A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
'L.A. Confidential'
'L'america'
'La Promesse'
'Lake Placid'
'Last Dance'
'The Last Days'
'The Last Days of Disco'
'Last Night'
'Leaving Las Vegas'
'The Legend of 1900'
'Les Miserables'
'Lethal Weapon 4'
'Liar, Liar'
'Liberty Heights'
'A Life Less Ordinary'
'Living Out Loud'
'The Long Kiss Goodnight'
'Lost Highway'
'The Lost World'
'Love and Basketball'
'Love And Death On Long Island'
'Love and Sex'
'Love Is The Devil'
'Love Serenade'
'L.A. Confidential' (9/22/97)
Directed by Curtis Hanson
Starring Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe
"L.A. Confidential" has all the right ingredients for a film noir: a dense and satisfying plot that gives off the pungent odor of corruption, a rich cast of deeply flawed characters whose actions resist snap judgments and a nostalgia-free re-creation of the city in 1953. Director Curtis Hanson and his co-writer, Brian Helgeland, have taken a complex novel by James Ellroy and boiled it down to a no-flab screenplay that still eludes easy synopsis. A mass murder in a downtown cafe sets off an investigation that spirals off in many directions. At the heart of the tale are three cops with radically conflicting agendas who find themselves pursuing the same dangerous truth. Bud White (Russell Crowe) is the most volatile. Squeaky-clean Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) is his opposite; brainy, political and ambitious. Publicity-hungry Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) is all preening vanity. One of the unexpected pleasures of the film is that your sympathies (or antipathies) for these guys keep changing. The brutal guy has more brain — and the smart guy more guts — than is first apparent. You have to pay close attention to follow the double-crossing intricacies of the plot, but the reward for your work is dark and dirty fun. (on video)
DAVID ANSEN
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'L'america' (1/29/96)
Directed by Gianni Amelio
Starring Enrico Lo Verso, Michele Placido
The landscapes in Gianni Amelio's powerful movie belong to a country we haven't been allowed until now to see on screen. Welcome to Albania, a country that from 1944 to 1991 was sealed off to the West under draconian communist dictatorship. Though it's only 70 miles from the coast of Italy, the poverty-stricken land seems to belong to another century. Now open to the capitalist West, the country is rife for plunder. Enter two Yuppie Italian scam artists. Though his film will obviously have a special resonance for Italians, it's no less relevant to America in 1996, in the grips of anti-immigrant fever. Don't miss this beauty of a film. (on video)
DAVID ANSEN
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'La Promesse' (6/30/97)
Directed by Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne
Starring Jeremie Renier, Olivier Gourmet
There's not an ounce of flab or a false move in the breathtaking Belgian film "La Promesse." Written and directed by the brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, whose background as documentary filmmakers can be felt in the tale's gritty verisimilitude, it's the story of a teenager's hard-won moral awakening. Fifteen-year-old Igor (Jeremie Renier) has little chance to be a kid. He's too busy learning the ropes of his father's shady business: exploiting illegal immigrants who've sneaked into Belgium from Eastern Europe and Africa. Then a dying African worker, fallen from a scaffold, extracts a promise from Igor to take care of his wife and child. To keep his pledge, Igor must betray his father and look at the world with new eyes. Urgently, without sentimentality, "La Promesse" shows us the birth of a conscience, and its cost. (on video)
DAVID ANSEN
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'Lake Placid' (7/16/99)
Directed by Steve Miner
Starring Bill Pullman, Bridget Fonda
There are many clues that a movie is going to be bad, and one of them is a pointless title. "Lake Placid," for instance, is not about Lake Placid but a lake in Maine called Black Lake. Perhaps it's meant metaphorically, referring to the lake's smooth surface, which is ruffled only by the appearance of a menacing 30-ft. crocodile. But the title is not the only problem. Add to the mix unlikable characters (particularly Betty White as a foul-mouthed lake resident), hackneyed dialogue (written by television's David E. Kelley of "Chicago Hope," etc.) and scenes that strongly echo, if not directly rip-off, the "Jaws" movies, and you have a very dull movie indeed. There are some genuine scares and some suitably gruesome effects, but you still wonder why the likes of Bill Pullman, Bridget Fonda and "The General"'s Brendan Gleeson, bothered to don woodsy apparel for this soggy endeavor. Pullman, as Maine's fish and game head, has surprisingly little to do. Fonda turns in a limp performance as an American Museum of Natural History paleontologist sent to Maine to examine a tooth extracted from one of the creature's victims. She's the kind of "quirky" (read neurotic) urbanite who thinks worms are yucky. For her, searching for a killer croc that decapitates (or cuts clean in half) its victims becomes an empowering experience—the first time she's been "a part of something." For the viewer, it's more like being in a "croc" of nonsense.
