They are complex characters, and the actors give astonishingly vivid performances to bring them to life. There’s so much twitchy energy when they’re on screen together that you don’t know where to look.
It would have been a masterpiece except for some plot problems. The pair keep bumping into people they knew years ago. This just doesn’t happen in a city as large as London. And for a story grounded in social realism, three major coincidences is two too many.
It’s genuinely exciting, with some particularly strong scenes – one set on a bridge and another in the streets of New York City. It’s the sort of film you wish the 1990s James Bond instalments had been, with strong characters, credible geopolitics, tight plotting, and a convincing scenario. The Pierce Brosnan films, sadly, had none of those things.
Anthony Hopkins is the only good thing about the film, and thankfully he’s in virtually every frame. He plays a know-it-all billionaire, Charles, who survives a plane crash in Alaska and attempts to walk back to civilisation. His efforts are hindered by the vain photographer, Bob, who he accompanied (Alec Baldwin), who happens to be having an affair with his wife (a miscast Elle MacPherson).
For some reason, Charles and Bob are continually saying each other's names.
The situation is exciting enough – there are plenty of showdowns with bears – but the execution is third-rate and even comical. In one laugh-out-loud scene, Hopkins and Baldwin don bear-hide costumes that they have apparently rustled up in mere minutes. They look like Ewoks.
Photographer Maggie (Meg Ryan) and astronomer Sam (Matthew Broderick) team up to spy on and torment their former lovers, who have become a couple. This unlikely and mean-spirited premise sees the pair squatting in a New York City apartment opposite their exes and watching them by using Sam’s astronomy equipment for surveillance.
The story doesn’t work for a number of reasons, but mainly because it’s built around cruelty. Are we really meant to relate to them destroying the lives of the people who wronged them?
There are so many silly aspects:
1. Maggie is a revenge-crazed grungy biker/artist with perfect make-up. The film can’t decide how we’re supposed to feel about her.
2. Neither Maggie nor Sam have anything else they need to do, such as earning a living. They can spend all of their time dismantling other people’s lives.
3. The Frenchman Anton (Tchéky Karyo) who steals Sam’s sweetheart Linda (Kelly Preston) doesn’t sound French at all. I kept thinking that the plot would reveal him to be an American, but no, he was just acting badly.
4. There’s an absurd scene in which a bunch of kids are persuaded to spray perfume on Anton via water pistols. This sort of thing just doesn’t ring true.
It’s fascinating in a way, but the tone is all wrong and it’s simply not funny. You wonder why Ryan and Broderick ever got mixed up in something so misjudged.
The wealthy American heiress Milly (Alison Elliott) is dying. Her friend Kate (Helena Bonham-Carter) schemes to inherit her money via a love triangle with her boyfriend Merton (Linus Roache). But inevitably things don’t go to plan.
It's enjoyable but there are a couple of flaws. The first is that Milly never seems especially unwell. The second is that Merton doesn’t seem charming enough to have two women in love with him. What’s the appeal?
In places, more depth was needed to explore characters and their motivations. For example, Kate’s strict, stuffy aunt (Charlotte Rampling) is something of a caricature without being fully explained. This may be because the novel had to be condensed for the screen.
That said, it's lavishly shot and generally well acted.
Crime drama directed by Mike Newell.
It’s loosely based on the true story of Joseph D. Pistone (played by Johnny Depp), an FBI agent who infiltrates the New York mafia of the 1970. He befriends Lefty Ruggiero (Al Pacino) but finds himself torn between doing his job as an agent and becoming part of the shady world he is attracted by.
It’s engaging, but somehow not quite as good as it should have been. You wonder if in the hands of Martin Scorsese the same material could have been more skilfully handled. Depp and Pacino are both excellent.
My favourite scene is when the various meanings of “Forget about it” are discussed. If only there had been more of this subtle, nuanced character-based comedy.
Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow star as two friends who travel from Los Angeles to Tucson, Arizona, to attend their school reunion, anxious to impress the peers who snubbed them 10 years previously.
As with so many American films, there’s a lot about status anxiety. It’s a story about aspiration and class. It’s also about the importance of friendship. While some of the jokes miss the mark completely, and the writing could be sharper, there’s enough charm in the two leads’ performances that it works.
I’m still not sure if it’s forgettable fluff or a satire of forgettable fluff. It certainly doesn’t have the edge of Clueless, but it’s in the same general universe.
Written and directed by Woody Allen, this is one of his less impressive efforts. Harry (Allen) is a bestselling writer who has angered friends and family by putting them into his stories in only loosely fictionalised form. This indiscretion gets him into trouble again and again.
The film tells his story, partly through visualisations of the stories he created, and it works on multiple levels in a very post-modern kind of way. As a narrative device, that’s welcome. But there are major flaws. There are some good lines but overall it’s just not funny enough. Some of the fantasy sequences (such as a trip to Hell) fall flat. There’s also something quite distasteful about it. We see Harry take off on a road trip with a prostitute, kidnapping his own child along the way – not exactly hilarious.
Allen seems out of place against the glamorous Elizabeth Shue and Kirstie Alley, so the benefit of a skilled, all-star cast is diminished by that jarring mismatch. Also featured are Richard Benjamin, Billy Crystal, Paul Giamatti, Mariel Hemingway, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tobey Maguire, Demi Moore, Stanley Tucci and Robin Williams.
