Category: Movie Review

THE FILMS OF SERGEI PARADJANOV There are few people of genius in the cinema; look at Bresson, Mizoguchi, Dovzhenko, Paradjanov, Bunuel: not one of them could be confused with anyone else. An artist of that calibre follows one straight line, albeit at great cost; not without weakness or even, indeed, occasionally being farfetched; but always […]

SCHOOL DAZE **** (Masterpiece) Directed and written by Spike Lee With Larry Fishburne, Giancarlo Esposito, Tisha Campbell, and Kyme. It’s difficult at first to see what all the trouble is about. It’s so simple, really. Here’s Spike Lee following up the surprise success of his low-budget romantic comedy She’s Gotta Have It with something bigger […]

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE **** (Masterpiece) Directed by John Frankenheimer Written by George Axelrod With Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh, Angela Lansbury, James Gregory, Leslie Parrish, John McGiver, Khigh Dhiegh, and James Edwards. The first and only time I’ve seen a good 35-millimeter print of Carl Dreyer’s 1944 masterpiece Day of Wrath was in Europe […]

HAIRSPRAY *** (A must-see) Directed and written by John Waters With Ricki Lake, Divine, Leslie Ann Powers, Colleen Fitzpatrick, Ruth Brown, Sonny Bono, Debbie Harry, and Shawn Thompson. As John Waters is the first to point out, Hairspray is “a satire of the two most dreaded film genres today–the ‘teen flick’ and the ‘message movie.’” […]

MIX-UP **** (Masterpiece) Directed by Francoise Romand. ANATOMY OF A RELATIONSHIP *** (A must-see) Directed and written by Luc Moullet and Antonietta Pizzorno With Moullet and Christine Hebert. GAP-TOOTHED WOMEN * (Has redeeming facet) Directed by Les Blank. While the issue of representation is at the cutting edge of most debates about film, it usually […]

MOONSTRUCK ** (Worth seeing) Directed by Norman Jewison Written by John Patrick Shanley With Cher, Nicolas Cage, Olympia Dukakis, and Danny Aiello. Moonstruck, Norman Jewison’s pleasant, warmhearted movie, draws upon two dramatic traditions–the celebration of liberated passion (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Smiles of a Summer Night, Cousin, Cousine) and ethnic domestic comedy-drama. The setting is […]

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING ** (Worth seeing) Directed by Philip Kaufman Written by Kaufman and Jean-Claude Carriere With Daniel Day-Lewis, Juliette Binoche, Lena Olin, Derek de Lint, Erland Josephson, Pavel Landovsky, Donald Moffat, and Daniel Olbrychski. Before we are forgotten, we will be turned into kitsch. Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion. […]

RADIUM CITY Directed by Carole Langer. Thanks largely to the influence of auteur criticism, most of our aesthetically oriented writing about film since the 60s has been concerned with style. But one could argue that such an emphasis has tended to divert attention from what might be considered even more important–namely, form and content. “Whatever […]

SLEEPWALK *** (A must-see) Directed by Sara Driver Written by Driver and Lorenzo Mans With Suzanne Fletcher, Ann Magnuson, Dexter Lee, Steven Chen, Tony Todd, Richard Boes, and Ako. The French term fantastique–which emcompasses science fiction, comic strips, Surrealism, sword and sorcery tales, and many other forms of fantasy–suggests an attitude toward the imagination that […]

HOUSEKEEPING **** (Masterpiece) Directed and written by Bill Forsyth With Christine Lahti, Sara Walker, Andrea Burchill, Anne Pitoniak, Margot Pinvidic, and Bill Smillie. Two or three days and nights went by; I reckon I might say they swum by, they slid along so quiet and smooth and lovely. –The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Marilynne Robinson’s […]

RAW * (Has redeeming facet) Directed by Robert Townsend Written by Eddie Murphy With Eddie Murphy. Eddie Murphy’s new concert film, Raw, has one of those titles that rebound cruelly on their creators. No doubt Murphy and his handlers used “raw” to mean uncensored and unvarnished, hyping the notoriously scatological and obscene Murphy you can’t […]

BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED *** (A must-see) Directed by Matthew Robbins Written by Robbins, Brad Bird, Brent Maddock, and S.S. Wilson With Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy, and Michael Carmine. Batteries Not Included is either the most ingenuous or the most subversive film of the year, and I’m not sure there’s a way of figuring out which. […]

Jonathan Rosenbaum Looks Back at the Year’s Best Movies

BROADCAST NEWS *** (A must-see) Directed and written by James L. Brooks With Holly Hunter, Albert Brooks, William Hurt, Robert Prosky, Lois Chiles, Joan Cusack, and Jack Nicholson. WALL STREET ** (Worth seeing) Directed by Oliver Stone Written by Stone and Stanley Weiser With Charlie Sheen, Michael Douglas, Martin Sheen, Daryl Hannah, Terence Stamp, Hal […]

EMPIRE OF THE SUN * (Has redeeming facet) Directed by Steven Spielberg Written by Tom Stoppard With Christian Bale, John Malkovich, Miranda Richardson, and Nigel Havers. THE LAST EMPEROR **** (Masterpiece) Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci Written by Bertolucci and Mark Peploe With John Lone, Joan Chen, Peter O’Toole, Ying Ruocheng, Victor Wong, Dennis Dun, and […]