JANE HOGAN
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'Last Dance' (5/6/96)
Directed by Bruce Beresford
Starring Sharon Stone, Rob Morrow
At 19, Cindy Liggett (Sharon Stone), wasted on crack, brutally killed a boy and a girl. Sentenced to die, she's been on death row for 12 years. As her execution approaches, her only hope rests with a young, rich-kid attorney, Rick Hayes (Rob Morrow), who has frittered his life away. But after meeting Cindy, he's transformed; he dismays his superiors by digging up errors in the trial and fighting to save Cindy's life. (Of course, he's more than a little in love.) Following her Oscar-nominated triumph in "Casino," this is meant to cement Stone's reputation as a prestige actress. Unfortunately for Stone, she also has no character to play. (on video)
DAVID ANSEN
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'The Last Days' (2/19/99)
Listen to their stories.
Directed by James Moll
Documentary
When it comes right down to it, no matter how frequently it is covered in documentaries, films, books and classrooms, the horror of the Holocaust will never die. The first feature documentary to be produced by the Shoah Foundation*, "The Last Days" may not provide any wildly original insights, nor much new in the way of footage, but it does simply and very movingly explore the individual experiences of five Holocaust survivors-and that is more than enough. As the survivors-Congressman Tom Lantos, artist Alice Lok Cahana, teacher Renée Firestone, businessman Bill Basch and grandmother Irene Zisblatt-are all Hungarian Jews, their experiences date from the last year of the war when the Nazis were racing to carry out the "final solution." Director James Moll skillfully interlaces the stories of their past with their present return to their hometowns and the concentration camps in which they were interned; it is an emotional and effective combination.
What makes the film a truly unique experience is that each of the survivors has a personal tale to tell; one that despite the common elements, has never been heard before. It brings the Holocaust down to an individual human level that makes it all the more horrific. When Irene Zisblatt, for example, explains how she repeatedly swallowed and retrieved the diamonds her father had given her in order to be able to keep something that was hers in the camp, or Renée Firestone confronts the doctor who ran the camp clinic where her sister was subjected to medical experimentation and died, the viewer comes to understand the Holocaust experience in a whole new way. What is most extraordinary is that these people not only survived, but that they survived without hate in their hearts and have gone on to lead full and valuable lives. Their stories provide a lesson in healing that the world would do well to master. But ultimately, "The Last Days" demonstrates that there are still tales of human cruelty and suffering we will never get used to-for which we should be eternally grateful.
ANDRÉA C. BASORA
*Steven Spielberg set up the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation with the intention of collecting and archiving the stories of Holocaust survivors. With teams of interviewers and videographers around the world, they have so far gathered a total of 50,000 testimonials for a digital library system that will eventually be available as an educational resource.
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'Last Night' (11/5/99)
Directed by Don McKellar
Starring Don McKellar, Sandra Oh
Were the world to end tomorrow, what would your last night mean to you? While the question likely prompted director Don McKellar to make "Last Night," the film fails to explore it in any clear, interesting way. Using a series of oddly connected sub-plots and an hour-by-hour account of the last day, McKellar aims to show how different people view the apocalypse. The introverted Patrick, played by McKellar himself in a wonderfully understated performance, rebuffs his saddened family to spend the last night in solitude. His plans fail, however, when the anxious Sandra (Sandra Oh) crosses his path. Stranded amidst the town's deserted stores and broken pay phones, she enlists Patrick's help to return to her husband in time for the end. The two meet a strange cast of characters along the way, including the hilarious Craig (Callum Keith Rennie), who spends the last night resolutely indulging his every sexual fantasy (and providing the film's only flickers of humor). To McKellar's credit, a few useful lessons transcend the film's disconnected feel. Primary is the realization that too much of what we do (and don't do) is based on consequence; it's unsettling to realize how our decisions might change were there no tomorrow. Perhaps most thought-provoking is the sadness and bewilderment felt by all: if everyone is going to die, you're not alone and you won't be missing anything, so there's ostensibly little to be sad about. Until you realize that this life, warts and all, might perhaps be worth living. That message is drowned out, though, by the film's morbid mood. There's an ample sense of foreboding in "Last Night"—but sadly, very little else.
