Daniel Day-Lewis plays Gerry Conlon, a real-life Irishman wrongly sentenced to life in prison for the IRA bombing of a London pub in the mid-70s, and Pete Postlethwaite plays his father, who was also jailed. Adapted by director Jim Sheridan and Terry George from Conlon’s book, this 1993 movie falls over backward trying to avoid taking a political position and seems a few years off in its depiction of hippie London. But the acting’s so good it frequently transcends the simplicities of the script, and whenever Day-Lewis or Postlethwaite is on-screen the movie crackles. Emma Thompson is on hand as a lawyer who becomes interested in the Conlons’ case after they’re convicted. 127 min. (JR) Read more
Wim Wenders’s flat-footed, long-winded sequel to Wings of Desire gives us more adventures of angels (fallen and otherwise) in Berlin, as well as some mainly heavy-handed attempts at humor. Many of the same actors are backincluding Otto Sander, Bruno Ganz, Solveig Dommartin, and Peter Falkalong with Horst Buchholz, Nastassja Kinski, Heinz Ruhmann, Rudiger Vogler, Willem Dafoe, and, in odd cameo appearances, superstars ranging from Lou Reed to Mikhail Gorbachev (both playing themselves). Some of the old Wenders poetry recurs in spots, but the feeling of a sprawling smorgasbord is fairly pronounced throughout, and Jurgen Jurges’s cinematography can’t match that of Henri Alekan (who appears in a cameo) or Robby Muller, who shot Wenders’s last two features. Incidentally, the title, which like Wenders’s previous Until the End of the World sounds like an awkward translation, is also the title of a Nick Cave song; too bad they didn’t opt for So Near, So Far. (JR) Read more
The first Jurassic Park spin-off. Stupid plot, silly dialogue, cheap special effects, gratuitous gore, over-the-top acting, dinosaurs eating politically correct environmentalistswhat more could you want? Roger Corman produced, which at least gives it the right kind of bad-movie pedigree. (Corman based his earliest cheapo efforts for teenagers on the principle that no matter how dumb you think you are, you can still feel superior to his movies.) Diane Ladd plays the mad scientist who wants to give the world back to dinosaurs and eliminate mankind while she’s at it, which should be a lot funnier than the movie makes it. Adam Simon of Brain Dead fame wrote and directed, basing his work on a novel by Harry Adam Knight and a treatment by John Brosnan. His taste for images of women giving birth to baby dinosaurs shows his clear indebtedness to David Cronenberg, and his apocalyptic finale seems straight out of Night of the Living Deadbut neither reference seems worthy of its source. With Raphael Sbarge, Jennifer Runyon, Harrison Page, and Clint Howard. (JR) Read more
A cheesy, by-the-numbers Hong Kong remake (1990) of La femme Nikita with an elevator-music score, daft subtitles (e.g., My head feels so hurt, I’m sorry for swirling you into trouble), and a reasonable amount of gore. The programmed-killer heroine (Jade Leung), dressed throughout in skimpy or tight outfits, gets a microchip implanted in her brain and is conditioned in prison with torture techniques out of A Clockwork Orange. The story doesn’t so much come to an end as stop, and when it did I was very grateful. Directed by Stephen Shin; with Simon Yam and Thomas Lam. Not to be confused with Point of No Return, an American remake of the same movie. In Cantonese with subtitles. 92 min. (JR) Read more
