APOLLO 13
***
In 1970, an explosion aboard
the Apollo 13 spacecraft endangers the lives of its three astronauts.
Patriotically and patronizingly overblown space opera, though it holds
your attention.
dir: Ron Howard
cast: Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, Kevin Bacon, Gary Sinise,
Kathleen Quinlan
BABE
***½
An ambitious orphan pig is
raised as a puppy at an Australian farm.
A smart, funny and completely adorable family film, with talking farmyard
animals and seamless special effects.
dir: Chris Noonan
cast: James Cromwell, Magda Szubanski
voices of:
Christine Cavanaugh, Hugo Weaving, Miriam Margoyles
BEFORE SUNRISE
***
A simple, romantic account of
the sophisticated conversations between Celine and Jesse, who meet on a
European train and decide to disembark and spend a night in Vienna.
dir: Richard Linklater
cast: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy
BRAVEHEART
***½
The life of 13th-century
Scottish rebel warrior William Wallace.
A flawed but engrossing and passionate epic that makes for a pathetic history
lesson but stunning entertainment.
dir: Mel Gibson
cast: Mel Gibson, Sophie Marceau, Patrick McGoohan, Catherine
McCormack, Brendan Gleeson
THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY
**½
In 60s Iowa, a farmer's wife
has a brief but passionate affair with a photographer.
A dull and sentimental adaptation of a tear-jerking bestseller, with
strong performances and an unnecessary flashback structure.
dir: Clint Eastwood
cast: Clint Eastwood, Meryl Streep
CARRINGTON
***
The life of painter Dora
Carrington, specifically her relationship with gay author Lytton Strachey.
A literate, high-minded, drawn-out biopic of varying interest and lethal
pace.
dir: Christopher Hampton
cast: Emma Thompson, Jonathan Pryce, Steven
Waddington, Samuel West
CASINO
***
A mafia-appointed Las Vegas
casino owner runs into trouble.
A compelling but overlong and unoriginal mafia marathon.
dir: Martin Scorsese
cast: Robert de Niro, Sharon Stone, Joe Pesci, James
Woods, Don Rickles, Alan King, Kevin Pollak
LA CÉRÉMONIE
***½
France
Yet another icy, compulsively watchable warning from Claude Chabrol to a
complacent bourgeoisie: the idyll that is your lifestyle may survive
divorces, unwanted pregnancies and even gossip but watch out for your
insecure, maladjusted maid.
Not even sociopathic tendencies however, will prevent Chabrol from
siding with the proletariat.
dir: Claude Chabrol
cast: Sandrine Bonnaire, Isabelle Huppert, Jacqueline Bisset,
Jean-Pierre Cassel, Virginie Ledoyen,
Valentin Merlet, Julien Rochefort, Dominique Frot
THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN
***
A madman kidnaps children and
tries to steal their dreams.
Dark, offbeat and inventive fantasy with stunning imagery but no heart.
dir: Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Marc Caro
cast: Ron Perlman, Daniel Emilfork, Judith Vittet, Dominique
Pinon, Jean-Claude Dreyfus, Jean-Louis Trintignant
CLUELESS
****
Two popular high school girls
decide to transform the new geek girl into one of them.
A smart, knowing and hilarious teen satire, plotted along the lines of
Jane Austen's "Emma" and providing for a bright turn from a
then-rising star.
dir: Amy Heckerling
cast: Alicia Silverstone, Stacey Dash, Brittany
Murphy, Paul Rudd, Dan Hedaya
COLD COMFORT FARM
***
In the 1930s, a fashionable
London girl goes to live at a farm with her estranged relatives.
There's too many lovably wacky characters to keep track of and not
enough time is spent with any of them. The picture would likely have ended
up embarrassing without this amount of esteemed thespians littered
across the cast.
dir: John Schlesinger
cast: Kate Beckinsale, Eileen Atkins, Sheila Burrell, Ian
McKellen, Rufus Sewell, Ian McKellen, Stephen Fry, Freddie Jones, Joanna
Lumley
CYCLO
***½
A bicycle-taxicab driver is
recruited by the mafia.