ANJALI ARORA
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'The Last Days of Disco' (6/8/98)
Directed by Whit Stillman
Starring Chloë Sevigny, Kate Beckinsale
Like Stillman's previous films, "Metropolitan" and "Barcelona," the true subject of "The Last Days of Disco" is East Coast WASPs. Stillman's comedy may be filled with songs by Blondie and Evelyn (Champagne) King, but it could just as well have been called "The Last Days of Peter Duchin." What Stillman does capture is what it feels like to start your adult life in a big city; to find yourself roommates with people you don't really like; to rush into relationships without quite knowing why. He has a keen sense of group dynamics and a fine comic ear. The cast, including Kate Beckinsale as a vivacious, crafty and back-stabbing Hampshire College grad, Stillman regular Chris Eigeman and Matt Keeslar as an eager assistant D.A., is right on the money, though Chloe Sevigny's virtuous schlumpiness becomes one-note. (on video)
DAVID ANSEN
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'Leaving Las Vegas' (10/30/95)
Directed by Mike Figgis
Starring Nicolas Cage, Elisabeth Shue
A love story like no other, Mike Figgis's is a bleak, mesmerizing rhapsody of self-destruction, defiantly uninterested in peddling Hollywood-style uplift. Figgis doesn't pretend, and I won't either, that this movie is for everybody. Its milieu is sordid, its language explicit and its lovers — an alcoholic screenwriter named Ben (Nicolas Cage) and a Vegas prostitute named Sera (Elisabeth Shue) — aren't in the market for reformation. But anyone who cares about ravishing filmmaking, superb acting and movies willing to dive into the mystery of unconditional love will leave this dark romance both shaken and invigorated. (on video)
DAVID ANSEN
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'The Legend of 1900' (11/2/99)
Directed by Giuseppe Tornatore
Starring Tim Roth, Pruitt Taylor Vince
'The Legend of 1900' tells the story of a boy named after his birth year who lives his whole life at sea. Found abandoned on an ocean liner and raised secretly by a ship worker, the toddler spends his days with a port hole as his only window onto the outside world. When his adoptive father dies he is left alone to grow into a young man (Tim Roth) with an extraordinary talent for the piano. We hear the tale of 1900 from Max (Pruitt Taylor Vince), his trumpet-playing shipmate who decades later is convinced his old friend is still aboard the decrepit ship which is to be demolished. "The Legend of 1900" is an adaptation by Giuseppe Tornatore ("Cinema Paradiso") of a monologue by Alessandro Baricco and not an entirely successful one. It has moments of poignancy when it examines its protagonist's psyche: 1900's fear of land turns out to be a fear of the unknown or as he puts it, a fear of "never knowing where the story's going to end." Unfortunately, the film doesn't know either. Careening wildly between fairy tale and drama it doesn't know when to call it quits.
