Robert Altman’s Gosford Park , from a screenplay by Julian Fellowes, based upon an idea by Mr. Altman and Bob Balaban, manages to be derivative and original at the same time through Mr. Altman’s patented polyphonic virtuosity with intermingling ensembles in an ever-fluidly-shifting mise en scène . Hence, Gosford Park may remind you at times Read More
Dress for depression. The holiday movies are upon us, and from
the picture thus far, the big screen doesn’t promise much ho-ho-ho. In Vanilla Sky , Tom Cruise is a man whose
face has been smashed and burned beyond recognition, then surgically sutured
into a hideously deformed death mask. In A
Beautiful Mind , Russell Read More
Philip Kaufman’s Quills , from a screenplay by Doug Wright based upon his play, has taken so many liberties with the life and death of the Marquis de Sade (1740-1814)–particularly his last days at Charenton Asylum–that he becomes as much an icon of civil liberty as the literary originator of what we now term “Sadism.” Read More
Ladies Who Love Gere
The swallows may not be coming back to Capistrano, but one by one the film-festival movies that took Cannes, Venice and Toronto by storm are coming home to roost on a marquee near you. Robert Altman’s Dr. T & the Women will, I predict, be one of the most popular. It Read More
Friday, April 17. Heading up 12th Avenue toward Pier 92, site of the “Natural Health & Fitness Expo ’98,” a major annual New Age health-holistic gadget gangbang of a trade show, I’m trying to remember just what it was that ever attracted me to New Age culture in the first place. I know it initially Read More
Affleck’s Lousy;(11)O’Toole’s Soused
Several otherwise serious people disgrace themselves in a stupid little spook show called Phantoms , based on a book by Dean Koontz, a writer of supernatural potboilers who has previously seen his works limited to the television screen. Mr. Koontz, who has also co-written the screenplay of Phantoms , has always Read More
Robert Altman’s The Gingerbread Man , from a screenplay by Al Hayes, based on an original story by John Grisham, takes place in a Savannah that bears little resemblance to the more scenic Savannah of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil . Indeed, the Savannah of The Gingerbread Man is as dark and Read More