Painstakingly detailed squalor with searing visuals. A brutal, devastating ode
to a tortured city, but a little too much to bear at times.
dir: Tran Anh Hung
cast: Le Van Loc, Tony Leung, Tran Nu Yen Khe
DEAD MAN
***
In Cleveland 1875, an
accountant heads west for a new job but ends up wanted for murder.
Stylish and gorgeously composed but little else.
dir: Jim Jarmusch
cast: Johnny Depp, Gary Farmer, Lance Henriksen, Michael
Wincott, Mili Avital, Iggy Pop
DEAD MAN WALKING
***½
A rapist on death row develops
a relationship with a compassionate nun.
Sentimental but compelling and superbly acted prison drama.
dir: Tim Robbins
cast: Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon
FALLEN ANGELS
***
Hong Kong
Leon Lai plays an introspective hitman who wears shades and fires oceans
of bullets at faceless, immaculately-tailored hoods in slow motion.
Michele Reis is his nubile agent. Takeshi Kaneshiro plays a mute because
if he spoke he wouldn't be quirky or cutesy enough. They all have flawless
skin.
Wong Kar-wai's feel for alluring imagery and stylish cutting
is still palpable, but it's a comfort to know that he moved on to much
more nutritious fare.
wr/dir: Wong Kar-wai
ph: Christopher Doyle
cast: Leon Lai, Michele Reis, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Charlie Yeung,
Karen Mok, Karen Mok
FLIRT
**½
The same story dealing with
commitment is told from three different perspectives.
After delivering four classics without a lot of visible labouring, Hartley decided to
go pretentious. It didn't really work out for him.
dir: Hal Hartley
cast: Bill Sage, Parker Posey, Martin Donovan, Dwight Ewell,
Geno Lechner, Peter Fitz, Miho Nikaidoh, Toshizo Fujisawa, Chikako Hara
THE
FLOWER OF MY SECRET
***½
Spain
The first time that most people picked up on hints of a meditative nature
behind the mad, frantic genius of Pedro Almodóvar was this atypically
talky tale of the emancipation of one hormonal writer of glossy romance
paperbacks. The magnificent, ever elegant Marisa Paredes takes on the lead
role with terrific command, along with brazen support from two inimitable
staples of the Almodóvar pantheon, Rossy de Palma and Chus Lampreave.
wr/dir: Pedro Almodóvar
cast: Marisa Paredes, Juan Echanove, Carmen Elías, Rossy
de Palma, Chus Lampreave, Kiti Manver, Imanol Arias
GET SHORTY
**
A Miami mafia debt collector
goes to Hollywood.
A weak, predictable and sanitized black comedy for mainstream audiences,
constantly snickering and nudging at your elbow.
dir: Barry Sonnenfield
cast: John Travolta, Gene Hackman, René Russo, Danny
DeVito, Dennis Farina, Delroy Lindo, James Gandolfini
LA HAINE
***½
A day in the life of three
unemployed youths, one black, one Jewish, one Arab.
A bold, confronting and unflinching attack on French society.
dir: Mathieu Kassovitz
cast: Vincent Cassel, Hubert Kounde, Saïd Taghmaoui
HEAT
**½
An obsessive L.A. cop trails a
skilled robber.
So the two legends finally met. Too bad they got bored and tired in the
meantime. De Niro holds back, Pacino doesn't, sadly. Enthusiastic
direction tries to make what it can of a painfully overcooked yet
underdeveloped script.
dir: Michael Mann
cast: Al Pacino, Robert de Niro, Val Kilmer, Jon Voight,
Tom Sizemore, Diane Venora, Amy Brenneman, Ashley Judd, Natalie Portman
KIDS
***
A day in the life of a group of
teenagers involved in sex, drugs and skateboarding.
A squalid, disturbing, verité style account of aimless youth of the 90s.