KEVIN STUART
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'Les Miserables' (5/4/98)
Directed by Bille August
Starring Liam Neeson, Geoffrey Rush
Not even counting that musical that won't go away, there has been no shortage of "Les Miserables" to choose from. Does the world really need another retelling? Frankly, no. But we've got one anyway, this time with Liam Neeson as the reformed convict trying to live a decent life and Geoffrey Rush, of "Shine" fame, as the obsessive, law-and-order police inspector who spends half a lifetime hunting him down. Rafael Yglesias has condensed Victor Hugo's immense novel into a tight, time-hopping script, that is the basis for Danish director, Bille August's solid, handsomely mounted but seldom inspired film. Perhaps it will prove enthralling to a viewer encountering Hugo's sweeping, romantic tale for the first time. For Mizniks, however, the thrills seem diluted. (on video)
DAVID ANSEN
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'Lethal Weapon 4' (7/20/98)
Directed by Richard Donner
Starring Mel Gibson, Danny Glover
A manic, steroid-enhanced mixture of jokes, explosions and crunching violence, Richard Donner's sequel is more than eager to please — it's desperate. All the familiar elements are in place, ratcheted up a notch. There's Danny Glover's exasperation, Mel Gibson's jokey recklessness, Joe Pesci's yapping-dog nudginess, not to mention enough fires to suggest a pyromaniac behind the scenes. Donner and screenwriter Channing Gibson have abandoned even the pretense of plausibility: if they can get a laugh with a nitrous oxide gag they'll go for it, however out of character it may be. What's freshest here are the (demographically selected) newcomers. Chris Rock plays a cop trying to keep his marriage to Glover's daughter a secret from the old man, and Hong Kong star Jet Li is the Chinese-triad villain, a smiling devil with the deadliest kung fu kicks in the biz. (on video)
DAVID ANSEN
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'Liar, Liar' (3/24/97)
Directed by Tom Shadyac
Starring Jim Carrey, Maura Tierney
Tom Shadyac's "Liar Liar" is the most conventional movie Jim Carrey has ever made and Carrey, a true subversive, shouldn't be wasting his time rattling the bars of the ordinary. He plays a dirt-bag lawyer named Fletcher Reede, whose young son (Justin Cooper) is so sick of being fibbed to that he makes a birthday wish that magically comes true: Dad can't lie for an entire day. Fletcher is trying to win a bogus case and sleep his way up the corporate ladder. What's a lawyer to do? "Liar" has a clunky first act, and two actresses get handed the same stereotype: Amanda Donohoe plays Boss Slut, and Jennifer Tilly plays Client Slut. (Fletcher's ex, not a slut, is played warmly by Maura Tierney.) But once Fletcher starts telling the truth against his will, the movie delivers some perfect laughs. Fletcher maniacally abuses his firm's partners and literally beats himself up in a john. For 30 minutes, this is the best volcano movie of the year, but when Fletcher inevitably becomes caring and chants "I love my son," you cringe. (on video)
JEFF GILES
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'Liberty Heights' (11/23/99)
Directed by Barry Levinson
Starring Ben Foster, Adrien Brody
Not a minute too soon, the floundering Barry Levinson ("Sleepers" and "Sphere") has returned to Baltimore, the inspiration for his best and most personal movies—"Diner," "Tin Men" and "Avalon." "Liberty Heights," a languorous, funny and lovingly detailed memory film, is set in 1954 in a Jewish suburb at a time when signs at a country club still announce baldly: NO JEWS, DOGS, OR COLOREDS ALLOWED. That will soon change: integration is just around the corner, and white teenagers like Ben Kurtzman (Ben Foster), who can't keep his eyes off the only black girl (Rebekah Johnson) in his classroom, are about to discover the glories of Ray Charles and James Brown. Ben is not the only member of the Kurtzman family dealing with what his mother calls "the other kind." His older brother, Van (Adrian Brody), becomes obsessed with a rich, blond shiksa goddess (Carolyn Murphy). Fifties coming-of-age tales have become a cliche unto themselves, but Levinson's reverie feels handcrafted. By focusing on such a specific milieu, he keeps the genre alive with his great ear for small talk, an elegant eye and a warm, forgiving heart. This is nostalgia bottled and aged with care.
