ALICE
***½
USA
A Manhattan housewife goes
through a process of self-discovery, aided by the magical herbs of an
Asian acupuncturist.
The fantasy undercurrent is a tad over-insistent in this otherwise inventive and
quite thorough character study with reliably remarkable work from
Farrow.
dir: Woody Allen
cast: Mia Farrow, Joe Mantegna, William Hurt, Keye Luke, Alec
Baldwin, Blythe Danner, Cybill Shepherd, Bernadette Peters, Gwen Verdon,
Judy Davis
AN ANGEL AT MY TABLE
***
The life of New Zealand writer
Janet Frame, who was wrongly diagnosed as a schizophrenic.
A vivid if somewhat leaden biopic.
dir: Jane Campion
cast: Kerry Fox, Alexia Keogh, Karen Fergusson, Iris Churn, K.
J. Wilson
ARACHNOPHOBIA
**½
B-grade horror dressed up with a big budget. It holds a few shocks.
BACK TO THE FUTURE PART III
***
An entertaining sequel that transports the franchise into a Western setting.
BLUE STEEL
*½
Ludicrous, dull and
unnecessary female cop melodrama, with murky, poorly managed feminist pretensions.
CYRANO DE BERGERAC
****
A dashing soldier handicapped
by a long nose helps a handsome friend win the love of the woman the
soldier is secretly in love with.
Passionate and brilliant French epic, probably the greatest film
version of Rostand's play.
dir: Jean-Paul Rappenau
cast: Gérard Depardieu, Anne Brochet, Vincent Perez, Jacques
Weber
DANCES WITH WOLVES
**½
A Civil War soldier becomes
part of a Sioux Indian tribe.
The first hour is laughably self-indulgent and misguided. The following
two are only moderately less so.
dir: Kevin Costner
cast: Kevin Costner, Mary McDonnell, Graham Greene, Rodney A. Grant,
Floyd (Red Crow) Westerman
DELICATESSEN
***
In a post-apocalyptic town, a
butcher kills his workers and sells their flesh.
Dark, weird and brutal black comedy. Undeniably original and inventive,
but way over the top.
dir: Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Marc Caro
cast: Dominique Pinon, Marie-Laure Dougnac, Jean-Claude Dreyfus
EDWARD SCISSORHANDS
***
A sales-lady meets a man-made
boy with scissors instead of hands and takes him home to her family.
Quirky fairy tale, which also makes for an excellent suburban satire.
dir: Tim Burton
cast: Johnny Depp, Winona Ryder, Dianne Wiest, Anthony Michael Hall,
Alan Arkin, Kathy Baker, Vincent Price
EUROPA EUROPA
***½
The true story of a young
Polish Jew, who, once captured by the Germans, poses as a Nazi in order to
stay alive.
Powerful and compelling drama of survival at all costs. Suspenseful and
darkly comic.
dir:
Agnieszka Holland
cast: Marco Hofschneider, Julie Delpy, André Wilms, Aschley
Wanninger
GHOST
**½
A murdered man returns as a
ghost to seek revenge on his murderers and warn his grieving girlfriend.
Romantic bull, with comic relief of both the intentional - thanks to
Goldberg - and especially the unintentional kind.
dir: Jerry Zucker
cast: Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, Tony Goldwyn, Whoopi Goldberg
THE
GODFATHER, PART III
**
GOODFELLAS
***½
The life of an Irish-Italian
gangster.
Entertaining but generic gangster biopic, with a mysteriously
overwhelming reputation.
dir: Martin Scorsese
cast: Ray Liotta, Robert de Niro, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco, Paul
Sorvino
THE GRIFTERS
****
A con artist is reunited with
her son and his girlfriend, both in the same trade.
Clever, quirky and seductive neo-noir, with striking performances.
Regrettably though, it doesn't retain the 50s setting of its source novel.
dir: Stephen Frears
cast: Anjelica Huston, John Cusack, Annette Bening, Pat Hingle,
Henry Jones
THE HAIRDRESSER'S HUSBAND
**
A middle-aged man's childhood
dream of marrying a hairdresser comes true.
With barely enough plot for a sweet-natured if unremarkable short film,
the feature format was a mistake.
dir: Patrice Leconte
cast: Jean Rochefort, Anna Galiena
I HIRED A CONTRACT KILLER
***
A French immigrant hires a man
to kill him but unexpectedly finds love.
Minimalist black comedy. Little more than a short stretched beyond its
limits, but amusing and satisfying nonetheless.
dir: Aki Kaurismäki
cast: Jean-Pierre Léaud, Margi Clarke, Kenneth Colley
I LOVE YOU TO DEATH
**½
Broad and largely failed farce,
bizarrely based on a true story. To a native Yugoslav, the Anglo actors' attempts at
speaking Serbo-Croatian are jarring, though Plowright's
pluck is nevertheless admirable and entertaining.
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THE KRAYS
***½
Twins grow up to rule London's
gangster underworld in 1960.
