a rock concert with a neighbor who died at 22 of complications from a hole in her heart, and took w…
Nothing would have kept me away from John Huston's swan song, The Dead, but I suspect that the overall sentimental response to the film is based more on a lifelong admiration for Huston's work than to the film itself. I have a hunch that some audience members find all these Irish bores quaint or precious, but I did NOT. James Joyce's 1914 story is a pleasure to read for the lo…
Nicole Kidman and Sam Neill are a cute couple, but I wouldn't get in a car with her or on a boat with either one of them. Five minutes into Dead Calm, her baby is hurled through a windshield. There is actually no reason for this sequence except to establish why Kidman and Neill go on a sea cruise alone to recover. It also prepares you for the violence this accident-prone couple will experie…
It was the summer of 1937 and happy days weren't here again. It would take a second world war to end the international depression. Sidney Kingsley (Men in White, The Patriots, Detective Story) had won a Pulitzer Prize for the original play Dead End in 1935, when he was only 29. Lillian Hellman (1905–84) was on Samuel Goldwyn's payroll, so she wrote …
I fidgeted all the way through Jim Jar-musch's Dead Man. This is one of those long-winded black-and-white Westerns that makes you want to bag the screening and spend the time necking instead. Johnny Depp plays the title role with excruciating fidelity, and Robert Mitchum plays a cameo role, but that's about it. There's a line at the beginning that pretty much says it all, unle…
Susan Sarandon is Sister Helen Prejean, death row inmate Matthew Poncelet's (Sean Penn) last chance at spiritual salvation. Poncelet murdered two young people in cold blood and is numb to the horror of his crime. Seeing Sister Helen is better than nothing, so he asks her to keep visiting him at Angola prison in New Orleans where he waits to die. On an early visit, he tries to …
For those who believe that Hell may mean repeating your earthly mistakes over and over again with one agonizing moment of realization every time that THIS is to be your fate for the rest of eternity, Dead of Night is one very scary flick, best seen with lots of friends who won't leave you alone afterward. Mervyn Johns plays an architect who wakes up after a nightmare and then goes to a farm…
If you like to watch Rebecca DeMornay and Paul McGann work, you can see them in Dealers, an incomprehensible drama about London high finance.
The excellent Italian picture Dear Michael explores the wanderings of Mara, a gypsyish mother (Mariangela Melato) and her baby. Mara has an idea who the father is, and spends her time moving in and out of the homes of his friends and relatives. Melato, so effective in the Lina Wertmuller films Seduction of Mimi, Love and Anarchy, Swept Away, and Summer Night…, wrings enormous …
At first, Dear Victor gives every indication that it's going to be a comedy, then a savage plot twist occurs: Film Festivalitis? Yes, that strange and sometimes frightening condition that afflicts directors who don't want to make a choice about the direction of their narratives, so the choice is made FOR them by tuned-out audiences! The compensatory surprise here is Alida Valli, who's simply wonderful and very funny as a singer who COULD have been an opera star.
Roman Polanski sets up a gripping dilemma here and then dribbles it. Why do we have to forgive the unforgivable? Why do we have to live and let live when we've been victimized by a person who clearly didn't care whether or not we lived or died? Three fine actors (Ben Kingsley, Sigourney Weaver, Stuart Wilson) grapple with this situation for 103 minutes until the credits…
I once saw a movie about Bismarck made during the Third Reich that didn't have a single battle sequence, for who knows what reason. It played out rather like a chess game. It reminded me of THIS movie, about the 16-year-old kid who started World War I (and, consequently, II) by shooting Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife during a holiday parade in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914.…
The Deceivers appears to have everything going for it: a handsome hero (Pierce Brosnan), fine support from excellent character actors Shashi Kapoor and Saeed Jaffrey, fascinating Indian locations, and a plot that promises mystery, suspense, and danger. It bogs down in murky character development, a fatal lack of conviction about who the villains are, and an obvious series of false di…
Jane Asher is a fine actress whose well-publicized social life offscreen has eclipsed virtually everything she's ever done onscreen. In the case of the rarely shown Deep End, it's a shame, because her performance here is outstanding. John Moulder-Brown is 15-year-old Michael, who gets a job as a Men's Attendant at London's Newford public bath-house. He falls hard for Wo…
Ah, those demon temptresses, preying on innocent divinity students.