DAVID ANSEN
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'A Life Less Ordinary' (11/3/97)
Directed by Danny Boyle
Starring Ewan McGregor, Cameron Diaz
The latest creation of the hipper-than-thou "Trainspotting" and "Shallow Grave" triumverate (director Danny Boyle, producer Andrew McDonald and writer John Hodge), suffers from a mean-spiritedness that belies its romantic intentions. An attempt to capture the spirit of a 1930s romantic comedy, "A Life Less Ordinary" throws a hapless man (Ewan McGregor) and a bratty heiress (Cameron Diaz) together with love as the outcome. There is too much disconcerting and nasty violence in this light-hearted caper, but when it sticks to its romantic guns, it is often charming. Unfortunately, much talent is thrown by the wayside. Stanley Tucci, Ian Holm and Tony Shalhoub are all wasted in thankless minor roles. Luckily, McGregor and Diaz make the most of their leading roles — they can't save the movie, but it's fun watching them try. (on video)
ANDRÉA C. BASORA
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'Living Out Loud' (11/02/98)
Directed by Richard LaGravenese
Starring Holly Hunter, Danny DeVito
Judith Nelson (Holly Hunter), the tightly wound, bottle-blond heroine of "Living Out Loud," may be the most fully imagined female character in an American movie this year. A lonely, angry divorcee who's full of surprises, she is as entertaining to watch as she is hard to pigeonhole. Judith is holed up in her big Fifth Avenue apartment after her 17-year marriage to a philandering doctor (Martin Donovan) has collapsed. She's locked inside her overactive mind, and writer-director Richard LaGravenese lets us eavesdrop on her internal conversations; he takes us inside her fantasies — some as drastic as suicide, others as banal as having someone to dine with. The film is about how this complicated, unfinished woman finds her way back into the world — back to living out loud, with a voice she can call her own. Hunter gradually unpeels the layers of pretense this Southern girl has acquired as she's traded up in the world. "Living Out Loud" is far from seamless — the last third of the movie has a choppy rhythm and an ending that doesn't quite work — but it's alive in all the ways that count. LaGravenese dramatizes nuances most filmmakers wouldn't even think to try. This un-hyped, delightfully grown-up comedy is the sleeper of the season.
DAVID ANSEN
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'The Long Kiss Goodnight' (10/21/96)
Directed by Renny Harlin
Starring Geena Davis, Samuel L. Jackson
Director Renny Harlin is smart enough never to ask the audience to take this movie seriously. Would you believe this premise: a sweet schoolteacher with amnesia who slowly discovers that she was a gun-packing government assassin in her former life... who teams up with a low-rent private eye to figure out her true identity and finds herself the target of both her former nemesis, an international terrorist, and her ex-employer, the CIA — neither of whom is happy to see that she's still alive. Together Geena Davis and Samuel L. Jackson make a wonderfully improbable action team: she's the muscle, he's the reluctant brains. Though some of the violence is nastier than it needs to be and the obligatory climactic melee, complete with choppers, skidding trucks and explosions, overstays its welcome, "The Long Kiss Goodnight" stays fun because it plays its heroine's split personality for laughs, not trauma. (on video)
DAVID ANSEN
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'Lost Highway' (2/24/97)
Directed by David Lynch
Starring Bill Pullman, Patricia Arquette
David Lynch has made a movie that will drive you bananas. His films ("Blue Velvet," "Wild at Heart") and his groundbreaking TV series "Twin Peaks" fused reality with dreams. In "Lost Highway," reality has become a dream. But Lynch has forgotten how boring it is listening to someone else's dream. In "Lost Highway" (co-written by Barry Gifford), Fred Madison (Bill Pullman) is a jazz musician who suspects his wife, Renee (Patricia Arquette), is having an affair. When she's gruesomely murdered, he's tried and sentenced to the electric chair. In his cell he suddenly turns into Pete Dayton (Balthazar Getty), an auto mechanic. The flabbergasted cops release Pete, who soon meets Alice (Arquette), the girlfriend of sadistic mob boss Mr. Eddy (Robert Loggia), who's also sadistic mob boss Dick Laurent. Alice is a blond Renee look-alike — or is she Renee? And is Pete Fred? And who in hell (literally) is the Mystery Man (Robert Blake), a corpse-faced galoot who can be in two places at the same time? These mysteries become not fascinating but maddening. (on video)
JACK KROLL
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'The Lost World' (5/26/97)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Starring Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Moore
At one screening "awesome" was the verdict of an 11-year-old. But, for all the enhanced ingenuity of the special effects in "The Lost World," the element of surprise and originality (the idea of cloning dinosaurs from fossilized DNA) is no longer present. And screenwriter David Koepp (the movie is very loosely based on Michael Crichton's sequel to his novel "Jurassic Park") has come up with a pretty conventional story line: get the characters back with the dinos and let them start running and screaming. As a result, the film devolves into a series of set pieces in which everyone is placed in fearsome peril. Some of these are brilliantly staged and the technical stuff surpasses "Jurassic Park," especially in the interaction between creatures and humans. Still, none of the animals has any personality. The humans, on the other hand, are gallant. Jeff Goldblum, as mathematician Ian Malcolm, finds more ways to look aghast than seem humanly possible; Julianne Moore, as Malcolm's paleontologist girlfriend Sarah Harding, shows that she can be profitably terrified. (on video)
JACK KROLL
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'Love and Basketball' (4/21/00)
Directed by Gina Prince-Blythewood
Starring Omar Epps, Sanaa Lathan
"Love and Basketball," television writer Gina Prince-Blythewood's debut feature, is enamored of sports metaphors—at one point one character suggests to another that they play a game of one-on-one "for your heart." True to form, the film is divided into "quarters" and while the first half showcases an impressive new directorial talent, the last two quarters fail to score.
