After showing himself a master at juggling autobiographical material in Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Long Day Closes, both dealing with his childhood in Liverpool during the 50s, Terence Davies adapts a novel by John Kennedy Toole about growing up in the rural deep south in the late 30s and 40sand it’s remarkable how persuasively he handles this milieu while making it wholly his own. Two substantial assists are provided by Gena Rowlands (starring as the narrator-hero’s disreputable aunt, a onetime torch singer) and the ‘Scope format, both of which boost some of the mythological possibilities in the material. Davies’s special gifts as a filmmaker have much more to do with expressing and sculpting passages of pure feeling than with telling a story. Diana Scarwid, as the hero’s fragile mother, is almost as good as Rowlands (both actresses sing in this movie, and Davies turns their songs into incandescent experiences). Neither Toole’s novel nor Davies’s faithful version of it adds up to anything more than a period mood piece, but some of the passages in this movie are so beautiful and potent that you may carry the moods around with you for weeks. With Jacob Tierney, Denis Leary, and Leo Burmester. Read more
A semiabsorbing courtroom thriller, based on William Diehl’s novel, about a poor Chicago altar boy (Edward Norton) accused of murdering an archbishop and defended by a hotshot defense attorney (Richard Gere). Scripted by Steve Shagan (Hustle) and Ann Biderman (Copycat) and directed by first-timer Gregory Hoblit, the movie coasts along reasonably well as a mystery until it gets snarled in some double-talk about psychopathology toward the end. The leading charactersincluding the prosecutor (Laura Linney), the judge (Alfre Woodard), and a corrupt government official (John Mahoney)never quite convince, but this matters as little as characterizations do in most mysteries, and the plot keeps one interested in any case. With Frances McDormand. (JR) Read more
Chazz Palminteri adapts and stars in his own comic play, about a businessman (Ryan O’Neal) who hires a hit man (Palminteri) to bump off his wife (Cher) on their 20th wedding anniversary; Paul Mazursky, who plays the hit man’s shrink, directed, and Robert De Niro served as coproducer. The story has more twists than a rattlesnakeperhaps too many to sustain believability throughoutbut I must say I found at least two-thirds of it enjoyable and funny, and the remainder at least tolerable, thanks to lively performances by Palminteri, Cher, and Mazursky, all of whom shine (as does the cinematography by Fred Murphy); with Amber Smith. (JR) Read more
A disappointing 1990 collaboration between comic actor and writer-director Maurizio Nichetti (The Icicle Thief) and animator Guido Manuli combining animation and live-action. It’s a comedy in which Nichetti plays a sound-effects man working on cartoons who finds himself turning into a cartoon version of himself after the sound studio he works for starts working on porno movies. There’s a fair amount of ingenuity on display here, and there are some laughs, but the conceit never really takes off. With Angela Finocchiaro and Patrizio Roversi. (JR) Read more
An irreverent, politically incorrect 1996 satire about the abortion debate by writer-director Alexander Payne, an independent (at least before he signed up with Miramax) who considers activists on both sides of the debate equally ridiculous. As a comedy, this has its audacious moments, but I was more offended than impressed by Laura Dern’s award-winning performance as a pregnant, glue-sniffing slacker who becomes an unwitting symbol for both pro-life and pro-choice factions, because, like so much else in the movie, it reeks of class condescension. When her character finally musters the gumption to fight for her own interests, she becomes more palatable; but she’s still just another version of Alex in A Clockwork Orangesimply a pawn of the author’s thesis. If you’re alienated from politics and maybe from humanity in general, you might like this. I didn’t. With Swoosie Kurtz, Kurtwood Smith, Mary Kay Place, Kelly Preston, Tippi Hedren, and Burt Reynolds. (JR) Read more