The credits for A Delicate Balance sound so tantalizing, it's sad that the film itself is such a drag to watch. Six years earlier on Broadway, the original play by Edward Albee had won the Pulitzer Prize, and actress Marian Seldes won a Tony for her performance. (Co-stars Hume Cronyn and Rosemary Murphy were also nominated, and the venerable Jessica Tandy was in it, too.) Mayb…
Delusion is an accurate title for a movie that is deliberately reminiscent of many other noir films. Those films, which include Edgar Ulmer's Detour and Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, deliver a lot more than Delusion ever does. It starts out well: a schnook named George (Jim Metzler) steals nearly $250,000 to save his ailing company, then drives his Volvo into the d…
Quentin Tarantino as Johnny Destiny. Right. And the Emperor was really wearing clothes. But Mr. T is an Oscar winner. He's the 1990s’ Big Thing. Why not be a movie star and an influential screenwriter and a hot director, too? Tarantino was promoted more in the television spots than the so-called stars, Dylan McDermott, Nancy Travis, James LeGros, and James Belushi, as if his Midas to…
Detour is THE grunge classic of all time. In most cases, when you watch a poverty row film, you find yourself wishing that they had just a bit more time or money to do things properly: if only the wallpaper in the hero's apartment and the police station weren't identical; if only the same three extras weren't in the background in every single sequence. But Detour, shot on a ne…
Maybe it was movies like The Devil Is a Woman that eventually lured Glenda Jackson off the sound stages and into Parliament.
In the city of Bendzin, Poland, three small children among thousands were being torn away from their families during the Nazi occupation.
Sherilyn Fenn may not have the marquee value of Kim Basinger—yet—but just wait. The smashingly talented alumnus of Twin Peaks can act rings around most other actresses of her generation as she demonstrates in Roy London's 1992 film noir sleeper, Diary of a Hitman, starring Forest Whitaker. Whitaker plays a hired gun who is paid by Lewis Smith to execute his wife (Fenn&#…
Richard Spence's Different for Girls is a love story with a twist.
This charming film from Czechoslovakia, a surprise hit at international film festivals, is inspired by the Nick Carter detective stories that enjoyed a vogue at the turn of the 20th century. Dinner for Adele/Adele Hasn't Had Her Supper Yet is about a man-eating plant, some early flying machines, a mad scientist, a sane scientist, a delightful strudel of a girl who makes terrific stra…
I used to love Jennifer Grey when she had her own nose on her face in the 1980s; it was cute, it gave her character, and it suited her. Now, I don't always recognize her face on the video boxes and she's indistinguishable from so many other ingenues of the 1990s. For the long summer of 1987, Grey and co-star Patrick Swayze epitomized romance as they danced together all night long. It…
Dites-Lui Que Je L'Aime is a disappointing second film by Claude Miller, who made such a promising debut with 1976's The Best Way. Dites-Lui… seems to have been crafted by a self-indulgent film student. Based on a Patricia Highsmith novel, the plot revolves around a completely unsympathetic accountant (listlessly played by Gerard Depardieu), who pursues former gi…
Independent producer Harry M. Popkin made several interesting films in the late 1940s and early 1950s, most with an emphasis on location shooting. D.O.A. is extremely effective in this respect because when Edmond O'Brien as Frank Bigelow runs through the streets of San Francisco and Los Angeles, the actual neighborhoods give his story a realistic touch that no lighting tricks or rear screen…
This early film by Goran (Someone Else's America) Paskalyevic tells the story of Mika, an escaped prisoner (Svetlana Bojakvic), and the two men who “help” her.
All director Bruce Beresford does with David Williamson's stage play Don's Party is show that when people drink too much they become obnoxious.
Don't Take It to Heart has no reputation whatsoever, but is a lovely surprise for those who stumble on it by accident. Its stars are dashing Richard (Robin Hood) Greene and beautiful Patricia Medina, his wife at the time. He's Peter Hayward, a helpful solicitor with a secret; she's Lady Mary, the socialist daughter of the Earl of Chanduyt (the wonderful Ir…
“A Heterosexual Movie by Gregg Araki"? How about a re-tread of 1987's Three Bewildered People in the Night, also by Araki? Rose McGowan gives a vivid performance as Amy Blue, but the theme here, that figurative and literal lost puppies deserve whatever they get, is illustrated in nauseating detail, rather like a low-budget homage to Natural Born Killers, released the previous year. O…
In A Special Day, Ettore Scola already demonstrated his unique gift for tackling a difficult subject with sensitivity, and then shaping a lovely and graceful film. The hilarious Down & Dirty is about a large Italian family who live in a hovel and who spend most of their time trying to kill each other. The humor here isn't the least bit polite, with Scola (who collaborated on t…
Jules Dassin's contemporary vision of the Medea myth was dissolved by critics, who thought that Melina Mercouri overacted and the update itself was just plain silly. It isn't great, but it isn't the wretched mess they insisted it was upon release. A Dream of Passion actually serves up some pretty good acting by Mercouri, Ellen Burstyn, and Andreas Voutsinas (best known …
When Gavin Millar's Dreamchild was released in 1985, its star Coral Browne (1913–91) seemed a sure bet for an Oscar nomination.
Before there was Trainspotting and Ewan McGregor, there was Drugstore Cowboy and Matt Dillon. He's excellent here as a junkie trying to escape the drug scene, circa 1971. Delicately lovely teenager Heather Graham (the real-life daughter of an FBI agent, she later starred as Annie Black-burne on Twin Peaks) is the sacrificial lamb of the group, and the impetus for Matt's…