The "Love" of the title is between Quincy McCall (Omar Epps) and Monica Wright (Sanaa Lathan), childhood neighbors who meet when Quincy discovers that 11-year-old girls can play basketball too. The two grow up to be buddies and rivals, until they fall in love and are both recruited by USC. At this point, the romantic side of the film falls into predictable "A Star is Born" territory. At first he is the star, while she struggles, then as she finds her footing, his fortunes reverse and neither is mature enough to deal with the pressure. It is not a new story, but the novelty of the sports setting makes it surprisingly captivating (though perhaps not for long—the more astute "Girlfight," due out this summer, treads similar ground). The scenes on court are shot energetically, albeit with a heavy reliance on the pop music soundtrack. But one particularly gripping game features a running voice-over monologue by Monica that gives a real sense of what goes through the mind of a player.
The film is also buoyed by its performances. Epps, an actor who more than made his presence known with roles in "The Wood" and "In Too Deep," gives Quincy an easy, assured arrogance that is just right for the role of the college golden boy. As the determined, tomboyish Monica, Lathan finds a nice balance between awkward and appealing. Some of the smaller roles are also notable: Alfre Woodard is saddled with some dreadful lines as Monica's housewife mother, yet still turns in an affecting performance; Dennis Haysbert, bearing a remarkable resemblance to Denzel Washington, brings and unexpected dignity and complexity to the role of Quincy's philandering father.
Prince-Blythewood cleverly highlights the contrasts between men's and women's sports. While Quincy enjoys the privileged life of the college star—cheerleaders, big crowds, autograph-seekers—Monica and her team must toil in relative obscurity. What is acceptable male aggressiveness for him, is seen as unladylike behavior in her. He is self-confident; she is belligerent. However, we never really get a sense of why basketball is so important to Monica—she is indisputably driven, but we never know the reason. Nor is there a real exploration of the dangers facing Quincy when he decides to go pro too soon. Spike Lee, who co-produced this film, dealt much more profoundly with the corruption of college basketball in "He Got Game" and this uniformly glossy treatment is aching for a trace of his grittiness.
Just when things start to get really interesting, touching upon the devastating lack of opportunity for female athletes (Monica is forced to go overseas to pursue her dream), the hope offered by a newly created WNBA, and the challenge of raising a family as a professional athlete, the film wimps out. "Love and Basketball" never really reconciles the two elements of its title and ultimately basketball is forced to take a backseat to love. It's a pity because romantic comedies are a dime a dozen this season, but we could sure use a good basketball movie.
