<P>Strange, that "Alfie" (1966) is halfway remembered as a comedy, when it was actually about a man who attempted to live life as comedy despite the lowering gloom which he thoroughly deserved. Alfie, in 1966 and again in the 2004 version, desp…
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<P>A peephole into the nastier corners of the male ego and human nature, the two-character Sleuth has enjoyed a robust life on the stage and on film. (Michael Caine had the role of the younger character, co-starring with Sir Laurence Oliver in …
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<P>In the same way that the Beatles' cover of Buck Owens' "Act Naturally" or the Stones' version of "Route 66" cut to the soul of American music without being American, Hong Kong cop and gangster movies have often seemed more quintessentially A…
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<P>It's vaguely disconcerting to admit that, less than 24 hours after seeing Under the Tuscan Sun, the thing I remember most clearly about it is neither the characters nor the situations, but the photography. This is a beautifully shot motion p…
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<P>Call me swine-phobic, but the last thing I wanted to see was a moving comedy about a pig. But after grunting my way into "Babe," I came out squealing with pleasure. A hilarious fantasy, about a plucky piglet that learns how to tend sheep, "B…
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<P>Two sewer workers are fleeing for their lives as a huge, invisible something pursues them relentlessly. It captures one of them as his colleague makes his way up the ladder to the street, yelling for help all the way, and as he is being pull…
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<P>"Big Daddy" is a film about a seriously disturbed slacker who adopts a 5-year-old and tutors him in cynicism, cruel practical jokes and antisocial behavior. It's not every film where an adult role model throws himself in front of a moving ca…
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<P>Last Holiday should not work. Its premise is weak, its outcome is never in doubt, and its humor tends to fluctuate between the banal and the uninspired. And yet somehow this remake of a darker 1950 Alec Guinness comedy overcomes all that and…
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<P>Amazingly, writer/director/producer Audrey Wells has taken the simple, basically unexciting narrative spine of Under the Tuscan Sun, writer Frances Mayes' memoir about falling in love with a villa in Italy, and cleverly fictionalized it--wra…
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<P>Time has not been completely kind to the 1939 version of "Wuthering Heights". Intended as a great tearjerker, it now comes across almost as camp. The hammy performances and dramatic dialogue are very entertaining, however.</P>
<P>The Emily…
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<P>Charges of anti-Semitism have been leveled against The Merchant of Venice so many times that it's easy to overlook the play's other problems. An unwieldy mix of comedy and tragedy, the play has some of Shakespeare's least convincing plot twi…
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<P>Romantic comedies sell fantasy. Ultimately, that's their reason for being - to make even the most cynical heart crave true love. Some romantic comedies, this one included, fail because of an inability to convince the audience that the protag…
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<P>Empty is the head that wears the crown in "The Last Emperor," Bernardo Bertolucci's lavish biography of Pu Yi, the sheltered sovereign who found himself out of work when China became a republic in 1912. Pu Yi's personal tragedy has become Be…
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<P>As I said in my review of the North and South DVD, I'd not read the book of North and South before watching this adaptation on TV. Having watched it I then went straight out and read the book. I'm quite pleased I did it this way, as I think …
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<P>Is there really anything left to say about The Lord of the Rings? By now, everyone knows the story of how a Kiwi filmmaker with only a handful of low-budget horror flicks to his name convinced New Line Cinema to give him $300 million so he c…
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