The most interesting aspect is the unusual editing, with sudden jump-cuts within scenes. As such, it seems to predict the annoying tic later used by countless YouTubers.
Helen Hunt is absolutely superb as the cafe waitress that Nicholson falls in love with but is unable to articulate his feelings towards. Her three-dimensional character seems entirely real. Less convincingly Greg Kinnear plays Melvin’s gay artist neighbour, who Melvin slowly begins to accept and like – despite all his prejudices.
It’s an intelligent film with no easy answers. It works as a romantic comedy, but it’s the least formulaic example of that genre I can imagine.
It leaves you with a lot to think about, not least whether the OCD community think it’s a fair portrayal of that condition.
A radio astronomer, Ellie (Jodie Foster) discovers deep-space signals of intelligent life. These turn out to include instructions on how to visit their distant system.
The slow build-up is interesting. I like the way that political and religious interests get in the way of the pure science that Ellie represents, as this seems quite “real” in terms of how people might react to this sort of news.
The “space” content of the film occupies only a few minutes of the lengthy running time. In some ways that’s disappointing, and what you actually see feels like a cop-out, but really this is a story about humans’ reactions to learning we are not alone in the universe – rather than a saga about aliens.
Foster is highly convincing in the lead role. Cameos from John Hurt and Rob Lowe don’t add a great deal, but James Woods is always enjoyable to watch. Matthew McConaughey is OK as Foster’s love interest, a Christian whose spiritual leanings meet in the middle with Foster’s scientific rationality.
While robbing a billionaire’s mansion, a skilled burglar named Luther Whitney (Clint Eastwood) witnesses a crime involving the US President (Gene Hackman) and his secret service operatives. Because of the President’s careless actions in an affair with the billionaire’s wife, his mistress ends up getting shot. Detective Seth Frank (Ed Harris) begins to investigate the death, for which Whitney now finds himself the main suspect.
All three male leads are charismatic and appealing. The secret service team are less impressive, although there’s a funny and clever scene in which the President dances with his Chief of Staff (Judy Davis). It’s moments like this – and a scene in which Ed Harris shows his attraction to the burglar’s estranged daughter Kate (Laura Linney) – that exhibit the warmth and intelligence that make the film so enjoyable. There’s also fun to be had in Whitney’s skill as a master of disguises, and there’s a fairly touching thread in which – despite everything – Luther and Kate begin to re-connect.
It has some of the pantomime silliness of Flash Gordon, but absolutely none of the charm. And it steals from Blade Runner (there’s Vangelis-like music at one point, and Jovovich seems modelled on Daryl Hannah’s Pris at others), but it has none of that film’s vision or innovation. It’s played for comedy, but it’s never funny. It falls flat. The crass talk-show host Ruby Rhod (Chris Tucker) is just embarrassing – possibly the most annoying film character I’ve ever encountered.
Absolutely nothing about this film appeals.
The cast is superb. Kevin Kline plays Ben Hood, a father of two who’s having an affair with his friend and neighbour’s wife (Sigourney Weaver). Bored and restless, the two couples have troubled children too – perhaps unsurprisingly. Everything comes to a head on one dramatic, frozen night, as the fractures in their marriages and issues relating to the children’s insecurities seem to point towards a horrifying and inevitable conclusion.
It’s harrowing stuff – more so than I remembered from seeing it at the cinema in 1997.
Another disturbing thought: in 2021 we are as far from 1997 as 1997 was from 1973.
Brad Pitt plays Austrian mountain climber Heinrich Harrer, who abandons a pregnant wife to summit Nanga Parbat. But then World War II begins and he is held in a prisoner-of-war camp. His wife files for divorce, so he has little to return home to, but he escapes and makes it to the Tibetan capital city of Lhasa. There, he becomes tutor to (and friend of) the 14th Dalai Lama. The film details his gradual shift to a more caring, sharing kind of guy after years of living fairly selfishly.
It’s rich and colourful, but there are flaws. Pitt is oddly unconvincing. Maybe it’s his accent. Or maybe it’s his haircut. But I struggled to believe he was an Austrian climber, and struggled further to believe the spiritual development the film told us (rather than showed us) took place. Also, the “action” moves too slowly. Parts of the narrative look nice but just aren’t very interesting.
For much of the story, Heinrich is accompanied by colleague Peter Aufschnaiter – first a rival and later a friend – but that part too fails to come alive in the hands of David Thewlis, and their relationship never gains the gravitas it’s supposed to.
Given that Harrer’s actual life story seems fairly remarkable, it’s a shame that this account somehow fails to capture the essence of what makes it so notable.
Earth is at war with a devastating species of bugs. A young soldier named Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien) enlists to fight, and moves up through the ranks. He’s involved in different ways with two colleagues – “Dizzy” (Dina Meyer), who fights alongside him in the Mobile Infantry, and Carmen (Denise Richards), who is a gifted pilot. Blandly handsome and obedient, they perfectly epitomise the patriotic ideal.
The effects are extraordinary, and they don't seem to have the slick veneer of CGI. It’s extremely violent, with plenty of bloody dismemberment presented in a semi-cartoonish manner, but it’s also a hugely entertaining romp that's both intelligent and memorable. I liked it even more on second and third viewings.