Also unpleasant, not necessarily because of its attempted raw
honesty, but because of its explicit and exploitative eagerness to shock.
dir: Larry Clark
cast: Leo Fitzpatrick, Sarah Henderson, Justin Pierce, Chloe
Sevigny, Yakira Peguero, Harold Hunter, Rosario Dawson
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THE LAST SUPPER
***½
A group of young liberals start
murdering right-wing extremists.
A dark, evil and deliciously twisted comedy, though it promises a lot more
than it ultimately delivers.
dir: Stacy Title
cast: Cameron Diaz, Annabeth Gish, Ron Eldard, Courtney B.
Vance, Jonathan Penner, Bill Paxton, Jason Alexander, Mark Harmon, Bryn
Erin, Charles Durning, Nora Dunn
LEAVING LAS VEGAS
***½
An alcoholic self-destructive
writer falls in love with a Vegas prostitute.
A searing, well-acted study of the painful bonding between two long-suffering losers
in life. Though it ultimately lacks the
impact it aims for, because it's aiming for it so obviously.
dir: Mike Figgis
cast: Nicolas Cage, Elisabeth Shue, Julian Sands
LIVING IN OBLIVION
***½
The making of a low budget film
involving an incompetent but ambitious ensemble.
A bitter and unrealistic though reasonably amusing satire of wanna-be movie-makers,
told from from several
points of view.
dir: Tom DeCillo
cast: Steve Buscemi, Catherine Keener, Dermot Mulroney,
Danielle von Zerneck, James LeGros
MALLRATS
***
Two youths get dumped by their
respective girlfriends and decide to go heal at the local mall.
Kevin Smith meets a budget. He opts for the commercial route without
hesitation, but nicely stylized dialogue - left over from
"Clerks" - generally keeps things going.
dir: Kevin Smith
cast: Jason Lee, Jeremy London, Shannen Doherty, Claire
Forlani, Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith, Joey Lauren Adams, Priscilla Barnes,
Michael Rooker
MIAMI RHAPSODY
***½
A contemporary Miami woman is
insecure about her impending marriage, thanks to the marital misadventures
of those around her.
A Woody Allen homage that is hardly original, but smart, funny,
observant and consistently entertaining.
dir: David Frankel
cast: Sarah Jessica Parker, Gil Bellows, Antonio
Banderas, Mia Farrow
MIGHTY APHRODITE
***½
A sports writer meets the
prostitute birth mother of his adopted son.
A witty and enjoyable exploration of love and marriage, as narrated by a
Greek chorus.
dir: Woody Allen
cast: Woody Allen, Helena Bonham Carter, Mira Sorvino, Michael
Rapaport, F. Murray Abraham, Claire Bloom, Olympia Dukakis
LES MISÉRABLES
***½
A former boxing champion finds
that his life parallels that of Jean Valjean.
An ambitious, absorbing, passionate and moving variation on a timeless
epic tale.
dir: Claude Lelouch
cast: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Michel Boujenah, Alessandra
Martines, Annie Girardot
RICHARD
III
****
In a fascist England of the
30s, Richard III murders his way to the throne.
A surreal re-interpretation of Shakespeare's play,
transferring its themes to a universe almost parallel to our own, with
stunning design and a commanding central performance.
dir: Richard Loncraine
cast: Ian McKellen, Annette Bening, Jim Broadbent,
Robert Downey Jnr, Nigel Hawthorne, Kristin Scott Thomas, Maggie Smith,
John Wood
SAFE
***½
A modern housewife develops a
mysterious condition involving allergies to her environment.
Somewhere between a new-age thriller and a straight-faced satire, it
draws much of its power in its somewhat unsettling tendency to pick no side
as well as pulling the rug from beneath you subtly but repeatedly. There's
definitely some intriguing observations beneath its antiseptic surface.
dir: Todd Haynes
cast: Julianne Moore, Xander Berkeley, Dean North,
Julie Burgess, Ronnie Farer, Jodie Markell, JamesLeGros
SENSE AND SENSIBILITY
****
The love lives of two sisters
with deeply contrasting personalities in 18th Century England.
A witty, joyous and captivating Austen adaptation.
dir: Ang Lee
cast: Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Alan Rickman, Hugh
Grant
SEVEN
****
A soon-to-be-retired detective
and his young replacement search for a serial killer working his way
through the seven deadly sins.
