Glorious Wreck Nick Nolte Makes Off With The Good Thief

Neil Jordan’s The Good Thief , from his own screenplay, inspired by Jean-Pierre Melville’s Bob Le Flambeur (1955), has been compared favorably with such caper flicks as Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven (2001) and Frank Oz’s The Score (2001). By contrast, The Good Thief has been compared unfavorably with such acknowledged caper classics as John Huston’s Read More

Wake Bening! She’s Bombed … Three Reasons to Hit the Town

Wake Bening! She’s Bombed

Written and directed by quirky Neil Jordan ( The Butcher Boy ) and starring the mesmerizing Annette Bening (I wonder if Warren Beatty really deserves her), In Dreams filled me with so much anticipation, I couldn’t imagine a better way to get 1999 off to a smashing start. Now that I’ve Read More

Immortality or Meg Ryan? You Can’t Have Both

Brad Silberling’s City of Angels , from a screenplay by Dana Stevens, based on the Wim Wenders film Wings of Desire (1987), strains to achieve the enchantingly sublime, but ends up sinking to the depressingly ridiculous. I must confess, however, that angels (with or without wings) in the movies have always made me nervous. Curiously, Read More