Lady StuckJane Campion’s adaptation of ‘The Portrait of a Lady’ makes
James’s heroine a nineties-style feminist martyr. Nicole Kidman as Isabel Arc […]
CreepinessIn the brilliant, disturbing ‘Happiness,’ Todd Solondz gets in close to his characters, only to find misery in search of company, cruelty disdai […]
Ants in Their PantsIn “Antz,” Woody Allen again snares a young beauty – Sharon Stone – but this time she’s an insect and so is he.
Ronin the BarbarianHe and his pals chase cars, send kiwis and rutabagas flying, wallow in blood, and generally wreak havoc. What Ronin & Co. don’t do is mak […]
The Runaround“Without Limits” is a finely made, powerfully moral tale of a long-distance runner, but it’s also a little boring.
Lust LifeNicholas Barker’s disturbingly intimate “Unmade Beds” looks and listens intently as four singles search for love in New York City – and, natura […]
Long ShotNothing else in “Snake Eyes”’ matches the exquisite thrill of Brian De Palma’s opening sequence, a sustained prologue reminiscent of Altman and […]
Quite Contrary“There’s Something About Mary” wraps a romantic comedy in frat-house humor.
Heroic ProportionsSavage yet exhilarating, Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” shows the great and minor acts of bravery that define valor against the horrific tape […]
Bittersweet CharityRestored and uncensored, Fellini’s masterpiece, “Nights of Cabiria,” finds tremendous power in tracing the emotional life of a streetwalker.
In Brief: ‘Buffalo ‘66’In Buffalo ‘66, Vincent Gallo, acting in a movie that he wrote (with Alison Bagnall) and directed himself, has a face like an unsheathed knife. […]
Femmes FataleIn the quotidian “Six Days, Seven Nights,” Anne Heche glistens.
‘Opposite’ AttractsChristina Ricci is devastating as a malevolent teen vixen in “The Opposite of Sex.”
Selling ShortAs a financier driven to murder by his adulterous wife in “A Perfect Murder,” Michael Douglas makes a grand creep irresistibly appealing.
In Brief: ‘Under the Skin’At the beginning of Under the Skin, an unnerving and brilliant little English movie, the 19-year-old Iris (Samantha Morton) lies on her bed nake […]
Nobody Beats the LizA waterlogged remake of the 1954 sci-fi classic finds “Godzilla” stomping through Manhattan instead of Tokyo. Come back, Raymond Burr – all i […]
Goal TendingIn Spike Lee’s “He Got Game,” hoop dreams and the American dream are intertwined in a blistering morality tale about making the big score.
In Brief: ‘Two Girls and a Guy’D. H. Lawrence, describing his own practice, wrote in a letter to a friend that “the old stable ego” in fictional characters was gone, replaced […]
Hell’s CadenzaThe music-filled story of a man’s sensual reawakening after the war, “The Truce” is adapted from Primo Levi’s second Holocaust memoir.
It Isn’t Romantic“The Object of My Affection” turns the modest tale of a woman in love with her gay best friend into a maddening twist on “The Odd Couple.”
In Brief: ‘Point of Order’In 1964, documentary filmmaker Emile De Antonio and art-film impresario Daniel Talbot edited the kinescopes of the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings, […]
To Live and Fly in L.A.Gorgeously shot, “City of Angels” moves Wim Wenders’s “Wings of Desire” from Berlin to Los Angeles – and something crucial’s been lost in transit.
Speaking in TonguesMamet’s clipped chatter captures the con artists’ terrain of “The Spanish Prisoner”; the Irish accents of the brilliant “Butcher Boy” nearly foi […]
Nowhere ManA suicidal man driving through the outskirts of Tehran doesn’t sound like a promising concept, but “Taste of Cherry” isn’t your average road movie.
In brief: ‘Wild Things’Wild Things, which is about sex and murder in the Everglades, sounded like great fun. A couple of weeks ago, there was even a screening-room buz […]
Young Rascals“Primary Colors” is funny, raucous, and sometimes raw, but like the novel, Mike Nichols’s film sidesteps Bill Clinton’s intellectual prowess.
Humbert’s GiftFunny and sharply observed, “Love and Death on Long Island” is “Lolita”-like in describing the inexorable pull of illicit obsession.
In Brief: The Big LebowskiThe funniest thing in the Coen brothers’ comedy The Big Lebowski is a cameo appearance by John Turturro as a gay Latino bowler, a dandy of the […]
Mr. Holland’s Other OpusDirector Todd Holland’s “Krippendorf’s Tribe” lampoons academics, makes a fool of Richard Dreyfuss, and revels in a burlesque sensibility.
In Brief: ‘Palmetto’ and ‘The Real Blonde’Palmetto is an unconvincing, paint-by-numbers pass at American noir by the usually ambitious German director Volker Schlondorff (The Tin Drum). […]
In Brief: ‘The Zero Effect’ and ‘Sphere’The first movie written and directed by young Jake Kasdan, The Zero Effect, turns out to be a surprisingly intense comedy about a sort of modern […]
The Sound of MuzakAdam Sandler says dirty words kids can relate to, but he’s really a young softie, as his ultimately sentimental “The Wedding Singer” attests.
In Brief: The Gingerbread ManAltman “has a real gift for conventional story-telling, and the result of its full exercise is something like unmitigated pleasure.”
Grace NotesIn “Mrs. Dalloway,” Vanessa Redgrave plays a woman of means whose internal voices are far more rebellious than a polished exterior suggests.
In Brief: ‘The Dress’In the award-winning Dutch movie The Dress, a thin summer frock, enlivened with a pattern of golden leaves against a blue background, passes fro […]
Life is a DreamboatWomen can’t resist the hungry young hero of “Live Flesh,” Almodóvar’s most enjoyable film since “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.”
In brief: ‘Arguing the World’There are still plenty of intellectuals in New York, but “the New York intellectuals” as a compact group with common passions and a great magazi […]
Apocalypse, Nu?To divert attention from a presidential scandal, two spinmeisters create a fake war in “Wag the Dog,” a crass satire that nevertheless gets the […]
In Brief: ‘The Boxer’Just as the Irish Troubles seem to have gone on forever, movies about the Irish Troubles have also gone on a bit, and so I may, perhaps, escape […]
In Brief: ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’The first hour or so of Tomorrow Never Dies, the new Bond, is laced with the usual satisfying sexual innuendo and insolent humor. Pierce Brosnan […]
The Gospel TruthWhen Hollywood showed no interest in a preacher who wasn’t a demagogue, Robert Duvall said “Amen” – and made a great film anyway.
Pulped FictionTarantino has created a gangster fiction that is never larger than life and sometimes smaller.
Just Buddha-fulScorsese’s “Kundun” is gorgeously shot and utterly respectful of the story of the fourteenth Dalai Lama, but it’s dramatically inert.
movie review
A Gruesome DeathIn Death Becomes Her, not even Meryl Streep can “stop the idiotic big-budget thinking that turns human beings into grotesques.”
movie review
He’s Gotta Have ItIn Do The Right Thing, Spike Lee does the right thing, the wrong thing, and finally everything.
