Leo McCarey’s 1957 remake of his 1939 masterpiece Love Affair, coscripted with Delmer Daves and shot in color and ‘Scope, is his last great filma tearjerker with comic interludes and cosmic undertones that fully earns both its tears and its laughs, despite some kitschy notions about art and a couple of truly dreadful sequences. A playboy (Cary Grant) and a nightclub singer (Deborah Kerr) meet and fall in love on a luxury liner headed for New York; each is romantically committed to someone else, but they agree to meet at a future date if they can disentangle themselves from their commitments. Neither star ever showed quite this much delicacy before or after, and McCarey’s elliptical way of framing key emotional moments meshes perfectly with their sublime performances. 115 min. (JR) Read more
This film by one of the best Belgian directors, Andre Delvaux, adapted from a Marguerite Yourcenar novel set in the 16th century, follows a dissident doctor from Flanders who is hounded throughout Europe for his views and falls into the hands of the Inquisition. Read more
Formulaic action dross, below the norm. The fact that CIA drug dealers are the villains this time theoretically adds a certain tang to the proceedings, but in practice this slugfest of Dirty Harry tactics is very much the mixture as before. Real-life martial arts master and international security specialist Steven Seagal plays the lead, coproduced, and collaborated on the story with director Andrew Davis; Pam Grier is on hand as his loyal sidekick, Sharon Stone is his wife, and Daniel Faraldo and Henry Silva are among the villains. Filmed on location in Chicago, with the usual amount of property damage. (JR) Read more