Poorly acted and directed, but the story is compelling.
dir: Peter Medak
cast: Gary Kemp, Martin Kemp, Billie Whitelaw, Susan Fleetwood,
Charlotte Cornwall, Jimmy Jewel
LONGTIME COMPANION
**½
A decade in the life of a group
of NYC gay men, from when they first find out about AIDS in 1981.
An incisive, and often harrowing examination of the effects of AIDS. Episodic in format, it
certainly gains in comparison to
Hollywood tripe on the same subject, but it doesn't really belong on a
cinema screen and the finale is an embarrassment on any screen.
dir: Norman Rene
cast: Campbell Scott, Stephen Caffrey, Bruce Davison, Mark Lamos,
Patrick Cassidy, Mary-Louise Parker, John Dossett, Dermot Mulroney
THE MATCH FACTORY GIRL
****
A put-upon factory girl is
abandoned and left pregnant.
Bleak, austere and savagely funny.
dir: Aki Kaurismäki
cast: Kati Outinen, Elina Salo, Esko Nikkari, Vesa Vierikko,
Reijo Taipale, Silu Seppälä
METROPOLITAN
***
The way of life of NYC's
debutantes.
A dry, original, influential, much-praised indie conversation piece,
medium-to-low
on entertainment value.
dir: Whit Stillman
cast: Carolyn Farrina, Edward Clements, Christopher Eigeman, Taylor
Nichols
MILLER'S CROSSING
****½
A corrupt politician's aide is
caught between two rival gangsters.
A cool, moody, stylish gangster movie homage.
dir: Joel Coen
cast: Gabriel Byrne, Albert Finney, Marcia Gay Harden, John Turturro,
Jon Polito, J. E. Freeman
THE NASTY GIRL
****
A girl researches events in her
hometown during the Nazi regime and faces hostility from the locals.
Clever, biting social satire.
dir: Michael Verhoeven
cast: Lena Stolze, Monika Baumgartner, Michael Gahr, Fred
Stillkrauth
POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE
***
A drug-addicted actress must
live with her similarly unstable mother, an aging star.
Witty, enjoyable and convincing look at a Hollywood mother and
daughter, based on Carrie Fisher's memoirs.
dir: Mike Nichols
cast: Meryl Streep, Shirley MacLaine, Dennis Quaid, Gene
Hackman, Richard Dreyfuss, Rob Reiner, Mary Wickes, Conrad Bain, Annette
Bening, Simon Callow
PRETTY WOMAN
**½
Julia Roberts was a star and the movie's unlikely success
spawned upon multiplexes a decade-long curse of cutesy, formulaic romantic
comedy.
THE RESCUERS DOWN UNDER
**
Dreary Disney sequel, which unfortunately and unfathomably missed out on a
straight-to-video release.
REVERSAL OF FORTUNE
***
Convicted for attempting to
murder his now-comatose wife, a cynical European aristocrat hires a law
professor to challenge the decision.
Little more than a high-minded, refined TV drama, but acceptable as
such due to dark wit and a fine shade of ambiguity hanging over the
proceedings. The dissection of the legal system is, however, a little
distracting and far less seductive than the study of an elegant, dryly
sophisticated enigma and the world he occupies.
dir: Barbet Schroeder
cast: Jeremy Irons, Glenn Close, Ron Silver, Annabella Sciorra,
Fisher Stevens, Christine Baranski
TIE
ME UP! TIE ME DOWN!
***½
Spain
An Almodóvar concoction that drifts by listlessly but
pleasantly. It concerns a pre-Hollywood Antonio Banderas, who, straight
after his release from a mental institution, kidnaps a former junkie and
porn star played by Victoria Abril. At this point in time, this is probably
as reserved and unassuming as Almodóvar could get.
dir: Pedro Almodóvar
cast: Antonio Banderas, Victoria Abril, Loles León, Julieta
Serrano, Francisco Rabal
TOTAL RECALL
****
TRUST
*****
A pregnant teenager meets a
moody electronics expert.
Offbeat, subversive, life-affirming deadpan lunacy/existentialism.
With sneaky wisdom, it examines matters of family,
motherhood and marriage.
dir: Hal Hartley
cast: Adrienne Shelly, Martin Donovan, Marritt Nelson, John
MacKay, Edie Falco, Gary Sauer, Matt Malloy
WILD AT HEART
***
Forbidden lovers go on the run.
Flawed, brutal and hypnotic road trip down a surrealist America.
dir: David Lynch
cast: Nicolas Cage, Laura Dern, Diane Ladd, Willem Dafoe, Isabella
Rossellini, Harry Dean Stanton, Crispin Glover
THE WITCHES
***½
USA
A family-oriented horror film
based on a Roald Dahl story involving a campy, Anjelica Huston with an
obscure, fluid European accent playing the grand queen of witches out to
destroy all children. When at a witches' convention the audience of
strange-looking women take off their human 'masks' and turn into Jim
Henson creatures, it's a terrifying moment.
dir: Nicolas Roeg
cast: Anjelica Huston, Mai Zetterling, Jasen Fisher, Rowan Atkinson,
Bill Patterson, Brenda Blethyn, Jane Horrocks
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