ANDRÉA C. BASURA
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'Love And Death On Long Island' (3/9/98)
Directed by Richard Kwietniowski
Starring John Hurt, Jason Priestley
John Hurt has found a role he can sink his sharpest teeth into. In "Love and Death on Long Island," a comedy of unusual intelligence, he plays a recently widowed highbrow British novelist named Giles De'Ath, an old fogey so set in his ways he doesn't know one can't use a VCR without a television set to go along with it. One afternoon, locked out of his London house, he deigns to go to the cinema and finds himself transfixed by the vision of teen idol Ronny Bostock (Jason Priestley). So begins an obsession that will drag this 19th-century man into the cheesy delights of 20th-century pop culture. As a man in the grips of a passion he knows is ridiculous and is helpless to abandon, Hurt gives one of his subtlest, funniest — and most touching — performances. The first-time writer-director, Englishman Richard Kwietniowski, has adapted Gilbert Adair's novel with wit, economy and a delicate understanding that the funniest comedies are played with dead seriousness. (on video)
DAVID ANSEN
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'Love and Sex' (8/31/00)
Directed by Valerie Breiman
Starring Jon Favreau, Famke Janssen
"Love and Sex" won't make anyone's top 10 list for the year, nor will it break any records at the box office. Still, this small, witty film's appealing subject matter and fresh script make it stand out from standard summer schlock.The film traces the up-and-down relationships of Kate Welles (Famke Janssen), a charming woman who works at a Cosmo-esque woman's magazine named for its bitchy editor-in-chief, Monique. Kate's job at this weighty publication is to write how-to-keep-your-man-type articles with specifics hinted at by such unfortunate titles as "Blow by Blow." All the while, the predatory Monique gives Kate counsel such as "Don't get old. Old is ugly. Ugly is death."
Kate's sometime significant other is Adam Levy (played by Jon Favreau of "Swingers" fame), an acid-tongued young man who makes his living as a pop-art wannabe painter. The relationship is built more on differences than similarities. She loves German expressionist films; he digs B-grade ninjette flicks, which leads to a predictable video store dispute. But the stars generate enough chemistry that it's easy to identify with them as a couple.
As the smart and beautiful Kate, Janssen is excellent, especially when director Valerie Breiman's occasionally acerbic script lets her get bitchy. During a low point in her topsy-turvy relationship with Adam, Kate calls his new lover, Peaches, a bimbo. "But she plays the harp," he whines. "Excuse me, a bimbo savant," she replies without missing a beat.
It's a tale of love and loss that will resonate with anyone who has ever suffered through a broken heart. The script is breezy and funny--making this a perfect date movie, even if its all-too-pat ending disappoints. It's the only cop out in a movie that otherwise gets the perils of life and love just right.
SUZANNE SMALLEY
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'Love Is The Devil' (10/12/98)
Directed by John Maybury
Starring Derek Jacobi, Daniel Craig
You won't see any of Francis Bacon's actual paintings in writer-director John Maybury's claustrophobic, close-up portrait of the artist, but you may feel you have been taken inside one. From beginning to end, this visually striking film radiates the sickly, anguished intensity Bacon created on canvas. No traditional biopic, "Devil" homes in on the destructive relationship between the flamboyant modern British painter (Derek Jacobi) and the thief George Dyer (Daniel Craig), who for seven years was his model, lover and muse. Their sadomasochistic relationship calls to mind the fatal erotic power games of Fassbinder films. Maybury's chilly and chilling film is not for those who crave narrative — images take precedence over plot. But any aficionado of Bacon — or of dazzling acting — will feast on Jacobi's wickedly bitchy performance. This Bacon is a charismatic but nasty piece of work. You may never look at his paintings the same way again.
DAVID ANSEN
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'Love Serenade' (7/28/97)
Directed by Shirley Barrett
Starring Miranda Otto, Rebecca Frith
This Australian comedy by writer-director Shirley Barrett won the Camera d'Or for Best First Film at the 1996 Cannes festival. Deservedly: its sense of humor is deliciously different. It concerns the love-starved Hurley sisters, Dimity (Miranda Otto) and Vicki-Ann (Rebecca Frith), denizens of the tiny, forlorn town of Sunray. Their sisterly bond is sorely tested with the arrival next door of the mellifluous-voiced Ken Sherry (George Shevtsov), an over-the-hill deejay from Brisbane setting up shop in this backwater burg, which he floods with the sepulchral tunes of Barry White. Rarely has a less appropriate love object come into movie view. The jaded, fortysomething, thrice-divorced Sherry is Mr. Wrong incarnate. Just how fishy this character is cannot be revealed, for it would spoil Barrett's weirdest conceit, which spins the movie into the territory of fable. (on video)
DAVID ANSEN
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