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…
It’s not a startling breach of conventional wisdom to apply the term masterpiece to Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 Rear Window, which is being reissued this week in a nice restored print that, if memory serves, is better (though not that much better) than we’ve seen before. But critical reputations can be…
The first thought you’ll have while watching The Next Best Thing is “Was Madonna always this bad an actress?” It’s a question that will soon fade from consciousness, to be replaced by “Was Rupert Everett always this bad an actor?” and “Was John Schlesinger always this bad a director?” Since…
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:…
Step right up, youth of the world, and receive the Boomer inoculation that is Wonder Boys, the first feature from director Curtis Hanson since his much-lauded adaptation of James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential. Then marvel at Michael Douglas showing off his wide spectrum of inert doldrums and tedious self-pity. Thrill to…
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…
Twenty-seven-year-old Ben Younger delivers the message of his first feature, Boiler Room, with all the subtlety of a car bomb. To wit: Greed is alive and well in the new century, fueled by the material dreams of a generation bent on instant gratification and the distorted expectations of neophyte investors…
Moviegoers rejoice! The first fun movie of the year has arrived. Oh, Leo’s little seaside adventure was pretty to look at, but the attempts at depth were a real bummer. And let’s not even talk about Scream 3. Even the first one was highly overrated, and it’s been downhill from…
Ewan McGregor. You can’t toss a caber in Scotland these days without toppling a gaggle of blokes who closely resemble him. Yet some magical combination of talent, charm, and shrewd management has thrown wide the gates of choice projects for the young superstar, whose résumé already glows like a career…
Jane Campion’s 1993 film The Piano was an intoxicating work of art, a film of such beauty and power that it literally took my breath away. Nothing the New Zealand-born writer-director has done before or since even comes close to matching it in form, content, or sensibility. And her latest…
Sharon Stone doesn’t appear on screen until halfway through this tale of three lives unraveling, but when she does, she makes quite an impression as Rosie, the third player in a horseracing scam. Adapted from a play by Sam Shepard, Simpatico jumps back and forth in time between the present…
Ah, boxing. Beating and being beaten about the head and torso until one of two bruised and bloodied humans drops. Clever sport. Tops even American football for sheer poetic elegance. So it’s not surprising — and this is only half sarcastic — that so many fine films have been made…
The evening of March 14, 1885, was an auspicious one in the annals of musical theater. Less than four years had passed since the opening of London’s Savoy Theatre, built specifically for the productions of librettist William Schwenk Gilbert and composer Arthur Seymour Sullivan. The partners’ first six works had…
The subject matter is surely the stuff of which can’t-miss movies are made: Jacqueline Susann, author of the bestseller Valley of the Dolls and other jerk-off (pardon, “maddeningly sexy,” to quote Helen Gurley Brown) classic lit. There was nothing at all pedestrian about the woman who in her day was…
Boo hoo! Frank McCourt had a miserable childhood! Honestly, who can say his or her childhood wasn’t impoverished in some way… or in many ways? That Mr. McCourt survived and eventually published his inescapable memoir is nice, of course, and the book is indeed a poignant and crafty piece of…
In the last 30 years, Woody Allen has written and directed something like 28 movies — “something like” reflects the confusion of how to count his contribution to New York Stories — a remarkable productivity record for a major filmmaker and one that’s even more impressive when you consider how…
Some people really are crazy, but then, crazy is a relative term. Does it apply to someone who feels he might spin off into outer space and never be able to get back down to Earth? Or is it only crazy when you have to cling to the nearest table…
The 1995 film Friday is best remembered as the film that brought actor Chris Tucker to audiences’ attention. A modest hit, it would seem an odd choice for a sequel, but Ice Cube — who cowrote the original with DJ Pooh, as well as produced and starred — is back…
Of the readers who bought four million copies, in no fewer than 30 languages, of David Guterson’s 1995 bestseller Snow Falling on Cedars, many have likely been looking forward to the movie version. Others have probably been dreading it. For better or worse, this multifarious story about nativist bigotry, forbidden…
When Paul Thomas Anderson’s second feature, Boogie Nights, was released in 1997, critics and film-industry types fell over themselves to designate Anderson the next big thing, an auteur in the footsteps of Scorsese and Coppola. His film turned Mark Wahlberg from a has-been underwear model and rapper into a leading…
Top Ten of 1999By Andy Klein Film critics are by nature a sour lot, so it is with truly great pleasure that I suggest that 1999 has been the best year for cinema — certainly for American cinema and even for the major studios — in my 15 years on…
Ah, what a miracle that Andy Kaufman was. So sublime his wit, so pioneering his spirit. Astonishing! A hero to be loved, adored, and emulated by all artists and performers for the rest of eternity. An opener of doors, a smasher down of barriers, a glorious, luminous, intrepid spirit without…