A dark, intense thriller, with intelligently written,
beautifully lensed, tightly edited and masterfully directed sequences
leading up to an understated but devastating finale.
dir: David Fincher
cast: Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Richard Roundtree, R. Lee
Ermey, Kevin Spacey
SHOWGIRLS
***½
SMOKE
**½
Lives intertwine around a
Brooklyn cigar store.
An episodic foray into the lives of a group of aggressively lovable and
lazily eccentric underdogs, in which many found something to enjoy.
The cast is certainly distinguished, but they deserve better.
dir: Wayne Wang
cast: William Hurt, Harvey Keitel, Stockard Channing, Forest
Whitaker, Harold Perrineau Jnr, Ashley Judd
STRANGE DAYS
*½
In L.A. on the eve of the
millennium, a street hustler gets involved in an elaborate police
conspiracy.
Ambitious but under-developed, vacuous pseudo-noir paranoia.
dir: Kathryn Bigelow
cast: Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis, Tom
Sizemore, Vincent D'Onofrio, Michael Wincott, Glenn Plummer
TO DIE FOR
**½
A ruthless small town girl will
stop at nothing in her pursuit of a TV career.
A weak, misguided satire that lacks bite and imagination. Much as
Kidman tries, she can't quite manage to pull of the fascinating diva vixen
the script desperately wants her to be.
dir: Gus Van Sant
cast: Nicole Kidman, Matt Dillon, Joaquin Phoenix, Casey
Affleck, Illeana Douglas, Dan Hedaya
TOY STORY
***
A cowboy doll finds a rival for
his owner's attention in a space robot toy.
The first computer-animated feature was an unprecedented hit, both with
critics and audiences. The animation is quite accomplished and, despite a
plodding storyline, the script
has its clever points, but thankfully Pixar was to move on to better
things, including a superior and much more entertaining sequel.
dir: John Lasseter
voices of: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Don Rickles, Jim Varney,
Wallace Shawn, John Ratzenberger
UNDERGROUND
****
For decades, two petty crooks
convince underground weapons factory workers World War II is not over.
A frantic, sprawling, convoluted, blackly funny epic foray into
50 years of Yugoslav history, filled with tantalising sights and sounds.
Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival.
dir: Emir Kusturica
wr: Dusan Kovacevic
ph: Vilko Filac
ed: Branka Ceperac
m: Goran Bregovic
cast: Miki Manojlovic, Lazar Ristovski, Mirjana Jokovic, Slavko
Stimac, Ernst Stotzner
THE USUAL SUSPECTS
***
Five crooks who met in a police
line-up seem to be manipulated by a mysterious mastermind.
An atmospheric thriller and surely an intense ride for those who don't
predict the twist during the first fifteen minutes.
dir: Bryan Singer
cast: Gabriel Byrne, Stephen Baldwin, Chazz Palminteri, Kevin
Spacey, Kevin Pollak, Pete Postlethwaute
WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE
****½
The life of a neglected but
much put upon 13 year old girl.
A stark, black and biting suburban satire that also provides for a painfully real exploration of early adolescence.
dir: Todd Solondz
cast: Heather Matarazzo, Matthew Faber, Daria Kalinina,
Brendan Sexton Jr, Eric Mabius, Will Liman
THE WHITE BALLOON
*****
A young girl is given money to
buy a goldfish, but she loses it along the way.
An urgent, dark, superbly paced and structured thriller from a child's
perspective. Presented verité-style, in real time and rich in local
detail, it's particularly remarkable in that, without any technical tricks
or high-concept set-ups, it keeps you on edge throughout. And
in the lead role pint-sized Mohammadkhani is bewitching.
dir/ed: Jafar Panahi
wr: Abbas Kiarostami
cast: Aida Mohammadkhani, Mohsen Kafili, Fereshteh
Sadr Orfani, Anna Borkowska, Mohammad Shahani, Mohammed Bakhtiar,
Aliasghar Smadi
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