The Merchant-Ivory formula finds a few new flavours in this picturesque cultureclash comedy. Naomi Watts and Kate Hudson play American sisters in Paris, stumbling as they try to adapt to the French mores regarding love, sex, family and money. Subplots include Matthew Modine cracking up convincingly. Elegant and urbane.
This tender 1986 romance is generally considered one of Eric Rohmer's finest films, though you have to be in the mood: it's as slow as it is gently touching. A lonely secretary (Marie Rivière, who co-wrote) holidays alone, fails for a while to meet anyone special, then possibly does. Eventually, its charm and delicacy—and underneath them, realism—get you where it counts.
James Foley back on form with a nimbly entertaining, fleetingly noir, conman romp. Ed Burns, Rachel Weisz and gang unwittingly rip off sleazy crimelord Dustin Hoffman, and are forced to pull a bank heist for him. Andy Garcia floats around, countertwist follows triple-bluff, but for all the cleverness it's pacy and energised, with a smattering of drop-dead one-liners. Makes you want to like it.
Michael Winner's 1972 Cold War thriller manages to be built entirely from clichés, yet is almost completely incomprehensible. Burt Lancaster is the seen-it-all CIA man on the run through Europe from superiors who want him dead, pursued by his protégé, cat-loving contract killer Alain Delon. Muddy, but the stars tough it out, and if you've ever wanted to see Lancaster in blackface, dressed as a priest, this is your film.
You'll be—yes—giggly at how truly grim this really is. It's embarrassing watching the ego-addled Ben Affleck straining to show us what a stud he is for pulling J-Lo. The block Jenny's from is clearly made of wood, for her acting is equally dire in a would-be comic thriller from Martin Brest, who even calls in Pacino and Walken for cameos. To no avail.
Takeshi Kitano delicately intertwines three stories of endless love, inspired by traditional Japanese puppet theatre. In the main strand, a young man returns to his spurned lover following her suicide attempt, and the two roam the country, bound together by a red rope. Intersecting stories concern a yakuza pining for the girl he deserted, and a reclusive, disfigured pop star, stalked by an obsessive fan. A strange, visually ravishing film, with Takeshi's meditative, minimalist style as hypnotic as ever.
Kang Woo-Seo's admittedly stylish regurgitation of every Hollywood serial-killer/renegade-cop thriller cliché follows recalcitrant and psychotically violent detective Kang on the hunt for a mac-wearing knife-wielding slasher. Kang is a surly Kitano-esque bully, the killer is a narcissistic investment banker, and the whole movie is completely charmless.
This storm-tossed 1937 gem was the first flowering of Michael Powell's nearmystical vision of the British landscape. It tells of the death of one tiny, remote Scottish island, as young folk abandon old ways for the mainland, but Powell's cinematic treatment of the scudding light and shade of nature—part raw, heroic documentary, part mythic poem—raises the stakes to infinity and beyond. Magic realism, indeed.
